A California heiress who has described herself as an “anticapitalist” who wants to abolish prisons has established herself as one of the largest donors to a radical Political Action Committee that is working to elect Democrats across Texas.
Rachel Gelman, an Oakland, California resident and heiress to the Levi Strauss family fortune, donated $100,000 to the Texas Organizing Project PAC on August 27. The PAC is taking an active role in helping its endorsed candidates in the current election, including candidates for judicial office and at least two battleground seats in the Texas House of Representatives.
The New York Times featured Gelman in a 2020 article entitled, “The Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism.” In that article, Gelman described her politics as “anticapitalist, anti-imperialist and abolitionist.” In 2019, Gelman spent $3.3 million to acquire a building in Oakland, California, to serve as the national headquarters of Critical Resistance, an organization that seeks to eliminate policing and incarceration.
On its website, Critical Resistance states that it “organizes in various campaigns and projects that challenge the system of policing. Because policing is often the first point of contact our communities have with the prison industrial complex, our work seeks to chip away at the power of policing, reduce its scope in our lives, build alternatives to make it obsolete, and ultimately abolish policing.”
To achieve its stated goal of abolishing what it calls the “Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)”, Critical Resistance supports “undoing the society we live in.”
“PIC abolition is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment. From where we are now, sometimes we can’t really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn’t just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It’s also about undoing the society we live in because the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence, and controls millions of people,” says Critical Resistance.
The founders of Critical Resistance include Angela Davis, a prominent Marxist activist and academic who was the Community Party’s Vice-Presidential nominee in 1980 and 1984.
In a 2019 interview with radio station KQED about her support of Critical Resistance, Gelman said, “any system that cages people is fundamentally inhumane.”
Like Critical Resistance, the Texas Organizing Project seeks to dismantle the criminal justice system.
As part of its “Right2Justice” campaign, the Texas Organizing Project seeks to “end mass incarceration and the criminalization of poverty of Black and Latino people in four of the largest counties in Texas (Harris, Dallas, Bexar and Fort Bend) by creating a justice system that is fair and just.”
The Texas Organizing Project has advocated for the elimination of cash bail and operates a fund that bails individuals out of jail. The group has posted job openings for “community bail disruptors” that are “directly responsible for identifying individuals within the Bexar, Harris and Dallas county jail and executing their bails.”
Texas Organizing Project’s bail program gained attention in 2023 after an offender who had previously been bailed out of jail by the group murdered six people during a crime spree.
In addition to its work on criminal justice issues, the Texas Organizing Project has been critical of deportations and supports granting citizenship to illegal immigrants. The Houston Community Party has promoted events hosted by the Texas Organizing Project on criminal justice and immigration issues.
The Texas Organizing Project PAC has endorsed an assortment of Democratic candidates across Texas. In addition to supporting Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and Collin Allred in high-profile federal races, most of the group’s attention has been on down-ballot races. These include two hotly contested races for seats in the Texas House of Representatives.
Kristian Carranza, the Democratic nominee for Texas House District 118 in Bexar County, has been endorsed by the Texas Organizing Project PAC and is one of the biggest beneficiaries of their efforts. Carranza, who has worked as a Democratic political operative, is challenging incumbent Republican State Representative John Lujan in what is one of the few swing districts in the Texas House.
Lujan, a retired firefighter who also once worked as a Deputy Sheriff in the Bexar County Sheriff’s office, is supported by several law enforcement organizations, including the San Antonio Police Officers Association and the Texas Municipal Police Association.
In Collin County, the Texas Organizing Project PAC has endorsed incumbent Democrat State Representative Mihaela Plesa. Plesa was first elected in 2022 in what was the closest race for a seat in the Texas House that year. Plesa faces Republican opponent Steve Kinard in November.
Plesa was one of the worst-performing Democrats in her district in 2022, earning 50.7% of the vote, while other Democrats fared several points higher. Despite Plesa’s liberal views, Republican political consultant Luke Macias dedicated an episode of his Texas Scorecard podcast shortly before the 2022 general election- entitled “The One Texas Republican I Hope Loses”- to discussing why he hoped Jolly would be defeated by Plesa.
The Texas Organizing Project PAC has also endorsed Democratic candidates for Sheriff in Bexar, Tarrant, and Harris Counties, several Democratic judicial candidates in Harris County, and the Democratic Harris County District Attorney candidate Sean Teare, among others.
Candidates endorsed by the Texas Organizing Project must have a demonstrated commitment to the group’s leftist values. The published criteria for earning an endorsement from the Texas Organizing Project PAC include “Does the candidate have a strong history of working with TOP on our issues?” and “Does the candidate reflect TOP values?”
According to the most recent campaign finance reports on file with the Texas Ethics Commission, the Republican Party of Texas had not provided assistance to Lujan, Kinard, or any other Republican state legislative candidate as of the end of the most recent campaign finance reporting period.
