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  • It's Party Time
  • David Duhalde (bio)

Over the past four years, I've had the privilege to work for two of the national organizations that took advantage of the political energy unleashed by Bernie Sanders's 2016 run for president. I first served as deputy director of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and then as political director of Our Revolution. The two groups take quite different approaches to the critical question of how, or whether, to work inside the Democratic Party to turn it into a principled, social democratic force.

Our Revolution, which was created by the energy and core staff of the Sanders campaign, is dedicated to transforming the party. DSA, on the other hand, avoids engaging with internal party processes in any organized way. Our Revolution is following a more long-term and more promising approach: if you want to elect leftists to office across the nation, you have to take part in the internal workings of the mass organization that can make that possible. Strategically and realistically, if you do not engage in the Democratic Party, its apparatus will easily and continually be turned on you. To paraphrase Leon Trotsky: you may not be interested in the Democratic leadership, but they're interested in you.

Our Revolution

Bernie Sanders launched Our Revolution via a livestream from Burlington, Vermont, a month after the end of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. The nonprofit eventually grew to a handful of state committees, several hundred local affiliates, and over a quarter-million members. It focused on three arenas of struggle: passing transformative legislation such as Medicare for All, supporting progressive candidates up and down the ballot, and gaining a measure of power in the Democratic Party at all levels.

After the contentious and sometimes nasty contest for the 2016 nomination had ended, convention delegates established a Unity Reform Commission (URC) to bring more transparency to party affairs and open the primaries to more voters. The URC was born out of a resolution that addressed the [End Page 119]


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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders in October 2019 (Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

concerns of many Sanders delegates that closed primaries, superdelegates, and party financing, among other issues, had unfairly slanted the primary in favor of Hillary Clinton. One of my first duties at Our Revolution, under the leadership of our chair, Larry Cohen, was to facilitate grasstops support—often but not solely consisting of pro-Sanders organizations—for the reform effort to codify the URC recommendations into party rules. After a nearly two-year-long internal campaign led by Sanders supporters, the DNC voted to retain superdelegates but only allow them to vote if the nomination battle goes beyond the first ballot. In addition, state parties were encouraged to open their primaries to independents, and fiduciary oversight was increased.

Beyond reforming the national party, Our Revolution began to compete for state and local party offices. Jane Kleeb, an Our Revolution board member, was one of the most successful cases. Raised a Republican, she began voting Democratic in the 1990s but became a dedicated environmentalist during the George W. Bush administration. This decade, she joined the movement against the Keystone XL pipeline that threatened the water table in her home state of Nebraska. Kleeb was impressed by Sanders's strong backing of this movement effort by green and Native American activists against corporate power. In the spring of 2016, Kleeb helped him win the state's caucuses by nearly fifteen points and then got elected chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party. [End Page 120]

In December 2016, members of Our Revolution began a series of similar campaigns to take power in the infrastructure of local Democratic parties. The effort in New York state was one of the most extensive. After the 2016 convention, a group of Sanders delegates decided to form the New York Progressive Action Network (NYPAN). One of their primary goals was to reform the state's voter registration law that forced residents who had been independents to switch their registration half a year in advance to vote in the Democratic primary. Under pressure from NYPAN and other progressive groups...

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