The tentacles of disinformation have already claimed its first young victim. This week, an unvaccinated child in Texas died of measles – an entirely preventable disease. Right now, the state is seeing its largest measles outbreak in more than 30 years. Yet at a White House briefing, secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, falsely noted “it is not unusual”, and did not offer any plans for containment.

I am a pediatrician in Texas, and I can assure you the situation is so abnormal that most younger physicians have never seen a case of measles, thanks to successful vaccination campaigns.

My state is ground zero for freedoms under assault. Texas is home to some of the most draconian abortion laws, which have already led to the grisly deaths of women due to hemorrhaging or sepsis. A doctor convicted of providing an illegal abortion in Texas can face up to 99 years in prison, a $100,000 fine, and the loss of their medical license. Some doctors risk jail time to care for them, blossoming with unwavering courage, right out of a Faulkner novel.

I have spent time in the halls of power at the White House and networked in the ivory towers of Manhattan, where generational wealth burgeons from skyscrapers, and attended many a fundraiser on both coasts. But nothing I have done is more impactful than a day’s work in this battleground of the south, the graveyard of politicians’ abandoned promises.

Immigration policies are not polemics here; they are my backyard. Texas has the highest rate of uninsured and the second high rate of undocumented in the US. A recent Texas executive order requiring hospitals to ask patients about their immigration status has generated deep distress for health care providers, who worry that the threat of deportation serves as a deterrent to seeking health care. When a doctor went viral for informing patients that they are, in fact, not legally required to disclose citizenship status, the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, publicly threatened to pull funding from a children’s hospital.

I once transported a critically ill newborn with heart defects on a medical evacuation flight. My job was to keep the baby alive long enough so he could die in his mother’s arms. Immigration checkpoints made it so she could not join him for his life-saving surgery.

Abandoning classist gatekeeping is the only way the Democratic party will ever win a presidential election again

I expect no support from the Republican party, even as they proclaim to be the party of family values, but the mockery we receive from wealthy, influential progressives above the Mason-Dixon line is shameful.

What we need is vocal support, and money, from the elite Democratic political class. Instead, legacy media uses prime journalism real estate pages to mock our colloquial “y’all”. In another piece, Texas is compared to Mars. In The New Yorker, back when Democrats could have swept southern voters, George Packer wrote us as a caricature: “The southern way of life: country music and Lynyrd Skynyrd … Nascar … God and guns, the code of masculinity, militarization …”

We need not look far as to why sanctimonious condescension drips from the pages of the ruling class. The top 1% are overrepresented among the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal mastheads by a factor of about 50.

Our influential progressive allies have failed to meet the moment. And yet, abandoning classist gatekeeping is the only way the Democratic party will ever win a presidential election again. So enough of the posturing – coastal elites need to put their money where their mouth is, and stop using us as a punchline.

Instead of using family connections to get your children coveted internships or fund legacy nepo-education, take your Ivy League family money and funnel it to those of us propping up the scaffolding of a flailing republic on your behalf. Don’t just talk about immigration policy at your next art gallery opening, fund local clinics along border towns. Don’t just post abortion outrage; volunteer to drive teenagers 15 hours across state lines, and support the clandestine underground network of women who hold girls’ heads in their laps while they sob and sweat, blood dripping down their knees.

Invite us to your prestigious academic halls as professors with expertise on migrant health, criminalization of plan B, and the murky web of Chip (children’s health insurance plans). Invest in independent journalists with tenacity and deep local knowledge. Don’t rely on “helicopter reporters” who write us as Waffle House diner parodies.

Speak up for us in rooms where we don’t have access, or bring us in to say something daring enough to enrage your board members. Force moneyed decision-makers to reflect on the sins committed by the institutions they cradle.

If, as the quintessential gentrification yard sign says, you really do believe that Black Lives Matter, understand that geographically, the south has the highest share of the nation’s Black population (Houston maintains its position as the most diverse large city in America).

We in the south are a multicultural populace held hostage by voter suppression, gerrymandering to high hell, and the failures of legacy media establishments who refuse to acknowledge that humanity can exist in barefoot barbecues, not just on charcuterie plates with fine wines.

In the richest country in the world, I have sent home a malnourished seven month old infant who required an nasogastric tube for feeds to ensure brain growth. Since Texas did not expand Medicaid in the wake of the Affordable Care Act, this child did not have access to the baby formula she needed.

Platform my voice and that story, even if it includes me saying “y’all”.

• Seema Jilani is a pediatric physician based in Texas, a first-generation American, and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations