Campaign follows legislative sessions in which lawmakers used lies to attack reproductive rights, LGBT people and immigrants
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nov. 6, 2017
AUSTIN – Texas Rising – a project of the Texas Freedom Network focused on college and university campuses – and former state senator and gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, along with Davis’ nonprofit Deeds Not Words, today embarked on the new phase of a campaign designed to inform Texans about how lawmakers use falsehoods to pass harmful legislation.
This latest phase is a series of Lies into Laws forums on 10 college campuses during the month of November.
“We’re going to colleges and universities with this campaign because we simply can’t allow this state to continue to run on lies told by cynical politicians bent on taking away our rights rather than improving the lives of all Texans,” said Jensen Soderlund, president of the Texas Rising chapter at the University of Texas at Austin.
Added Soderlund: “When a new lie turns into another bad law, it is our generation that is immediately impacted, and it is also we who have to deal with the harmful consequences years or even decades down the road.”
The first forum takes place on the campus of the University of Texas-San Antonio today, a year to the day before the 2018 midterm elections.
“It is vital for young women and men to take part in the electoral process and fully understand what is happening in their country, state, and community,” said Davis. “When engaged, this young generation will be equipped to stand up, speak out, and fight back. Now is their time.”
The Lies into Laws public education campaign launched earlier this year following a report from the Guttmacher Institute showing that Texas and Kansas top all 50 states in the number of major anti-abortion restrictions not based on rigorous science.
During this year’s regular and special sessions of the Texas Legislature, lawmakers again used the lies-into-laws strategy to pass more unnecessary abortion restrictions, and then took it further and passed legislation that discriminates against LGBT people and immigrants.
It is expected that people ages 18-34, the Millennial generation, will in 2018 become the largest voting-eligible generation in the country, surpassing Baby Boomers.
“This is an increasingly diverse and progressive generation of Texans, and our Texas Rising members have been organizing with them and registering thousands of them to vote. Politicians who ignore this rising generation or alienate them by pushing lies to pass dangerous and discriminatory laws will sometime soon face these voters at the polls,” said Val Benavidez, outreach and field director for the Texas Freedom Network.
A full schedule of the Lies into Laws forums is available at tfn.org/liesintolaws
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Texas Rising is a movement of young, diverse, politically engaged Texans working to leverage their power through community, electoral politics and public policy advocacy.
