I cast my lot with the Berniecrats in the Democratic primaries. After Bernie lost I was naturally pretty disappointed in the DNC, especially the outgoing chair, but eagerly awaited Sanders’ next moves, which turned out to be both a well-regarded book and something a bit more than a PAC, an organization called Our Revolution.
After donating to Our Revolution, some of us have been impatiently waiting for the “bit more” part, which promised to build a network to get progressives involved in local Democratic Party organizations.
Recently a friend who’s been hounding Our Revolution even more than I finally heard something:
I know it doesn’t look like it, but we actually are working hard on several projects I am personally excited about. First, we’re researching and building a tool to allow folks to get involved in leadership in Dem and Working Families Party positions at their local level – you can check out our progress so far at transformtheparty.com. We’ve got teams of volunteers and staffers working hard on this. Right now the search tool only works for California addresses but we’re almost ready to launch the whole shebang. Second, we’re working on a sanctuary cities project that we plan to use to pressure additional cities to become havens for those who need protection – and third, we’re getting ready to roll out local organizing plans for all 50 states. This is going to be a big deal and has taken lots of time to try to get right – but we expect it to be out within the next few weeks at most.
Today my buddy sent me a “getting started” link to a signup page at the same website, where you can enter your name, address and state. The youthful techies who have created all this are using a discussion tool called #slack which you may want to invest some time learning to use, if you are so inclined.
So at least register. Even if you’re a mainstream Democrat it may be an eye-opener to discover how things actually get done. Which – now that I think about it – is true of just about any organization.
Meanwhile the contest between Democrats supporting Keith Ellison and those backing Tom Perez for DNC chair is heating up. Both are pretty good guys, but Perez has less political experience and is a tad more corporate-friendly while Ellison has a giant Republican “Black Muslim Jihadist Anti-Semite Communist wife-beater” target on his back, making some weak-bladdered Democrats pretty nervous. The person who ends up winning the DNC chair may be less important than how he wins it, and how the arm-wrestling match plays out between centrist and progressive Democrats.
So, as they say in arm-wrestling… Ready, Go!
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