To continue to build power, movements must diversify their tactics, make clear demands, put pressure on the newly elected and keep building community-based networks, movement experts said. And they must be unrelenting.
“Elections themselves don’t achieve what it is that people want,” said Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an African American studies professor at Princeton University and the author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. “They set the table for the possibility of change.”
Just to bring attention to something.
I remember fighting tooth and nail with Centrist Corporate / AIPAC Dems about how unviable Bernie-tinted progressives are in battleground, ruby-red states.
Well, we basically got an AOC with folksy Christian charm winning in Texas. We got a Muslim progressive pushing for Medicare For All elected in the battleground state of Michigan that went Trump last cycle. We had a progressive Sanders-backed candidate oust Republican Susan Collins in Maine. All state-wide races.
It’s time to deliver on the progressive vision. These next two years with all these new seats and media attention, Democrats have to continue selling and persuading the electorate on the Sanders vision of the future, for we now have the momentum.
This is only the beginning. The fight is far from over. We need to keep pushing at all levels.
Centrists needed to stall progress for 10 years while people like me suffocated. The fact that I am still alive is because I got lucky not because this is sustainable.
I wonder if they are done sabotaging progress now?
I wonder if they are done sabotaging progress now?
They’re elected representatives, not leaders and most certainly not rulers. That shit has no place in a democracy. The electorate is El Jefe. They were told what the job was going to be, and they chose to apply for the position of making it happen. It was granted to them, and now it’s time to meet the obligations they sought.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. Sure, they are representatives of the people, but they were elected because of a platform they communicated. Their mandate (not legally, but aspirationally) is to adhere to that platform and work towards delivering on it for the people that elected them. “Campaign promises”.
Where their platform deviates from what their constituents want is where there needs to be more pressure. Where representatives fail to act on their platform, there needs to be more pressure.
Sometimes it isn’t for a lack of desire, but of knowledge or ability. There may not be enough awareness of their constituents’ will on the matter, or support from others in legislature to maintain the votes (because of lack of pressure from their constituents).
All these areas are where the work continues to remain for the people. Voting was only step one. More action must follow. Engaging reps by phone, email, letter, meeting, protest, etc. must follow. Politically sleepwalking through the next few years because someone voted and thinks the work is over is not going to cut it to drive real change.
Great convo from Bernie talking about the urgency of this. Bernie reminded everyone that if dems don’t follow through, fascism will really take over:
