It’s your Bernie Election and Revolution News (BERN), a weekly or biweekly campaign news and analysis compendium produced collaboratively by The Political Revolution sub-blog here at DKos.
Before my first story on campaign staff diversity, I want to point out that by unionizing (i.e. voluntarily recognizing UFCW Local 400 as the employees’ representative, after they and Local 400 showed convincing evidence that a majority of employees want union representation, the first major party presidential campaign in history to do so), Bernie’s campaign is providing much-needed upward mobility and ideological consistency for its staff.
As a union member, organizer and negotiator of many years, I know those benefits well. This week my wife and I will be putting an offer on a brownstone duplex in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, using my union’s housing program to get us pre-approval on the loan, at below-market interest rates, my union’s free legal services department to provide the attorney to do the closing, my contractual union wage increases to afford a bigger mortgage, my union’s good job security to ensure I can keep making payments, and my solid union health and life insurance plan to ensure that god forbid something should happen to me, my wife and son would be able to continue to afford the mortgage payments on our new home. So when I tell you this next thing about Bernie’s staff diversity, keep all that stuff about the staff union in mind.
The campaign says that now, every single one of its teams — management, political, policy, organizing, communications, advance, digital, and fundraising — has women, and predominantly women of color, in leadership positions. Overall, the national leadership team is around 70% women.
(emphasis mine) It’s worth noting a few of these women specifically in terms of their talent and accomplishments:
René Spellman, deputy campaign manager, a Bernie 2016 alumna who has worked in the Obama White House
Analilia Mejia, political director, a union organizer who was honored by President Obama as a "Champion of Change"
Sarah Badawi, deputy political director, previously the legislative affairs director for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee;
Claire Sandberg, national organizing director, a Bernie 2016 alumna and previously the deputy campaign manager for Abdul El-Sayed's gubernatorial run in Michigan
Dr. Heather Gautney, deputy director of policy, formerly a senior policy advisor on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee and a researcher for Bernie 2016
Briahna Joy Gray, national press secretary, a former attorney and senior politics editor at The Intercept
I’m very inspired by the diversity and talent of this campaign, which is already WAY better than in 2016, and just barely getting started! And I am VERY proud that my contributions are not going toward what Bernie calls “starvation wages” nor jobs with untenable precarity, and I will just point out that the donation button is in the upper right of this diary, and leave it at that.
Now I will do a quick recap of the past week’s big early voting states’ rallies: New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, plus preview California.
As it stands in the New Hampshire primary, there’s Sanders and then everyone else. No one even comes close to the level of support, energy, and commitment that Sanders has enjoyed since he won the New Hampshire primary with 60 percent of the vote in 2016.
Wintery weather caused dangerous driving conditions Sunday, but it did not discourage supporters of Sanders and others who simply wanted to hear the candidate from packing the large conference room in the Courtyard Marriott Grappone Conference Center in Concord.
In his first stop in Keene since he announced his 2020 candidacy, Sen. Bernie Sanders brought a full house Sunday to The Colonial Theater.
The crowd included people who supported the Vermont independent when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, as well as some who didn’t.
“I wanted to see a woman in office (in 2016),” Deborah Rainey, 62, of Harrisville, who supported Hillary Clinton, said after the rally. “But I’ve become — well, I have been very progressive for a long time, and I am thinking I should have backed him last time, actually.”
Not far away, one of several vendors set up on a slushy sidewalk outside The Colonial sold “HINDSIGHT IS 2020” shirts.
When Sen. Bernie Sanders traveled to South Carolina for the first time as a 2020 presidential candidate on Thursday, his ... loss in the state’s Democratic presidential primary three years earlier seemed like a distant memory.
…The crowd, 1,600 strong, according to Sanders’ campaign, welcomed him with chants of “Ber-nie” and roars of support that initially made it hard for him to complete his sentences.
…Sanders’ loss in the state helped harden the impression that he had difficulty reaching black voters, the most reliably Democratic voters in the country and a key element of any successful Democratic presidential coalition.
Sanders has worked hard in the intervening years to strengthen his political network in South Carolina, and to reconfigure his message and campaign apparatus to better cater to black voters.
Although Sanders did not have a political candidate to stump for in South Carolina during the 2018 midterm elections, he made a point of stopping in the state capital of Columbia for a Medicare for All rally during a nine-state tour in October.
He also spoke at the South Carolina NAACP’s Martin Luther King Day celebration in January, taking an opportunity to discuss racial justice in more explicit terms than he sometimes did in 2016. Afterward, Sanders spoke at an historically black college in the area and met with South Carolina’s legislative black caucus, eliciting praise from a state lawmaker for his efforts.
...[H]e now highlights what he calls “the disparity within the disparity” ― or the degree to which racial inequities exist at every level of the earnings and education scale, compounding the overall woes for African Americans.
Video:
LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, Bernie Sanders arrived at Henderson’s Morrell Park before a crowd his campaign put at 2,200.
It's Sanders’ first stop in Nevada since he said he's running for president last month.
But first things first: the bandage. The eye. The day before, Sanders collided with a shower door in South Carolina, requiring seven stitches.
“A little black eye is not going to stop me,” said the candidate to cheers.
The guy who made populism cool in 2016, who almost went on to face Donald Trump that November, says this is what his campaign this year means.
“This campaign is about transforming our country and creating an economy, and a government that works for us, not just the one percent,” Sanders told the crowd.
He's still fired up, now in 2019, for a campaign that he says is fighting for, “economic justice, social justice, racial justice and environmental justice.”
Video:
Next, we have 3 big ones coming up in CA:
Signing off, but let’s keep the positivity going in the comments! FEEL THE BERN!!