Tim Ellis: To the political revolution that shall carry on
Photo Caption: (Jacobin/Google Images)
Written by: Tim Ellis
Bernie’s two campaigns changed my life, and changed the world.
It can be difficult to describe just how different things are. Democrats under Obama and Biden were working with Republicans to cut social security in *2012*. The people who stopped them? Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
The 2016 campaign was such an insurgency. It felt like things were being unlocked that had been marginalized for decades. Suddenly, anything was possible. The end felt heart-wrenching, but in truth it was incredible to have ever come so close under those conditions.
For me personally, it was a revelation. For nearly 15 years I’d been working a variety of menial jobs — call centres, manual labour, and so on — before finally getting to where I could earn a living as a writer and performer. It was a precarious existence, even when I became a “professional”. But that’s just what life was like, I thought — until working with Bernie showed me first-hand that better was possible.
The progressive movement blossomed after that. So many new organizations; so many new relationships; so many new and bold organizers for justice. It felt like, and truly was, the birth of a political revolution.
That is part of what makes today so heart-wrenching. We were SO. CLOSE. To come up short now, with the stakes so high….
This is real grief. I grew up poor; my family often had to choose between bills or food. My parents worked multiple jobs, none of which offered insurance. The stress broke my parents apart. My body has scars and trauma just from staying alive through those experiences. And all through that time, nobody in government had much to offer us; if people like us got a mention, it was to blame us for being lazy.
Bernie was the first politician who didn’t just speak about us; he spoke for us. He spoke with us. He helped us raise our own voices and showed us that we deserved what the children of the wealthy not only took for granted but also willfully denied us.
To have almost had such a man — someone who had stayed true to his principles for decades while serving in one of the most intensely corrupted systems in the nation — within a hairsbreadth of the Presidency, and then to have that snatched away… heartbreak does not begin to describe it.
Of course, it goes beyond that. We are in the midst of a pandemic and yet we just lost the only candidate remaining who is fighting for universal healthcare. We are looking at an ecological collapse and we just lost our Green New Deal champion.
We are not just mourning a Presidency. We are mourning a future for our children. This truly felt like our last chance to make the kind of change we need in the time we have. And it’s hard to have confidence that the candidates now on offer will get the job done.
This genuinely feels like burying my children before they are even born.
It feels like hope has been snatched away, and that the people who snatched it — the same people who have ignored us and refused to care about us for so long — are dancing a jig over once again taking it away from us.
It feels like the desperate struggle to survive that so many experience is, inexplicably, simply not as important to Democrats — the people who claim to care about us! — as the personal privilege of a few elites.
It feels like an older generation has decided to drag us to the grave with them.
You do not have to agree with any of this. I do not care if this is relatable for you. You do not have to have ever liked Bernie or understood him.
But you need to understand me, and the millions like me, who just voted for him.
You need to understand us because, as Bernie said in suspension speech, we are winning the ideological fight. We are winning the fight for the future of the party. Bernie won massive super-majorities of voters under 30; he won the majority of voters under 50 in most states. There are generations of progressives who are, right now, deciding whether or not to be Democrats, and the way you act now will be what makes that decision for them.
This is heartbreaking — I certainly didn’t expect to cry but here I am with tears on my face. But not only is it not the end; it’s literally only the beginning. The blossoming that happened after 2016 is only picking up steam.
To my fellow progressives, I want to be very clear about one thing, so that we never forget it, no matter how much heartbreak we face: we are the real Democrats. The Democrats of FDR and the New Deal; the Democrats of progress and working class unity; the Democrats of universal healthcare, of universal justice. We always have been; we always will be.
Bernie kept that torch alight through decades of playing defense, of sellouts, and surrenders to the capitalists by a leadership operating within a corrupted system and without the vision to see how things could be different.
Meanwhile, Democratic voters — and I do not blame them for this — have long held progressive values but been too afraid and browbeaten by a corrupt system to think that they could win with them.
But Bernie never stopped the fight.
It was, no doubt, a lonely struggle.
But it is not so lonely now.
Now, that torch has sparked a new generation of progressive action and movement building. And we are only just getting started.
Bernie is passing the torch to us, to all of us. We deserve to have at least one of the major political parties in US politics working for us. We deserve a government that actually cares about working people. We — all of us, every American and every Democrat and every progressive — deserve a Democratic party that lives up to its bold history and its true values every day and in every way, and nobody else is going to give it to us; we are going to have to build it ourselves, by empowering workers, by enfranchising voters, by teaching our fellow Democrats and independents that they deserve more than the crumbs Wall Street offers, that together we have the power and the determination to deliver that brighter future.
That we don’t have to be afraid anymore, not so long as we have each other.
To Senator Sanders, thank you for everything you’ve done for me and for all of us. Thank you for keeping the torch alight. Thank you for never selling out. Thank you for showing that you can run a national campaign without taking a dime from the capitalists. Thank you for bringing me to a new career, to a new life, and even, though unintentionally, for introducing me to my wife.
To my fellow Democratic voters, thank you for all you’ve done to fight Republican greed and corporate cowardice through the years. Take heart — reinforcements are here. At long last, we can take the initiative and begin to push the failed Reagan revolution aside. We do not need to be afraid any longer. The future is ours.
And to Wall Street and Donald Trump — enjoy it while it lasts. We’re taking our party back, and then we’re taking our country and our economy back. Your ideas are failing, your institutions are faltering, and your days are numbered.
Today is not our day. But the days to come are ours; and they are not so lonely, after all.
More Articles