Media
See Heidi’s appearances in the local and national press.
The Austin Chronicle
Community Organizer Heidi Sloan Announces Candidacy for TX-25
“I want to push into this idea that electoral politics can be a platform for organizing.”
Jacobin Magazine
It’s the Demand of the People That Creates Real Change
“We are running a campaign for people in this district to have a voice. We are running for people to make their demands heard. And I think that is really the biggest distinction: that I wouldn’t be doing electoral politics if I didn’t think it was important. But electoral politics without community organizing, without issue-based organizing and a platform that empowers people, is electoral politics that will keep us exactly where we have been.”
The Humanist Report
Socialist Farmer Heidi Sloan Calls Out Her Multi-Millionaire GOP Opponent
Roger Williams is the millionaire Republican who owns used car dealerships that he inherited from his father. He never comes to the district unless it’s for closed door fundraisers, and I got receipts man – he is Wells Fargo, he is Goldman-Sachs, he is developers and mortgage insurance companies, that is his entire list of supporters. And we know that we can go out into this district which includes Austin but which also includes a substantial amount of rural areas, and we can say to folks, Why are your rural hospitals closing? Why are your schools falling apart? Why don’t your wages keep pace with your cost of living, even as your quality of life is going down? And when they aren’t sure of the answer, we can point to the people who are backing Roger Williams and using him as a puppet to get done what industry and what billionaires and what the owning class wants to get done every day. That is a message that resonates, because we are here to be class conscious, and it resonates across the working class in District 25.
r/ChapoTrapHouse AMA
I’m a socialist farmer running to unseat a millionaire used car salesman Republican. AMA!
“Hey y’all, my name is Heidi Sloan, and I’m a candidate for US Congress in Texas’s 25th District. I’ve spent the last 7 years farming at a nonprofit housing community for the chronically homeless, and before that I taught toddlers with disabilities in public schools.”
The Conversation by The Young Turks
“For me, it is that organizing, it is standing with people who are directly affected by the policies and by the movement that has potential to change our lives.”
The Dig
Down-Ballot Fights with Jessica Cisneros, Stephen Smith, and Heidi Sloan
“We can actually solve for those [problems] by solving for human dignity and human rights as a whole and…we don’t have to say it’s a trade off. We can say that when we center folks who have been on the front lines, folks who have been most impacted by the social and economic system, life looks better for all of us.”
The Daily Dot
The 14 Progressives Who Could Be the Next AOC
Sloan has an interesting history as an organizer. She works at Community First Village of Mobile Loaves and Fishes where she “created the farming program that both feeds residents and provides employment.” She was a key activist in Austin DSA’s fight to win paid sick leave in the city of Austin.
The People’s Policy Project
3P Endorses Heidi Sloan for Congress in TX-25
Sloan is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and is running on key progressive agenda items like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and social housing. She has also endorsed the People’s Policy Project slate of family benefits, which includes paid parental leave, free child care and pre-k, free school lunches, and a monthly cash benefit paid to every family with children.
The Austin Statesman
Democrat Candidates Look to Suburbs for Support
A public school teacher for children with disabilities, Sloan said her mother’s struggles with mental health were unmet by the medical system in our country. Working with Community First! Village to provide affordable housing and support for individuals coming out of chronic homelessness, Sloan said she supports Medicare for All, a Green New Deal and the rights of working people.
r/WayOfTheBern AMA
“We know what we need most here in Texas: better wages and safer working conditions, decent housing, justice system reform, a thriving environment, and material support for families. What we need more folks to learn is how we get what we need – through collective action, shoulder to shoulder, with a clear target and a strategy to move them. As a community organizer who has spent years fighting alongside workers and poor people, I understand that one politician can’t change the world alone, but a movement can and will – especially a movement that understands the power of mass worker action. I’m running a class struggle campaign that will bring more people into the fights that affect our lives, to build a district that is organized enough to win its own gains and strong enough to hold any politician’s feet to the fire.”
The Michael Brooks Show
Primary Candidate Heidi Sloan on Texas Socialism
“There’s an ethos in Texas that you can’t just do something cause you need it, you have to do it cause your neighbor needs it, too — taking care of one another being one of our deepest core values.”
Season of the Bitch
Episode 102: Interview with Heidi Sloan
“We are definitely considering and building on and working towards the full incorporation of declaring the rights of sex workers as the rights of any workers. You know they are the same category as far as providing a service and making an income and having to pay their rent and their bills and et cetera. What is different about sex work is that it is pushed into the shadows and I know for certain that that is not a healthy or safe place for work to happen, any kind of work but particularly work that is in large part provided by already vulnerable people, tending to be women, tending to be people of color, tending to be younger people, folks who are already folks without much power in our communities.”
Data For Progress
The Progressive Labor Agenda is Popular. Are Insurgents Running On It?
As the plot shows, incumbent Democrats have reliably co-sponsored and voted for key proposals backed by organized labor, such as the Employee Free Choice Act, the Raise the Wage Act, and the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. In other words, there’s a baseline of support organized labor can count on from Democrats: and with the exception of Heidi Sloan (TX-25), Rebecca Parson (WA-6), Russ Cirincione (NJ-6), most progressive challengers are failing to stand out from baseline Democrats on labor.
Left Anchor
Episode 103 – Interview with Texas-25 Candidate Heidi Sloan
“When we go and talk to people in electoral spaces about policy, about a Green New Deal, about Medicare for All, about these huge visions for a future that are better for the vast majority, for all of us… we have to articulate that those things don’t just happen because you elect the right person. Those things absolutely require vigilance, they require the fight, the boots on the ground, and we are… building an office for this campaign that governs alongside the people — the same community organizers, the same labor organizers, the same directly affected individuals who are standing with us and making our policies stronger now — that our office will create space for them to have a permanent seat at the table as we learn to govern.”
The Damage Report
DSA Member Fights for the Working Class
“While I am a Democrat running on the Democratic ticket and pushing that as far to what we would call the left as possible, what I am ultimately trying to do is draw a distinction between policies that come from people who have existing and hegemonic power in our country towards policies that are stemming directly from the grassroots leadership of the working class. I’m a Democratic Socialist and for me that means that I am constantly pursuing the democratic voice of all people.”