Our Revolution is No Shadow Campaign for Bernie Sanders.
Let me make this clear: Our Revolution Is No Shadow Campaign for Bernie Sanders. Because many of you may see today’s AP’s outrageous, misplaced, scandal-mongering yellow journalism attack on Bernie and Our Revolution, I want to take a moment to offer my perspective as someone who has observed the inside of the machine, but with a little distance. The appearance of the article today is particularly upsetting to me, because today is the 3rd anniversary of the launch of my county’s local Our Revolution chapter — Our Revolution Montgomery County, Maryland — a chapter which I led in organizing as part of one of four statewide affiliates, Our Revolution Maryland. The AP article implies all kinds of hypocrisy that simply does not reflect what I have witnessed from my own deep personal engagement as a leading volunteer. This is my effort to set the record straight.
Our Revolution has endorsed Bernie Sanders, but it does not act to raise money to support him outside of FEC limits. Very little of the organization’s efforts have gone to support Bernie. The effort mostly works in reverse, when Bernie decides to actively support a candidate endorsed by Our Revolution, as he did 2 years ago in Maryland, with our statewide endorsed candidate for Governor, Ben Jealous. We have also turned out to support numerous causes which Sen. Sanders has also supported. Because of our proximity to Washington, DC (a short ride on the Metro), we have turned out members to attend Sen. Sanders’ Medicare for All bill launch events, for example.
In truth, though, most of our efforts have been locally focused, and we turned out much more support for rallies for local and state legislation, including a ban on fracking, a $15/hour minimum wage, and a doubling of the state’s renewable energy credit requirements for electricity providers. We were very active in leading a coalition of local progressive activist groups to elect a slate of progressive candidates in 2018. You would have heard much more about what we achieved in our primary in Montgomery County and in Baltimore County and Baltimore City, except our primary was the same day that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rocked the national political establishment in New York’s Congressional primaries. We surprised the local establishment with wins in the Governor’s race, several County Executive races, and wins in multiple state legislative races, including against powerful committee chairs. That’s what we accomplished locally, as a volunteer organization with one part-time employee helping to knit the local chapters into one cohesive state organization and few additional resources.
Our Revolution, for better or worse, was organized as a Super PAC (some original hires left over that decision). That has allowed it to raise some money from big donors, anonymously. The AP article actually reveals just how little money is at issue. It’s Dr. Evil level, really. Straight out of Austin Powers movies. One million dollars. Over 3 years. One million dollars in excess of what would be individual donor limits if Our Revolution wasn’t a Super PAC. Per the article, “much comes from six-figure donors.” So, that suggests that Our Revolution has literally a handful of big-dollar donors. Given that the money they donated was spread over 3 years, it is not very much actually (but, admittedly more than the $9k they could have have given directly to a candidate committee). I don’t know who this handful of bigger donors are, but that is not the point. I might note that this 3-year total is roughly what the Bernie Sanders campaign raises every 3 days — but that misses the point, too.
Our Revolution’s national organization supported hundreds of candidates, along with many protests and other policy-centered efforts, across the nation. The locals, thousands of chapters — with virtually no financial support from national — have worked on those issues and supported 1000s of candidates. Over the last 3 years, the funds that cash-strapped Our Revolution raised has paid for its CRM service, emails, texts (a practice mostly stopped now because of the cost) and staff (now down to a half-dozen full-timers and a few part-timers) who work mostly on #MedicareForAll events, and turning out to support labor, as we did yesterday to support the postal workers in Washington, DC.
The idea that Our Revolution has worked to allow a few donors to skirt the donation limits to Bernie Sanders, or to any other candidate truly distorts what Our Revolution has been and what is has done over its 3+ years in existence. Our local group launched 3 years ago to the day, with a meeting of about 160 people at the Rockville Public Library. We have has some successes on issues and in elections, but I wish we had done more on some of these issues and done more for the candidates we supported. One of our endorsed candidates, for example, held a slim lead on primary day, but lost by 12 votes after a recount. That said, we’ve done some really good work and have had a real impact. Our members helped with the lobbying and pressure on the Clean Energy Jobs Act, the Fracking ban, raising the minimum wage, first in our county and then statewide. Along with Democratic Socialists of America and other local progressives, we helped to score primary wins for Ben Jealous, Marc Elrich (County Executive), Vaughn Stewart, Gabriel Acevero, Julie Palakovich Carr, Lorig Charkoudian, Jheanelle Wilkins (all elected to the state House of Delegates), and a busload of other candidates across the state.
I hope we will continue to do this work in years to come, regardless of the outcome of the Presidential primary, or the general election. The work of Our Revolution is bigger and broader than just the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Our work — our revolution — is the people’s political revolution. It is not a dark, shadowy effort aimed at the Presidential campaign. We have been very busy over the last 3 years, on other things. And, we have been very careful since the launch of the 2020 campaign, to keep our personal efforts for Bernie Sanders well segregated from the campaign. Personal firewalls. Very intentional.
It is also true that the campaign has been extraordinarily careful to avoid any interaction with Our Revolution (or local chapters). Of course, it is true that much of the original national staff moved on to staff the Sanders campaign, That should surprise no one, as they all came to Our Revolution after the campaign.
In Montgomery County, we are, as I noted above, a short ride on the Metro from DC. It is the same short ride to the campaign’s national office, but campaign staffers would not even share the location with us, or provide us with a contact number, so as to avoid even the appearance of any coordination with members of Our Revolution local chapters. If the AP had bothered to interview any of the members, they would have heard chapter and verse about the reality that is not reflected in the scandal-mongering hit-job article which ran today.
To organize in the state, we have reverted back to the volunteer network we set up 4 years ago, before any of us had any contact with anyone associated with the 2016 Sanders’ campaign. I am quite certain that all volunteers around the country are being equally careful not to do anything that would undermine the campaign’s effort to remain a purely grassroots mobilization.
If you must, here’s the link to the AP article, but please note everything that is missing from the article, including the context of what that million dollars represents over three years, and, more importantly, what it really has supported.
