YAY! Democrats! And not the old school dems, either!
So. Bernie. The fire still burns! At least it does in Jefferson County!
First we tried everything we could to get Bernie nominated. For those who don't know, I was an alternate delegate at our county convention. I wasn't needed there so that's as far as that went. But I have a tshirt that I still proudly wear. Because Bernie.
At the county convention I helped people stay through the entire process by organizing with a few others to provide food and drinks for free through the entire event. Nothing special. Coffee, and water. Oranges, cookies, small bags of candies, cheese sticks. SCA experience helped there for sure. FEED THE BERN we called it, and we didn't ask who people supported when we gave out the food, we offered it to everyone. At the beginning of the county convention the Bernie people all thanked us, but the Hillary folks avoided us. When our youth volunteers were distributing the food inside the convention hall some Hillary supporters were a bit nasty to them. Nothing especially terrible, just fuck-you looks and the occasional "Get out of my face" and a snide "Are you kidding me?" here and there. The convention went on for about seven hours and by the end those snide people were starving. Some of them were absolutely shocked that we didn't put Bernie stickers on everything, and that YES, we had planned on feeding EVERYONE there, not just our tribe. We even got a few big Thank Yous for giving them a tangerine and a cup of coffee.
And that right there is a difference between the Berners and the Clintonites. The Clintonites were afraid that someone was going to take something away from them. Suspicious. AND at the same time confident that they deserved to win. There were many, many people over the election season who said things that were entitled, nasty, or both. Some to our faces, most in emails or on Facebook. Too much to rehash here, but if you were a big Bernie supporter you know exactly what I mean.
But, shenanigans happened. Bernie was, essentially, forced out by the corporate democrats. That didn't stop us from organizing to change things. Nope. Not at all.
Here in Jefferson County we kept the fires Berning, and organized folks to participate in the local democratic party.
Yesterday we won.
The previous head of the JeffCo Dems was a decent enough guy, but... he was managerial and completely unaware of how the way the local democrats had done things for years had shut people out of participation. Case in point: Every year the dems have a "fish feed" This is a major fund raiser for them. Tickets are (I think?) $35 each. Yes, I COULD afford that price tag these days if I budgeted for it, but in previous years it was always much too expensive. So we never attended. This year, prompted by my suggestion, they had a few tickets that were discounted to make the event more affordable to lower income families. This was a big success.
There were many other ways that they were exclusionary and totally unaware of it.
So. Bernie comes on the scene and excites the masses. We begin to have hope that we CAN change things. The JeffCo dems struggled with overflow at EVERY meeting this year. The previous leadership incorrectly assumed this was because their chair was so good. Nope. It was the Berners. We were able to pass a lot of progressive resolutions. We sent people to Philadelphia. And we never stopped organizing and pushing progressive themes.
Two weeks before yesterday's biannual reorganizing meeting some of the Hillary supporters began a nasty smear campaign against one of our strongest Bernie organizers. She was accused of secret meetings. Which is a silly charge because when working on any campaign of course you're going to discuss things only with your strongest supporters before going forward. They insisted the chair was a GREAT chair because he had made the local group grow from maybe 30 people participating at meetings to the 300+ we saw yesterday. Also ridiculous because there was no change in style or substance from the leadership of the JeffCo Dems that didn't come from Berners asking and pushing for it. The ONLY factor that was different this year was us Berners.
The Clintonites have suggested that the Berners don't have political experience - but where else does one begin to gain political experience except at the county level? They suggested we won't be able to fund raise the way the old chair did, which I am not sure if that comes down to calling us incompetent, or poor. Or both. Either way, 300 people can kick in a quarter the amount that 30 people can and STILL raise more dough, so, their assumptions fail at the basic level. Either way, unless they want to join up with the republicans when Trump is president, they'll have few options, so most of them will probably lick their wounds and come back sooner or later.
Anyhow, yesterday, the fruits of our work appeared. We ousted the previous chair. We elected Berners to nearly every position, and the two positions that went to non-Berners went to people with a solid progressive track record.
The first vote was for chair, and some folks who had threatened to walk out if the previous chair wasn't re-elected did so. We lost one Precinct Committee Officer, and maybe twenty others from the crowd. After that things went pretty smoothly.
ONWARD!
First we tried everything we could to get Bernie nominated. For those who don't know, I was an alternate delegate at our county convention. I wasn't needed there so that's as far as that went. But I have a tshirt that I still proudly wear. Because Bernie.
At the county convention I helped people stay through the entire process by organizing with a few others to provide food and drinks for free through the entire event. Nothing special. Coffee, and water. Oranges, cookies, small bags of candies, cheese sticks. SCA experience helped there for sure. FEED THE BERN we called it, and we didn't ask who people supported when we gave out the food, we offered it to everyone. At the beginning of the county convention the Bernie people all thanked us, but the Hillary folks avoided us. When our youth volunteers were distributing the food inside the convention hall some Hillary supporters were a bit nasty to them. Nothing especially terrible, just fuck-you looks and the occasional "Get out of my face" and a snide "Are you kidding me?" here and there. The convention went on for about seven hours and by the end those snide people were starving. Some of them were absolutely shocked that we didn't put Bernie stickers on everything, and that YES, we had planned on feeding EVERYONE there, not just our tribe. We even got a few big Thank Yous for giving them a tangerine and a cup of coffee.
And that right there is a difference between the Berners and the Clintonites. The Clintonites were afraid that someone was going to take something away from them. Suspicious. AND at the same time confident that they deserved to win. There were many, many people over the election season who said things that were entitled, nasty, or both. Some to our faces, most in emails or on Facebook. Too much to rehash here, but if you were a big Bernie supporter you know exactly what I mean.
But, shenanigans happened. Bernie was, essentially, forced out by the corporate democrats. That didn't stop us from organizing to change things. Nope. Not at all.
Here in Jefferson County we kept the fires Berning, and organized folks to participate in the local democratic party.
Yesterday we won.
The previous head of the JeffCo Dems was a decent enough guy, but... he was managerial and completely unaware of how the way the local democrats had done things for years had shut people out of participation. Case in point: Every year the dems have a "fish feed" This is a major fund raiser for them. Tickets are (I think?) $35 each. Yes, I COULD afford that price tag these days if I budgeted for it, but in previous years it was always much too expensive. So we never attended. This year, prompted by my suggestion, they had a few tickets that were discounted to make the event more affordable to lower income families. This was a big success.
There were many other ways that they were exclusionary and totally unaware of it.
So. Bernie comes on the scene and excites the masses. We begin to have hope that we CAN change things. The JeffCo dems struggled with overflow at EVERY meeting this year. The previous leadership incorrectly assumed this was because their chair was so good. Nope. It was the Berners. We were able to pass a lot of progressive resolutions. We sent people to Philadelphia. And we never stopped organizing and pushing progressive themes.
Two weeks before yesterday's biannual reorganizing meeting some of the Hillary supporters began a nasty smear campaign against one of our strongest Bernie organizers. She was accused of secret meetings. Which is a silly charge because when working on any campaign of course you're going to discuss things only with your strongest supporters before going forward. They insisted the chair was a GREAT chair because he had made the local group grow from maybe 30 people participating at meetings to the 300+ we saw yesterday. Also ridiculous because there was no change in style or substance from the leadership of the JeffCo Dems that didn't come from Berners asking and pushing for it. The ONLY factor that was different this year was us Berners.
The Clintonites have suggested that the Berners don't have political experience - but where else does one begin to gain political experience except at the county level? They suggested we won't be able to fund raise the way the old chair did, which I am not sure if that comes down to calling us incompetent, or poor. Or both. Either way, 300 people can kick in a quarter the amount that 30 people can and STILL raise more dough, so, their assumptions fail at the basic level. Either way, unless they want to join up with the republicans when Trump is president, they'll have few options, so most of them will probably lick their wounds and come back sooner or later.
Anyhow, yesterday, the fruits of our work appeared. We ousted the previous chair. We elected Berners to nearly every position, and the two positions that went to non-Berners went to people with a solid progressive track record.
The first vote was for chair, and some folks who had threatened to walk out if the previous chair wasn't re-elected did so. We lost one Precinct Committee Officer, and maybe twenty others from the crowd. After that things went pretty smoothly.
ONWARD!