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What’s Next For The Bernie Sanders Revolution?

What’s Next For The Bernie Sanders Revolution?

As we approach the upcoming Democratic convention, let’s look back at the race… and forward to the future.

The mainstream media tried to reduce the two Democratic campaigns as a Hillary v. Bernie war. The reality, though, is that most Sanders backers were enthusiastic precisely because his campaign’s purpose was far bigger than the usual personality politics. Supporters were signing up for a revolution against corporate rule.

To achieve this, we have to keep mobilizing for a truly democratic movement, and this is much harder than one presidential run. Sanders and close advisors are strategizing to help grow the grassroots rebellion — from school boards to Congress. This new coordinating effort will build on the framework and momentum of the campaign.

Outside of Sanders’ circle, a multitude of Bernie supporters are not waiting on a smoke signal from headquarters. With the primaries over and the convention starting, a mushrooming, percolate-up creativity has already burst into new organizing projects that are advancing this energized populist movement. Here are just two examples:

The People’s Summit. In the world of politics-as-usual, a losing candidate’s supporters just drift away, but All-Things-Sanders tend to be unusual. So, on June 17, just three days after the final Democratic primary, some 3,000 Berniecrats from all across America gathered in a Chicago convention center to “Keep the Bern Alive.” Rather than being morose or cynical about Sanders not winning the nomination, attendees were exuberant about the future and the movement that he galvanized. This extraordinary, uplifting event was a combination of tent revival and workshops for serious strategizing and organizing, and was rightly labeled a “Festival of Joyous Rebellion.” The two-day summit was convened by National Nurses United (a scrappy, aggressively progressive union) and co-sponsored by more than 50 diverse and effective democracy-building groups.

This meeting had a minimum of blah-blah and a maximum of planning on how to put experienced, locally-based organizers and volunteers directly into growing the movement — starting now. These ever-larger and broader local coalitions will: (1) be rooted in principled, anti-corporate politics; (2) launch direct grassroots initiatives and actions on a range of populist issues; (3) recruit, train, and elect thousands of movement candidates to school boards, city councils, state legislatures, and other offices; (4) deepen the relationships and sense of shared purpose in this revolutionary democratic movement. And (5) — Make it fun — putting the “party” back in politics. www.thepeoplessummit.org

Brand New Congress. What if progressive organizers and volunteers joined forces to run a nationwide campaign to replace today’s corporate-owned congress — all at once? Yes, one sweeping campaign to oust all incumbents of either party who owe their jobs to the Big Money powers. Those congress critters, feeling snug in their gerrymandered rabbit holes, could be outed by hundreds of coordinated, Brand New Congress campaigns running simultaneously in every state. Each local campaign would back candidates publicly pledged to fight for an agenda of economic, social, environmental, and political justice.

Impossible? Not in the minds of Zach Exley, Becky Bond and other former Sanders staffers who conceived and implemented this campaign’s successful grassroots model that Exley calls “distributed organizing.” They trained and empowered tens of thousands of far-flung volunteers to be autonomous organizers, digitally linked into a nationwide network, eliminating the need and cost of a rigid hierarchy of “leaders” to boss volunteers, recognizing instead that volunteers themselves are leaders — in churches, clubs, workplaces, community groups, etc. Now they’re applying this model to Brand New Congress that will carry the message of authentic populism and a shared agenda of populist policy proposals.

BNC is to be a true bi-partisan effort, running Dems in blue districts, Repubs in solid red ones, and independents whereever that makes sense. But wait — how can BNC get Republican candidates to run on progressive values? By recognizing that true populism is neither a right or left theory, but a top vs. bottom reality that even middle-class and lower-income Republicans can relate to. (Note: In Vermont, which often elects Republican governors, Sanders won 71 percent of the vote in his last Senate race). Indeed, outside of the right-wing Congress, many rank-and-file Republicans would support stopping global trade scams and crony-capitalism corruption, as well as assuring health care for all, recognizing climate change, and standing up to bigotry.

Bernie has urged his supporters to keep pushing for their democratic ideals. “Real change never takes place from the top down. It always occurs from the bottom on up — when tens of millions of people say ‘enough is enough’ and become engaged in the fight for justice. That’s what the political revolution we helped start is all about. That’s why the political revolution must continue.”

 

Photo: Supporters cheer as Bernie Sanders addresses supporters following the closing of the polls in the California presidential primary in Santa Monica, California, June 7, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Bernie Sanders’ Staffers Want To Replace Congress By 2018

Bernie Sanders’ Staffers Want To Replace Congress By 2018

A group of ex-staffers and volunteers from the Bernie Sanders campaign are looking past the 2016 presidential election and towards the 2018 midterms, aiming to replace the United States Congress with a brand new one – or as close to that as they can get – made up of political newbies and outsiders unbeholden to the donor-class.

Last Monday, these Sanders supporters formed a new Political Action Committee called Brand New Congress, and they’ve already raised nearly $35,000 in donations from around 8,000 pledged members. Around 300 have signed up to work for the campaign.

The group has a three-year plan: Throughout 2016 they will continue recruiting organizers and selecting a set of more than 400 candidates — from across the political spectrum, apparently — who conform to the Sanders brand of political integrity, and by January 2017 they’ll begin a hard push to the midterm elections in November 2018.

Although electing an entirely new Congress seems like a stretch, the massive mobilization we’ve seen of previously disenganged primary voters in 2016 makes just about anything seem feasible, at least on paper.

Brand New Congress doesn’t necessarily seem to want to swap out everyone on Capitol Hill — just those they deem part of the “do nothing” problem that has pushed so many voters to the fringes of their respective parties.

A statement on the group’s website reads, “America needs an honest, accountable Congress to enact Bernie’s program. But trying to win each Congressional seat one-by-one is impossible. So let’s run one campaign to replace Congress all at once…that whips up the same enthusiasm, volunteerism and money as Bernie’s presidential campaign.”

The group is pinning most of its hopes on convincing inexperienced political observers to throw their hats into the ring.

In an interview with The Attitude, a progressive talk show out of New Hampshire, Brand New Congress organizer Stacie Hopkins said “[political] experience is good to have, but it’s not always necessary to have that experience to be a good representative of the people.”

“We hope to be able to provide training to people who have natural leadership qualities,” Hopkins said. “We want to encourage people who may not have thought of running for public office, but who have the qualities that would make them conducive to being good representatives.” Hopkins noted that some congress people “may have gotten into [politics] not to serve the public, but for ego and personal ambitions, for the sake of having power.”

The group also plans on taking some of the fundraising pressure off of its newly-minted politicians, an awkward conflict with Sanders’s pledge not to accept money from outside groups. It’s a similar position to Harvard Law School professor — and one-time Democratic presidential candidate — Lawrence Lessig’s Mayday PAC, a super PAC meant to support candidates in favor of campaign finance reform.

Brand New Congress hasn’t shied away from its commitment to recruit new candidates from both parties. In an interview with the Huffington Post, organizer Zack Exley said, “We want a supermajority in Congress that is fighting for jobs, criminal justice reform and the environment. Most Americans actually want that, and I think we get it by running Dems in blue areas, Republicans in deep red areas, and by running independents wherever we didn’t defeat incumbents.”

Given the current — and longstanding – polarity of our political parties, it’s easy to disregard the potential for successfully finding Democrats and Republicans to run under the same umbrella group. According to a representative from the PAC, they plan on endorsing Republican candidates who back progressive social issues like LGBT and women’s rights — and those Republicans are out there, in and around the pro-privacy, live and let live libertarian camp.

If the real hope of Brand New Congress is to break up congressional gridlock and create an environment where all the issues can be contested on a level playing field, then this might be worth watching. It may be a long shot, but what about Bernie Sanders’s insurgent campaign for president isn’t?

Photo: Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks during a rally at Safeco Field in Seattle, Washington March 25, 2016. REUTERS/David Ryder  –