Hello all, I haven't written a diary in years. I am back now because I keep seeing a great deal of repeated thinking about Bernie as a candidate that I think is overlooking a huge sea change that Obama started and now Bernie supporters are taking to a whole new level. Bernie doesn't have a huge campaign staff yet because Progressive Dems of America, Facebook Events and Twitter are doing his outreach for him. Come with me over the orange squiggle and I'll explain.
When I heard that Bernie had announced I was rather happy, because if I couldn't have Warren I'd take him. I sure as hell didn't want to vote for Hillary. Dynasties much? So I went to his site and signed up to volunteer but I doubted I'd hear anything back since I live in Arizona, not a huge concern this early in the game. I did however poke around on Facebook and find Arizona For Bernie Sanders and decided for fun to host an event. Just to see who'd be interested.
I vaguely remembered Progressive Dems of America from back in the Obama, Hillary, Edwards campaign season ( I wanted Edwards, full disclosure) and so joined the page, made my own little event and posted it there. Now I don't have a lot of politically active friends so I was pretty shocked when I got fifteen complete strangers joining right off the bat. Then I got a FB message from the Arizona For Bernie Sanders page asking if I wanted PDA to email their database of people within 30 miles of the event to let them know it was going on. I said sure. I ended up with 54 people showing up to a random event I decided to hold. PDA organizer Dan O Neal came with flyers, sign up sheets and voter registration forms and helped me out a ton.
You see, PDA had talked to Bernie about running a few years ago and basically offered their infrastructure to him to help get him elected, he said yes and so it began. PDA is helping people set up house parties all over while Bernie concentrates on the early primary states. So while people talk about how Bernie has no campaign staff, well they're wrong. I have seen events all over Arizona get started by independent people like me that PDA reaches out to to help organize and get people to. Not by paying people to be there but by emailing and calling people in the area the house party or event is being held and telling them, hey Bernie event going on, come check it out.
Perfect example of this is today. As you all know Bernie is coming to AZ to do Netroots. PDA setup a livestream event for people who couldn't go to Netroots to watch Bernie's panel, then the campaign worked out an event for Sat night that got posted on FB 2 hours ago, it has since had to have the venue changed from a 2200 seat venue to a well over 5000 seat venue because the Arizona for Bernie page posted about it, PDA emailed about it and we all shared it. Bernie is also doing a speech Sat at the Latino Victory Project as well. So in one day Bernie is speaking at three different places and two of those events are being advertised primarily through social media. Trad media has probably heard nothing and won't show up, again. You know what? We don't need them to.
I've watched two of Bernie's rallies now, livestreamed. The Madison livestream had almost 9000 people watching it and the Wisconsin one had over 3000 watching, add that to his numbers of people attending. I am working with Bernie Tv along with at least one other person to livestream via Periscope the rally here in AZ.
I still have yet to hear from the campaign itself about volunteering but I don't have to wait for them. I am doing a ton of stuff to promote Bernie without ever having to leave my house. While Hillary is charging people for access, Bernie supporters are people powering his campaign through an entirely organic process with little or no top down guidance. We don't need it. We all know how to talk to people, we know his stances and we are taking the same approach he has to getting elected and re-elected in Vermont to heart.
Bernie is a public servant, not a politician and that's what people are responding to. When you look at his record, how he lives his life and how he acts it's very obvious he does not see himself as above the rest of us, he sees himself as working for us. Hillary looks down at us, that's the feeling we get from her, with her $2500 a plate dinners, controlled access and carefully managed campaign. Bernie shows up looking like he's been kicking ass all day and working his butt off because he has and you can see it in his face. You can also see that he's not in it for power, he's in it for progress. Notice he never has notes with him? Or seems to be looking at a teleprompter? His speech is not coached or practiced, he doesn't need to do all that. He's been saying the same thing for decades so he never has to wonder what talking point to deliver.
When I listened to Obama talk I noticed he said very few facts or statistics. He was all about the dream, Bernie is a number cruncher and a realist. These are the problems, here's how we need to fix them, take it or leave it. He doesn't use soaring phrases and oratorical skills, he just tells it like it is. Which is a very American trait. We are the land of the underdog, the scrappy fighter, the guy who takes on the powers of greed and wins. How many comic book, TV and movie heroes are based on that idea? We rebelled against one of the largest empires in history and won (with some help); our whole national character has always been defined by pulling yourself up, working hard, helping others and fighting for what's right. Our politicians, for the most part, have lost sight of that. Bernie has not and that's his appeal.
So while the trad media and people here still think "Can he reach minorities?" I see Latino and African American for Bernie groups popping up all over Facebook. At my event I had three 17 year olds and almost a dozen college kids, all fired up, all educated and all willing to work because this generation has no hope. They go to school knowing jobs are hard to get, knowing they will have a ton of debt and they want that to change. They are more worldly, thanks to the internet and more compassionate. They want a chance, Bernie's plans give them that.
As far as the power of social media, I am going to pull an example from fandom world. Stephen Amell, lead on the CW show Arrow has a FB page that he runs and interacts with his 3 million fans there constantly. He launched two t-shirt campaigns to raise money for Fuck Cancer, through his FB page alone he raised close to $2 million dollars. Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles from CW show Supernatural did a similar campaign for the charity To Write Love On Her Arms which deals with depression and mental illness. They sold over 76,000 shirts. I jumped in on that and ran a FB page matching people who couldn't afford shirts with people who wanted to donate shirts. That page alone sold 316 shirts through matches made worldwide.
People now expect the people they respect to be easily accessible through Twitter and FB and they want to help make a change. Those three actors did just that and there was a huge response. The people who support Bernie are using social media to it's fullest extent so if you want to really know where Bernie's campaign stands, follow Facebook groups, you'll see how big the movement really is.