reprinted from OpEdNews.com
Bernie is building a revolution. He's had over three million donations and over a million donors. These are people who are passionate about wanting change. Why wait for Bernie to win. I propose that Bernie Sanders start the revolution now by creating a separate organization aimed at doing the activism the revolution will be using to make change happen.
Today, his first day after Iowa, speaking in New Hampshire, Bernie talked about how the Walmart Walton family, owning as much as the bottom 40% economic portion of the population, uses the government for welfare, forcing underpaid employees-- they're the biggest private employer in the US-- to go on food stamps and Medicaid. I doubt that the Waltons will respond with change, but wouldn't it be something if they did sooner, rather being forced to later?
What if this organization I am proposing Bernie create now started identifying problems and creating strategies, tactics and actions using the million plus Bernie supporters. Get a million supporters to email or call a company doing something that it shouldn't. It might take ten such projects to get a win, a positive result, but it will happen. Get donors to give big bucks to this organization. I would donate to the organization and consider it a way of supporting the Sanders campaign. Bernie won't take PAC money, but he might let big money donors give to an organization that fights the evils and abuses he identifies and guides them to fight. If Bernie does that then he will be showing his power, how he gets things done.
Let's say they get a few million in donations and can start to hire a good team-- say they hire five teams of four, with a number of core resource people. That could be very doable for under $2 million, with a holocracy management structure which minimizes management costs and maximizes bottom up democracy. They'll also tap the volunteer network from the "Revolution" It could be huge. They could go after literally hundreds of projects. They could team up with Moveon, PDA and Democracy for America, probably reaching a combined eight or ten million people-- but people working for Bernie's Revolution. The projects would identify targets-- big corporations, high profile people, corrupt government organizations-- and then the Bernie Revolution, Moveon, DFA, etc. would get their people to contact them.
Chris Bowers points out,
"...no matter the outcome in Iowa, there is something that the Sanders campaign has already proven, and it is something that every single Democrat in the country needs to pay attention to and take to heart.
The lesson is this: A more progressive America is possible than you believe. And not just in some hypothetical future with demographics and legislative maps very different than those of the present day. A more progressive America than you believe is possible than you believe right now.
This lesson is especially important for those voters, analysts, political professionals and elected Democrats who backed Hillary Clinton primarily because they view her as more electable, and / or her policies as having a more realistic chance of passing into law. Those people who Paul Krugman described as "having an acute sense of the possible."
Bernie Sanders has shown that more progressive outcomes are possible than you believe because you have left some of your own potential power on the table. Specifically, you have left the grassroots activist power that he has unleashed on the table."
By setting up this independent organization, Bernie will be creating a way to show, before he's elected, the kind of things he can and will do. Can you imagine teams identifying corporate criminals, Wall Street and Goldman Sachs frauds and felons, setting up the research that a real Attorney General, with real teeth will act on.
Can you imagine projects that produce results in May, June, the summer-- results that affect millions of people.
Of course, this idea of an organization that gets things done, in association with the vision of a campaign, could become a "strategy" employed by any campaign. Hillary could do it. Cruz, Trump and Rubio could do it. The candidates who are sitting governors could do it. It would enoble the political process.
If you like the idea, let the Sanders campaign know. And it will help if you tell them you'll make an extra donation to support it.
