In 1982, the Dallas Morning News editorial page had a name for a guy who wanted to bring back farmers markets in Texas: socialist.
Not Medicare for All. Not a wealth tax. Farmers markets. The kind with watermelons and a guy selling tomatoes off a folding table.
Hightower ran for Texas Agriculture Commissioner with the idea as a key part of his platform anyway. He won. And in his first year in office, he and a staff of six built a hundred of them across the state.
Forty-some years later, Democratic strategists are still having the same panic attack about socialism. Turns out the “radical” thing was never the label itself; it was whether the guy delivered on campaign promises.
Here, Hightower tells the story himself: the watermelon stand outside Weatherford that started it all, how Hightower’s staff created the market access for the farmers, and the line he used to shut the haters up for good — “the word ‘free’ in ‘free enterprise’ is not an adjective. It is a verb.”
