Friends,
I am a registered member of the Green Party,
and I voted for Jill Stein. However, I live in Maryland, a safe state, so
Hillary was victorious here. Obviously, Hillary was a terrible choice,
but far better than the Trumpster. I do not see the Green Party, at
this time, as being able to have much of an effect on state or national
politics. So I believe a better option is to reform the Democratic
Party. For those who say that is impossible, think Jeremy Corbyn.
Kagiso,
Max
Draft
Bernie? Democratic Party Takeover? Strategic Concerns Paramount at People's
Summit
Even if you attended the 4,000-strong Peoples Summit in Chicago
on June 9-11 organized by folks from the Bernie Sanders campaign and National
Nurses United (NNU), you might have missed the most significant moment of the
gathering. It was a seemingly offhand comment made by NNU Executive Director
RoseAnn DeMoro during the Saturday evening session when Bernie Sanders spoke to
an adoring crowd, but a comment that adds kindling to a potential 2020 fire.
The audience in the packed Chicago theater included volunteers
for a new effort called Draft Bernie for a People’s Party. They waved Draft
Bernie signs and throughout Sanders’ speech, urged him to launch a new party.
The group is made up mainly of young staff and volunteers who
worked on the Sanders campaign but were so disillusioned by the Democratic
Party that they are determined to start a new one. They are sympathetic to and
want to collaborate with the Green Party and other existing third parties, but
they want a new, fresh progressive party like the European ones that captured
the public imagination and made sweeping gains. While their focus right now is getting
Sanders on board, they say they’ll build a People’s Party even if he refuses to
join.
At the end of Sanders’ rousing address at the Summit, he was
joined on stage by his wife, Jane Sanders, whose Sanders Institute was launched
this weekend, and by NNU’s RoseAnn DeMoro. DeMoro looked directly at the Draft
Bernie people in the audience and grinned. “We’re going to take a few questions
but I want to thank all the Draft Bernie people here,” she said. Then came the
zinger. “I’m with you,” she added, as she turned around to look at Bernie and
his wife. Then she pivoted back to the audience, “Nurses, are we with them?” As
they roared their approval, DeMoro turned to Sanders again. “I always say:
‘heroes aren’t made, they’re cornered.”
“It was amazing,” said Nick Brana, Draft Bernie founder, who was
former national political outreach coordinator for Bernie 2016 and former
electoral manager for Our Revolution. “We knew that RoseAnn was supportive but
had no idea that she would announce that support publicly, on stage, with
Bernie Sanders standing next to her and in front of thousands of cheering
fans.”
I don’t think most people in the audience realized the potential
significance of the DeMoro’s endorsement. Her union has about 150,000 members
and spent about $1 million on the Sanders campaign. It’s one of only six
national unions that backed Bernie Sanders for president. Under DeMoro’s
leadership, the nurses have become heavyweights in the progressive world,
championing everything from universal single payer healthcare to a Wall Street
tax to pay for free college education. Just imagine if DeMoro could get her
whole union to back a new party, and leverage that to get other unions and
progressive institutions on board.
Throughout the summit, speaker after speaker railed against the
Democratic Party. TV personality Van Jones trashed Hillary Clinton’s campaign
for failing to connect to working-class and minority voters. "Let's be
honest," Jones shouted. "They took a billion dollars, a billion
dollars, a billion dollars, set it on fire, and called it a campaign!"
Author Thomas Frank said Democrats signed off on Wall Street bailouts, mass
incarceration, and the Iraq War, giving up everything the party supposedly
stood for. Former State Senator Nina Turner, who had the crowd on their feet
during her entire speech, said the Democrats would have to follow the people to
the left, or they’d be left behind.
But criticizing the Democrats and ditching them are two entirely
different things. There are certainly sincere leaders still determined to
change the party from within. The Summit heard from Congressman Mark Pocan, a
progressive champion who was recently elected co-chair of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus. And most of the Summit was focused on getting more leftist
Democrats elected, from former NAACP head Ben Jealous running for Maryland
governor to the dozens of attendees running for city councils and state houses.
Getting Bernie Sanders to break with the Democrats is a long,
long, long shot. And even if he agreed, creating an effective third party in
the US “winner-take-all” electoral system is a treacherous path littered with
dead bodies, from Ross Perot’s Americans Elect to the Tony Mazzochi’s US Labor
Party.
But for those who see the Democratic Party as unfixable and the
existing third parties as ineffective, what have they got to lose?
*Note: The original headline of this article was updated to
remove an inaccurate representation of DeMoro's position.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment