Political Revolution From the Bottom Up

By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News

07 March 17

know that many of us want change immediately. It would be nice if we could transform the country in one sweeping act. Following Donald Trump’s victory in November, we saw establishment Democrats tripping over themselves to be with Bernie Sanders. They quickly lined up behind Keith Ellison and got our hopes up that Progressives were about to take over the Democratic Party. The problem is we didn’t have over half of the seats on the Democratic National Committee ... yet.

We are making progress, and we fell only 13 votes short. When the DNC met two years ago, only around forty of the 450 members were people who ended up voting for Bernie Sanders at last July’s convention. Last week, 200 voted for Keith Ellison. We are making progress. The lesson we learned last week is that change doesn’t come from the top down but from the bottom up. We still have work to do.

The good news is Our Revolution is busy doing that work. They are contacting supporters of the political revolution and encouraging them to fill open positions at the precinct level in the party. As the Democratic Party goes through their reorganization process, Our Revolution is transforming the party from the bottom up.

Like Bernie said last June when he ended his campaign for President: “Real change never takes place from the top down, or in the living rooms of wealthy campaign contributors. 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.”

Larry Cohen, the Board Chair of Our Revolution, told RSN: “The Democratic Party must encourage much wider participation at all levels and from the bottom up. Our Revolution is proud of our efforts to recruit precinct chairs and involves hundreds of thousands in building the party at the municipal and county levels across the nation. Thousands of precinct leadership positions have been vacant; our goal must be to fill them and to discuss the populist progressive change we imagine in every county and community.”

We saw the power of grassroots organizing in California,” said Our Revolution Executive Director Shannon Jackson. “Whether it was spreading the word among peers or volunteering to run – these victories are a testament to what we can accomplish when we stand together.”

In December, Our Revolution launched a reorganization web tool to inform supporters of opportunities to run for thousands of leadership positions open within local parties. After identifying 30 counties with open positions in California, Our Revolution sent more than 15,000 emails and 11,000 peer to peer text messages encouraging eligible supporters to run for open positions.

“Our Revolution did a great job helping us to get the word out, but we also had to go door to door, make printed materials, Facebook events, ads, websites and we reached out to the progressive groups we’re involved with,” Jon Schnitzer, who was elected as both a delegate and an Executive Board member in his district, told Common Dreams. “Bernie brought us all together, and we stayed together. Bernie told us at the DNC we need to run for low level offices because change only comes from the bottom up. And he was right, we’re proof.”

Here in Iowa, voters who caucused for Bernie have been getting text messages encouraging them to attend their “off year” Caucus. At these meetings, they can fill any vacant seats on the county central committees. There are thousands of empty seats all over the country. Filling them will strengthen the progressive movement’s hand in future years. Maybe next time the party elects a chair, the makeup of the DNC will allow us to win without support from centrist Democrats.

Our Revolution staff and volunteers are busy researching every state’s reorganization procedures and rolling up their sleeves and organizing. That is the only way real change occurs. The Political Revolution is succeeding, one precinct at a time.

Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott moved to Des Moines in 2015 to cover the Iowa Caucus.

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