Our Revolution is 3 Years Strong!
By Larry Cohen, Board Chair
This August 2019 issue marks Our Revolution’s third birthday, and I want to share a few of my reflections at this critical moment.
Over the past three years, I’ve learned that there are no shortcuts if we are serious about bringing about a real political revolution that transforms our country. I’ve learned that it’s easy to start a group — all you need is 10 members — it’s much harder to build and nurture large, powerful organizations, as we’ve done from Somerville, Massachusetts to San Francisco, California.
It’s easy to convince good candidates to run — it’s been so inspiring to see so many talented, passionate people put themselves forward — but it’s much more difficult to create an ongoing political base one community at a time.
And I’ve learned that it’s easy for us to hold protests and demonstrations, but it’s much harder to actually win and govern.
Real change demands that we never stop organizing and building power.
We can’t just demonstrate and protest. And we can’t put all our hopes into a good election. Right now, too many Americans still suffer from candidate addiction.
That’s why Our Revolution is committed — now more than ever — to our tripartite theory of change: We believe that organizing strong grassroots groups are critical to winning issue campaigns and elections. At the same time, changing the rules is essential to winning — whether it’s archaic Senate procedure, the electoral college, superdelegates in the Democratic Party, voter and party registration — we’ve got to get big money out of politics. As Bernie has said, our political system is rigged in so many ways, especially when compared to other democratic systems across the globe.
This triangle represents our evolving strategy as each side sustains and builds the other.
We’ve done much to be proud of using this strategic framework.
We’ve started over 600 Our Revolution groups across the country — including statewide organizations in Texas, Wisconsin, Maryland, and Massachusetts; helped elect more than 180 Our Revolution-endorsed candidates at all levels of government, won passage of 50 ballot initiatives to raise wages and expand health care; and we have helped transform the Democratic Party by eliminating superdelegates, democratizing party registration and at last week’s DNC meeting affirming a new Environmental and Climate Crisis council to fight for climate change policy and environmental justice.
All of this has been led by an incredible grassroots army of volunteers and a dedicated staff team — some who’ve returned to the Bernie campaign with Senator Nina Turner. As Our Revolution celebrates its third anniversary, I’m looking forward to working with you and our new team — led by Joseph Geevarghese — to do so much more.
Today, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we go back to work, because there is so much left to do. Forward Ever!
