Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything
Cross posted in GD
Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything
By Don Hazen, Steven Rosenfeld, Ivy Olesen / AlterNet - December 26, 2016
Frontline lessons from the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign didn’t just defy conventional wisdom by mobilizing millions of Americans. Its organizers and activists rewrote the political playbook by situating the campaign as part of a massive, grassroots, volunteer-driven movement for social, racial and economic justice and real change. Becky Bond and Zack Exley were at the heart of the campaign’s extensive volunteer effort. They and legions of young and older supporters used a mix of digital tools to communicate, organize, inspire, track and turn out voters. They tell the story and the lessons of what worked, what didn’t and why, in their new book, Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything. Bond and Exley spoke with AlterNet’s Don Hazen, Steven Rosenfeld and Ivy Olesen.
Don Hazen: Tell us how the book came about and what you really mean by revolution.
Becky Bond: We wrote this book over the course of five weeks in August and September. We felt it was really important to capture the lessons of how the big organizing that we were doing on the Bernie Sanders campaign could be used by social justice activists. We knew they would have too few resources and a huge job no matter who was going to be the president. We thought it was more likely that it would be Clinton at that point than Trump.
We felt these were things that needed to be in the hands of activists. These were lessons we learned. These are an in-progress set of rules. We felt it was really important to set up a new marker for what organizing could do based on what we had learned on the Bernie campaign. We did this really, really quickly because we thought after the election and before the inauguration would be an important time for organizing. It was awkward to write a book before the outcome of the election was known. Most people were shocked at the election of Donald Trump, but it's something we always saw was possible, even if we didn't expect it.
Don Hazen: Even though you thought it was possible, you're still shocked?
Becky Bond: Yes, it's stunning, we're stunned. Zack, maybe you can expand on that or talk about this question of what we mean by revolution, and why we even thought about it in terms of rules for revolutionaries and how that falls now.
What’s a Revolution?
Zack Exley: I think what Bernie meant by political revolution was just electing a whole bunch of people who actually represent the people, and who will carry out the sweeping changes that are needed to get Americans back to working, with good jobs and for some communities to stop being terrorized by their own government...
