She's With ThemBut We've Got Us: A Movement Bigger Than Sanders
Published on
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
by
Common Dreams
She's With ThemBut We've Got Us: A Movement Bigger Than Sanders
The DNC and the Clinton campaign joined forces against the 'political
revolution' for one simple reason: they knew it could win. And it still can.
by
Jon Queally, staff writer
A crowd of supporters cheer Bernie Sanders during a rally in New York
earlier this year. (Photo: Reuters)
The proper question of the week is not why Bernie Sanders supporters
delegates gathered in the Philadelphia and his millions of supporters
across the nationare so angry with the Democratic National Committee this
week.
The contents of internal party emails published by WikiLeaks last Friday,
now known as the #DNCLeak, only confirmed what most Sanders supporters knew
or assumed to be true all along: that the DNC had put its thumb on the scale
in favor of Hillary Clinton throughout the primary season. For many, the
leaked emailsthough affirmingsimply offered more concrete evidence and
credence to an already established fact.
"And if they didn't believe [Sanders could actually beat Clinton], none of
this would have been done."
So what's the real question regarding how the leaks fit into the political
tensions playing out this week at the national convention?
According to RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United
which endorsed Sanders and campaigned aggressively on his behalf, the point
isn't to locate the source of the anger (that's obvious), but instead to ask
this: Why did the Democratic Party decide to operate so aggressively to
undermine the Sanders campaign in the first place?
Despite the intensely competitive contest between Clinton and an insurgent
Barack Obama in 2008, says DeMoro, the DNC was far more neutral, or at least
appeared to be, during that campaign.
But the reason for this year's behavior, she explained in a phone interview
with Common Dreams, is that the DNC and the Clinton campaignand more
importantly their joint backers on Wall Streetrealized something altogether
too terrifying: "that Bernie Sanders could, in fact, defeat Hillary Clinton.
And if they didn't believe that, none of this would have been done."
That answer, though obvious on the one hand, has not been widely discussed
even as examples of how the DNC acted to undermine the Sanders campaign are
well-documented and include:
the decision to sanction so few televised Democratic debatesand
scheduling the few that did occur on nights almost guaranteed to have low
viewershipa curious choice if you believe in the potency of the party's
ideas and vision;
the decision to suspend the Sanders campaign's access to the DNC
voter database ahead of the first crucial contest in Iowa;
myriad examples of restricted voter access in Arizona, New York, and
elsewhere;
the serious questions of party rule-breaking in Nevada;
use of state-level committees to get around the campaign's
limitations on receiving large-donor gifts; and
the way pledges of support by superdelegates were exploited early
and often (and right to the end) as they fed a media narrative that Sanders
was always much further behind than he actually was.
"What this whole corruption in the DNC during this election has done is
essentially sabotaged people's hopes and beliefs and the love that they felt
by coming back into political life."
On that last point, said DeMoro, "with some unabashed help from many in the
media, the DNC just ran that and ran that and ran that narrative. We met so
many people who said, 'Oh, I love Bernie but he can't win.' And the Clinton
campaign pushed that because they knew that what he was saying would
resonate with America."
And yes, DeMoro says, she and other supporters of Sanders are angry and
rightly so. But that's not really the story either. Having been with Sanders
at his home in Vermont several weeks ago with other close advisers and
supporters, DeMoro identified something deeply personal and more emotive
than anger when it comes to what this campaign has representedboth for
Sanders himself and those inspired by his message.
"The saddest part of this," she said, "is how many people spent everything
they could and how much it touched Bernie's heart that people who were
living in poverty would try to give him $10 or $27 and that they had so much
belief. I saw personally how much that aspect of the campaign impacted him.
And on the other side, what this whole corruption in the DNC during this
election has done is essentially sabotaged people's hopes and beliefs and
the love that they felt by coming back into political life."
Stillbeyond despair, anger, and feelings about the DNCDeMoro sees much
reason for optimism.
"This whole cynical manipulation of this process could easily have destroyed
what was being built," she said, "But it hasn't." Despite the expressive
boos at the convention or the hand-wringing over how Sanders supporters will
now vote in the general election, DeMoro says the focus must be on what
comes next.
"We are in the moment to build maybe the greatest social movement in
history," said DeMoro, "and we are connected like never before. People are
angry, but they still believe that we have to do something. The economic
condition of the country is deteriorating and people's lives are not going
to get better because Wall Street's going to keep on doing what they do.
People understand that, but they are not going to stand for it any
longerregardless of who the next president is."
But here's the problem with Clinton: "She's with them."
And by 'them' she means Wall Street, the corporate power brokers, and the
elite clinging to a status quo so beneficial to their interests. Despite
what many are hailing as the "most progressive" party platform ever, DeMoro
argues that Clinton's pick of Sen. Tim Kaine as vice president shows that
the party establishment has returned to feeling sufficiently insulated from
the threat created by the 'political revolution' which grew up around
Sanders' presidential run.
"People have fallen pretty far and pretty deeply," she says, "and both
Washington, D.C. and the DNC are out of touch with what that means
economically and what that means politically. But we've got millions and
millions of peoplewhether in the movement or who the movement has inspired.
And this campaign season has allowed us to better recognize, basically, the
people who are not really our friendsbut who pretended to be our friendsin
these fights. So there were was an enormous exposé during this period."
"Debbie Wasserman Schultz is minor compared to what we're really up
against."
This is also why the post-#DNCLeak "downfall" of DNC chairperson Debbie
Wasserman Schultzcriticized throughout the primary season for being the
embodiment of the party's impartial behavior against Sandersactually means
so little to DeMoro and many other Sanders delegates and supporters.
"Debbie Wasserman Schultz is minor compared to what we're really up
against," DeMoro explained.
The real enemy, she clarifies, is international finance and the neoliberal
order their influence controls. That greater and more powerful foe, which
has done such a superb job of managing electoral ambitions and diminishing
what's politically possible over the last four decades, is alive and well,
says DeMoro. And because of that, much of the coalescing movement into which
Sanders helped breathe life is already looking beyond what transpires in
Philadelphia.
In June, National Nurses United helped organize a three-day 'People's
Summit' in Chicago where an array of social justice, labor, environmental,
and grassroots political organizations came together to discuss how to keep
the energy and focus on key issuesincluding climate change, corporate
power, economic inequality, Medicare for all, free higher education, and
criminal justice reformthroughout and then beyond this year's election
cycle.
"So what we're doing now," she explained, "is looking forward to the year
2020 and with the vision of 20/20. On the electoral front in the years to
come we have to build the right structures, create the right
infrastructures, and find candidates of the people. And we've already got
really wonderful people with ushighly intelligent and passionate people."
She highlighted how the young people attracted to Sanders' movement are
ready to build something much bigger and longer lasting. "The millennials
are probably the most phenomenal generation that I've seen in my time in
terms of intelligence," said DeMoro. "They read, they communicate, and they
act collectively. It's pretty amazing."
And when it comes to the looming presence of the Republican Party's nominee
Donald Trump, for DeMoro it goes without saying what "an enormous threat" he
poses to the nation and the world. But, she adds, "Bernie was our best hope
in terms of beating Trump. And so now we're in this double-bind, because
we've been betrayedbecause in the world of the DNC, Sanders was never
allowed to be a viable candidateand now the only thing that's left is fear
of Trump."
"Now we're in this double-bind, because we've been betrayedbecause in the
world of the DNC, Sanders was never allowed to be a viable candidateand now
the only thing that's left is fear of Trump."
"But that's the moment we're in and it's sadit's very sad," lamented
DeMoro. "It could have been a joyous time in history in the Democratic Party
but instead they really diminished the credibility of the Democratic Party
phenomenally."
For her part, DeMoro argues the Wall Street bankers and the corporate
interests spending so lavishly this week, along with the DNC itself, should
be the ones to pony up and reimburse those Sanders delegates who scrimped
and saved to attend this week's convention. "They really should," she said.
"Those delegatesjust like so many votersthought they were participating in
an election this year, only to find it was just rigged. And many of them
spent up to $7,000they saved, they went into debt, they fund-raisedto get
to Philadelphia because they thought that it would matter. But basically the
deals are already done. And though Bernie did they best he could, the
Democrats don't really believe in what they used to believe in."
And the fights over the party platform prove that. "We had to fight them on
everything," DeMoro said of the Clinton- and DNC-appointed delegates on the
committee. "They means-tested the higher-education reform, they rejected
single-payer, they wouldn't oppose the TPP, they wouldn't oppose fracking,
and they wouldn't expand Social Security."
The reluctance of the Democratic Party to embrace those more transformative
and egalitarian policy positions, she explained, is perhaps the fundamental
issue underlying the distress of Sanders supporters who pinned their support
on his call to push beyond what the current system says is permissible.
"It's very sad. It could have been a joyous time in history in the
Democratic Party but instead they really diminished the credibility of the
Democratic Party phenomenally."
During the primaries, for example, Clinton tried to convince voters the
single-payer healthcare system advocated by Sandersone she pronounced will
"never ever come to pass"would actually make people worse off and said
things like: "If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, would that end racism?
Would that end sexism?"
Explained DeMoro: "What the Democrats like to do is deflect with social
issues. They care about all social issues and that way they don't have to
address economic issues or disobey their financial backers on Wall Street."
But, she concluded, the Sanders campaigned has exposed the fault lines in a
way that is very helpful to those clamoring for a deeper transformation. As
a person who has spent her life organizing for labor rights and operating
within social movements, what she recognized on the faces of her fellow
nurses as many of them marched during a demonstration on Sunday in
Philadelphia was just how beautiful, and not terrifying, this current moment
has become.
"I realized how much Bernie has transformed Americathat there is a
revolution here. There's a revolution of consciousness and there's a
different paradigm now in America. We have changed this country. And that
they can't steal from us."
As she looked on, she said, "I realized how much Bernie has transformed
Americathat there is a revolution here. There's a revolution of
consciousness and there's a different paradigm now in America. We have
changed this country. And that they can't steal from us."
And when it comes to Clintonor any other lawmaker for that matter unwilling
at this point to submit to the full set of demands which fueled Sanders
riseDeMoro conjured an old saying she often uses when the nurses are in a
particularly stubborn fight.
"Heroes aren't made," she tells them. "They're cornered."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
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She's With ThemBut We've Got Us: A Movement Bigger Than Sanders
Published on
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
by
Common Dreams
She's With ThemBut We've Got Us: A Movement Bigger Than Sanders
The DNC and the Clinton campaign joined forces against the 'political
revolution' for one simple reason: they knew it could win. And it still can.
by
Jon Queally, staff writer
118 Comments
A crowd of supporters cheer Bernie Sanders during a rally in New
York earlier this year. (Photo: Reuters)
The proper question of the week is not why Bernie Sanders supporters
delegates gathered in the Philadelphia and his millions of supporters
across the nationare so angry with the Democratic National Committee this
week.
The contents of internal party emails published by WikiLeaks last
Friday, now known as the #DNCLeak, only confirmed what most Sanders
supporters knew or assumed to be true all along: that the DNC had put its
thumb on the scale in favor of Hillary Clinton throughout the primary
season. For many, the leaked emailsthough affirmingsimply offered more
concrete evidence and credence to an already established fact.
"And if they didn't believe [Sanders could actually beat Clinton],
none of this would have been done."
So what's the real question regarding how the leaks fit into the
political tensions playing out this week at the national convention?
According to RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United
which endorsed Sanders and campaigned aggressively on his behalf, the point
isn't to locate the source of the anger (that's obvious), but instead to ask
this: Why did the Democratic Party decide to operate so aggressively to
undermine the Sanders campaign in the first place?
Despite the intensely competitive contest between Clinton and an insurgent
Barack Obama in 2008, says DeMoro, the DNC was far more neutral, or at least
appeared to be, during that campaign.
But the reason for this year's behavior, she explained in a phone interview
with Common Dreams, is that the DNC and the Clinton campaignand more
importantly their joint backers on Wall Streetrealized something altogether
too terrifying: "that Bernie Sanders could, in fact, defeat Hillary Clinton.
And if they didn't believe that, none of this would have been done."
That answer, though obvious on the one hand, has not been widely discussed
even as examples of how the DNC acted to undermine the Sanders campaign are
well-documented and include:
the decision to sanction so few televised Democratic debatesand
scheduling the few that did occur on nights almost guaranteed to have low
viewershipa curious choice if you believe in the potency of the party's
ideas and vision;
the decision to suspend the Sanders campaign's access to the DNC
voter database ahead of the first crucial contest in Iowa;
myriad examples of restricted voter access in Arizona, New York, and
elsewhere;
the serious questions of party rule-breaking in Nevada;
use of state-level committees to get around the campaign's
limitations on receiving large-donor gifts; and
the way pledges of support by superdelegates were exploited early
and often (and right to the end) as they fed a media narrative that Sanders
was always much further behind than he actually was.
"What this whole corruption in the DNC during this election has done is
essentially sabotaged people's hopes and beliefs and the love that they felt
by coming back into political life."
On that last point, said DeMoro, "with some unabashed help from many in the
media, the DNC just ran that and ran that and ran that narrative. We met so
many people who said, 'Oh, I love Bernie but he can't win.' And the Clinton
campaign pushed that because they knew that what he was saying would
resonate with America."
And yes, DeMoro says, she and other supporters of Sanders are angry and
rightly so. But that's not really the story either. Having been with Sanders
at his home in Vermont several weeks ago with other close advisers and
supporters, DeMoro identified something deeply personal and more emotive
than anger when it comes to what this campaign has representedboth for
Sanders himself and those inspired by his message.
"The saddest part of this," she said, "is how many people spent everything
they could and how much it touched Bernie's heart that people who were
living in poverty would try to give him $10 or $27 and that they had so much
belief. I saw personally how much that aspect of the campaign impacted him.
And on the other side, what this whole corruption in the DNC during this
election has done is essentially sabotaged people's hopes and beliefs and
the love that they felt by coming back into political life."
Stillbeyond despair, anger, and feelings about the DNCDeMoro sees much
reason for optimism.
"This whole cynical manipulation of this process could easily have destroyed
what was being built," she said, "But it hasn't." Despite the expressive
boos at the convention or the hand-wringing over how Sanders supporters will
now vote in the general election, DeMoro says the focus must be on what
comes next.
"We are in the moment to build maybe the greatest social movement in
history," said DeMoro, "and we are connected like never before. People are
angry, but they still believe that we have to do something. The economic
condition of the country is deteriorating and people's lives are not going
to get better because Wall Street's going to keep on doing what they do.
People understand that, but they are not going to stand for it any
longerregardless of who the next president is."
But here's the problem with Clinton: "She's with them."
And by 'them' she means Wall Street, the corporate power brokers, and the
elite clinging to a status quo so beneficial to their interests. Despite
what many are hailing as the "most progressive" party platform ever, DeMoro
argues that Clinton's pick of Sen. Tim Kaine as vice president shows that
the party establishment has returned to feeling sufficiently insulated from
the threat created by the 'political revolution' which grew up around
Sanders' presidential run.
"People have fallen pretty far and pretty deeply," she says, "and both
Washington, D.C. and the DNC are out of touch with what that means
economically and what that means politically. But we've got millions and
millions of peoplewhether in the movement or who the movement has inspired.
And this campaign season has allowed us to better recognize, basically, the
people who are not really our friendsbut who pretended to be our friendsin
these fights. So there were was an enormous exposé during this period."
"Debbie Wasserman Schultz is minor compared to what we're really up
against."
This is also why the post-#DNCLeak "downfall" of DNC chairperson Debbie
Wasserman Schultzcriticized throughout the primary season for being the
embodiment of the party's impartial behavior against Sandersactually means
so little to DeMoro and many other Sanders delegates and supporters.
"Debbie Wasserman Schultz is minor compared to what we're really up
against," DeMoro explained.
The real enemy, she clarifies, is international finance and the neoliberal
order their influence controls. That greater and more powerful foe, which
has done such a superb job of managing electoral ambitions and diminishing
what's politically possible over the last four decades, is alive and well,
says DeMoro. And because of that, much of the coalescing movement into which
Sanders helped breathe life is already looking beyond what transpires in
Philadelphia.
In June, National Nurses United helped organize a three-day 'People's
Summit' in Chicago where an array of social justice, labor, environmental,
and grassroots political organizations came together to discuss how to keep
the energy and focus on key issuesincluding climate change, corporate
power, economic inequality, Medicare for all, free higher education, and
criminal justice reformthroughout and then beyond this year's election
cycle.
"So what we're doing now," she explained, "is looking forward to the year
2020 and with the vision of 20/20. On the electoral front in the years to
come we have to build the right structures, create the right
infrastructures, and find candidates of the people. And we've already got
really wonderful people with ushighly intelligent and passionate people."
She highlighted how the young people attracted to Sanders' movement are
ready to build something much bigger and longer lasting. "The millennials
are probably the most phenomenal generation that I've seen in my time in
terms of intelligence," said DeMoro. "They read, they communicate, and they
act collectively. It's pretty amazing."
And when it comes to the looming presence of the Republican Party's nominee
Donald Trump, for DeMoro it goes without saying what "an enormous threat" he
poses to the nation and the world. But, she adds, "Bernie was our best hope
in terms of beating Trump. And so now we're in this double-bind, because
we've been betrayedbecause in the world of the DNC, Sanders was never
allowed to be a viable candidateand now the only thing that's left is fear
of Trump."
"Now we're in this double-bind, because we've been betrayedbecause in the
world of the DNC, Sanders was never allowed to be a viable candidateand now
the only thing that's left is fear of Trump."
"But that's the moment we're in and it's sadit's very sad," lamented
DeMoro. "It could have been a joyous time in history in the Democratic Party
but instead they really diminished the credibility of the Democratic Party
phenomenally."
For her part, DeMoro argues the Wall Street bankers and the corporate
interests spending so lavishly this week, along with the DNC itself, should
be the ones to pony up and reimburse those Sanders delegates who scrimped
and saved to attend this week's convention. "They really should," she said.
"Those delegatesjust like so many votersthought they were participating in
an election this year, only to find it was just rigged. And many of them
spent up to $7,000they saved, they went into debt, they fund-raisedto get
to Philadelphia because they thought that it would matter. But basically the
deals are already done. And though Bernie did they best he could, the
Democrats don't really believe in what they used to believe in."
And the fights over the party platform prove that. "We had to fight them on
everything," DeMoro said of the Clinton- and DNC-appointed delegates on the
committee. "They means-tested the higher-education reform, they rejected
single-payer, they wouldn't oppose the TPP, they wouldn't oppose fracking,
and they wouldn't expand Social Security."
The reluctance of the Democratic Party to embrace those more transformative
and egalitarian policy positions, she explained, is perhaps the fundamental
issue underlying the distress of Sanders supporters who pinned their support
on his call to push beyond what the current system says is permissible.
"It's very sad. It could have been a joyous time in history in the
Democratic Party but instead they really diminished the credibility of the
Democratic Party phenomenally."
During the primaries, for example, Clinton tried to convince voters the
single-payer healthcare system advocated by Sandersone she pronounced will
"never ever come to pass"would actually make people worse off and said
things like: "If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, would that end racism?
Would that end sexism?"
Explained DeMoro: "What the Democrats like to do is deflect with social
issues. They care about all social issues and that way they don't have to
address economic issues or disobey their financial backers on Wall Street."
But, she concluded, the Sanders campaigned has exposed the fault lines in a
way that is very helpful to those clamoring for a deeper transformation. As
a person who has spent her life organizing for labor rights and operating
within social movements, what she recognized on the faces of her fellow
nurses as many of them marched during a demonstration on Sunday in
Philadelphia was just how beautiful, and not terrifying, this current moment
has become.
"I realized how much Bernie has transformed Americathat there is a
revolution here. There's a revolution of consciousness and there's a
different paradigm now in America. We have changed this country. And that
they can't steal from us."
As she looked on, she said, "I realized how much Bernie has transformed
Americathat there is a revolution here. There's a revolution of
consciousness and there's a different paradigm now in America. We have
changed this country. And that they can't steal from us."
And when it comes to Clintonor any other lawmaker for that matter unwilling
at this point to submit to the full set of demands which fueled Sanders
riseDeMoro conjured an old saying she often uses when the nurses are in a
particularly stubborn fight.
"Heroes aren't made," she tells them. "They're cornered."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
