What’s the Future of Bernie Sanders’ Political Revolution?
Had you closed your eyes last Sunday in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, you might have thought you were five years and a half-hour train ride away, occupying lower Manhattan for the 99 percent. Endorsing Bernie Sanders, New York City council member Jumaane Williams — a Black Lives Matter activist and former Occupier — led 28,000 people in a “mic check,” a call-and-response meant to get messages out fast to big crowds. “We want — we believe in,” Williams and the crowd roared, “the revolutionary moonshot.”
That moonshot, of course, is the 74-year-old democratic socialist vying for the nation’s top office. Having suffered a double-digits loss in New York last Tuesday, Sanders is now focused on garnering votes in the five states voting this week — though mathematically, his chances of securing the nomination are now slim. But win or lose, the future of the political revolution Sanders has championed probably won’t look anything like him. Rather, it will be headed by millennials and people of color — groups that, thanks to demographic shifts, promise to be major electoral bases in the coming years.
Encouraged by the momentum Sanders’ campaign has generated, the young people heading up some of the last decade’s most influential social movements are grappling with how to build a new kind of politics, as active in the streets as it is in the halls of power. Disillusioned by the lost hope of Obama’s historic election in 2008, they know better than to take any candidate, however progressive, at their word. Even leaders who feel the Bern share a kind of agnosticism for their work beyond election season, ready to ramp up protests whether Sanders, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office.
While millennial organizers may have been excited about a Sanders administration, many see a bolder goal on the horizon: an alternative to politics as usual, one that’s of, by and for the grassroots. From backing candidates up and down the ticket to marching on Washington, activists are looking to create a popular outlet for anger at the status quo, with electoral teeth.
“Movements are getting stronger, and are starting to take themselves seriously,” says Yong Jung Cho, the campaigns coordinator at 350 Action, the political arm of the environmental group 350.org. “They’re demanding political power.” For the last several months, Cho has been darting between campaign rallies from Iowa to New York. Small teams of activists, many of them trained in the fossil fuel divestment movement, have converged on candidates’ events to “bird-dog,” pushing White House hopefuls to answer tough questions as cameras roll. The goal is to attract media attention, and get candidates on the public record about controversial issues they would rather skirt. 350 Action’s victories this election season have included Clinton’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project she helped push as secretary of State, and her support for a moratorium on coal, oil and gas leases on federal lands.