19 April 2016 - 01:00 PM
Bernie Sanders Builds on Occupy, But Can He Build a Movement?
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The media has painted Bernie Sanders’ return to the state where he was born as a reunion of the Occupy gang, the apostles who allegedly laid the ground for the Democratic hopeful's mass appeal. Though he isn’t expected to steal New York’s delegate jackpot from Hillary Clinton, the waves he’s making in the streets are expected to last well beyond the election.

#NYIsBerning

OPINION:
Building a Movement: From Occupy Wall Street to Bernie Sanders

But in reality, it’s a bit more complicated.

Yes, the Occupied Wall Street Journal is back in action for a special issue championing the Bernie cause. Yes, economic justice is again at the center of the political debate. Yes, New Yorkers are leaving their homes for rallies on behalf of an avowed socialist.

But the love affair may be too good to be true: Sanders staffers and many Occupy veterans are keeping their distance from each other—and bracing for when the euphoria of the campaign ends.

“In order for a candidate to be successful, they can’t behave like a movement,” Charles Lenchner, co-founder of People for Bernie, told teleSUR. “In order for a movement to be successful, they can’t chain themselves to a candidate or a political party in any kind of permanent fashion.”

Lenchner started People for Bernie—the creative mind behind “Feel the Bern” and the engine behind much of Sanders’s viral social media content—with friends he met at Occupy Wall Street. They are not officially affiliated with the campaign, and they initially didn’t have their sights on Sanders.

A self-described “offshoot” of the pluralistic and largely anarchic Occupy movement, Lenchner and his friends were among those that believed they could work within the existing political system to get some of their demands made into law. When progressive favorite and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren declined to run, they turned their eyes to Sanders, who Lenchner calls “the beneficiary of a huge cultural and political shift.”

They do expect to help shake up the way elections work—and have already, at least partly.

The group, though, is far from typical when it comes to political campaigning. First off, they don’t believe in the “inherently anti-democratic” political system and don’t expect to change it.

“Nothing Bernie Sanders has done or said has influenced my understanding or faith in American politics,” said Lenchner.

Nor do they want political careers, at least as they exist today.

But they do expect to help shake up the way elections work—and have already, at least in part.

“The most creative and exciting movement is not coming from anyone who has a salary; it’s not coming from the consulting firms,” said Lenchner. “It’s the people themselves, with their memes and their videos and their events and their speeches. The way in which politics has been transformed is that the energy of the people comes first, and campaign infrastructure comes second.”

The “people” of People for Bernie sounds like an homage to the Occupy days, but it also reflects a grassroots-inspired philosophy of integrating anyone interested in participating in a horizontal, non-hierarchical way. They know that U.S. politics is not constructed for that kind of inclusion, but their experiments—like allowing donors to fund other Bernie supporters engaged in activism, not just Bernie himself—play with what they can. Lenchner refuses to call the group an “organization,” but rather “participants in a movement, and it belongs to everyone.”

Without funders, an office, a salary or a brand, the “participants” have been able to contribute more fluidly to the campaign, as individuals.

The less structured and lower-budget style is common among New York grassroots campaigns supportive of Sanders, often to the point that they can’t offer an official endorsement.

ANALYSIS:
Keeping Bernie Honest: Support for Sanders Has to Be Critical

Whether or not their members campaign, though, many organizers see the moment as an opening in acceptable dialogue, be it race, class or revolution. They attend Bernie rallies, not necessarily to show support for his candidacy, but to urge those attracted to the candidate to go even further and to keep agitating outside the realm of electoral politics.

Some in the New York left, such as Socialist Alternative, see the alignment as a strategic way to instigate change from within; others, like the International Socialist Organization, refuse to step fully on board out of permanent mistrust of the Democratic Party.

Lenchner sees the biggest division among the left coming from a Sanders loss, with many Sanders supporters not able to vote for Hillary Clinton with a good conscience and others willing to do anything to stop a Donald Trump presidency.

John Tarleton, editor of the Indypendent and one of the editors of the Battle for New York collaboration with the Occupied Wall Street Journal, sees the biggest tension not on the question of the vote, but on the question of how to organize within or outside the Democrats.

The party is the “graveyard of social movements,” he told teleSUR. During the interview, Tarleton was constantly taking calls to coordinate distribution of the Battle for New York broadsheet, which features articles making the case for Sanders.

Closely covering the city’s social justice fights for a decade before Occupy, the Indypendent decided to partner with editors from the out-of-print Occupied Wall Street to revive the call for economic justice in the middle of the election hype. It’s in print, not just online, so that “you can hand to another human being and begin a conversation when you hand it to them.” The Indypendent’s regular issue also lists Bernie events, from parties to marches to panel discussions on “Beyond Bernie.”

Tarleton is wary, though, of falling completely in line with the Democratic game. Campaigns that have scored the biggest victories remain outside the party to prevent diluting their demands—campaigns that Sanders has rallied alongside before and during the campaign.

The ISO, which has repeatedly published warnings against co-option, insists that “ upholding firm left-wing principles doesn't necessarily lead to sectarian irrelevance, a point that nobody has demonstrated more decisively than a certain Bernard Sanders.” The article, written by Danny Katch, goes on to say that Sanders’ “political revolution” requires sticking to a third party that could benefit from the upsurge in organizing since Occupy and since Sanders helped popularize socialism.

“One of the most amazing things we could do after election is to disappear.”

While Sanders has granted socialist ideas a wider audience—the rallies, debates and primaries have caught the attention of millions— “socialism doesn't need to be ‘normalized’ to appeal to working people,” argues Katch. Millennials already favor socialism over capitalism, and Barack Obama’s establishment-friendly presidency has not soothed the concerns of a growing populist right and left.

“It’s not a fringe position at all,” John Tarleton told teleSUR. “It’s difficult for the establishment, as it were, to put that genie back in the bottle.” A Sanders loss would not mean his campaign was for naught, he said, just like the end to the Occupy encampments did not mean the end of dialogue and action on issues of concern to the 99 percent.

Likewise, Lenchner said that the agent of change is not Sanders, but those in the streets demanding his platform.

“One of the most amazing things we could do after the election is to disappear,” he said. People for Bernie will at least have to change its name, but he hopes that the center of attention will turn to the thousands of other campaigns in need of their organizing and communication support. The goal is to create a social space “where we work as equals” to stay “very far ahead of traditional structures.”

Sanders wouldn’t disagree. He has repeatedly said that no one person can bring a political revolution; it comes on the back of the people.

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