The Political Revolution: An Ending and a Beginning
The 2016 Democratic Convention has come and gone, the culmination of a journey I began exactly one year ago when I attended a nationwide organizing meeting for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. He broadcast live to meet-ups all throughout the country, and asked us to join his “Political Revolution” to transform America.
There are very few moments in my life that have completely upended and shifted the path I was on. This was one of them.
On July 29, 2015, I walked into a community center in Glendale, CA — a city which never struck me as particularly overflowing with “democratic socialists” or even strong “progressives.” I was stunned to find myself amongst a crowd of over 100 people who had come out on a Saturday afternoon to hear from a little-known 73-year-old democratic socialist from Vermont.
Dionne Lignan, founder of Glendale for Bernie and host of the event, asked us to share why we supported this unlikely challenger to Democratic shoo-in Hillary Clinton. One young man shared a story about his gravely ill mother, and her battles with a for-profit health insurance system that fought her at every turn. A young lawyer described the fact that she’s accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt and can’t imagine ever owning a home or even raising a family. A woman from Holland shared her horror at the state of poverty in America:
“How can you be okay with your fellow citizens starving? Sleeping out on the streets? In Holland we believe the weak should be able to stand on the shoulders of the strong.”
I looked around the room at the 100+ individuals of all ages; whites and latinos and Armenians, millennials and boomers and septuagenarians. Holy crap, I thought. I’m not alone. I’m not the only one who feels this way.
I’m not the only one who feels that the grotesque level of money in politics is the root of so much dysfunction and corruption in our government; that health care should be a right, not a privilege; that tuition-free public college shouldn’t be “impossible” in the wealthiest country on earth; that climate change demands swift and dramatic mobilization—and that the United States must lead the way, not lag behind.
That day, on July 29th, I could not have predicted that my life was about to turn upside down. In the months that followed, I felt a growing call to devote myself to something larger and more important than myself and my career as a filmmaker. It was a call to put everything else on hold, to do everything I possibly could to elect a candidate — and build a movement — that I believed in with all my being. For the first time in my life, I answered that call.
Over the past year I have learned so much about the American electoral process, about organizing at the local level, about finding my voice and listening to others and trusting my intuition and developing the judgement to sort through it all. In the age of social media bubbles, I didn’t always succeed. It’s still a daily struggle to locate some sense of solid, objective “truth” in the fog of online political discourse.
This week, my first year in the Political Revolution drew to a close with the balloon drop in Philly. I have decided it’s time for me start sharing my experiences, thoughts, internal debates, and whatever knowledge I have accumulated since accidentally becoming a community organizer, political activist, and Bernie Sanders delegate.
I’ll start by doing my best to document and reflect upon my week in Philadelphia amongst the Bernie Sanders California delegation. We were a group of 220+ diverse volunteers and activists who found we suddenly had the power to organize and disrupt an internationally-significant event; an event that was, for all intents and purposes, meant to function as a pristine television commercial for the Democratic Party and their chosen candidate.
It was a week that challenged me to consider that multiple perspectives which seem to be fundamentally opposed can be true at the same time. It was a week of exhilaration and confusion and doubt and a thrilling sense of power to influence history. I look forward to sorting through it all on this blog, now and into the future, as I continue to organize on the local and national level. I hope what I share here can inspire some of you to join us, because we need you.
This country ain’t gonna transform itself.
Read my day-by-day account of the 2016 Democratic Convention:
Inside the Convention: Day Zero
Inside the Convention: Day One
Inside the Convention: Day Two
