DNC Party Meeting Leaves Progressives Furious over Purge [View all]

[lovemydogs]

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tom-perez-ousts-keith-ellison-loyalists_us_59ea6a44e4b0a484d0634a08?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

At the DNC Party Meeting Tom Perez purged top officials who backed Keith Ellison for Party Chair and Bernie Sanders in the Primaries.

“It’s a slap in the face to the activists in the party that are working so hard to make the party more responsive to the grassroots,” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, a digital grassroots group. “The idea that you’re going to purge Ellison supporters and bring the party together doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Becky Bond, founder of Knock Every Door and a veteran of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 Democratic presidential campaign, argued that the decision to remove Ellison surrogates puts Ellison, whom Perez brought on as deputy DNC chairman, in a “really hard place.”

Many activists feel Ellison is being ignored as well the voices of party activists themselves. Ellison's supporters lost spot on influential committees, many long time DNC officials. This included the first transgender member, Barbara Casbar.

Reformers hope that the party will accept a dramatically reduced role for superdelegates ― the party officials who can vote in presidential primaries independent of the will of the primary voters in their state ― as well make it easier for independents to participate in primaries and other party functions.

“I don’t know what the Rules Committee is going to do,” Bond said of their forthcoming assessment of the Unity Commission’s recommendations. “But I know that there are five Clinton-appointed Unity Commission members on the Rules Committee and no Bernie-appointed ones now that Perez has shaken it up.”

It looks like the hope for the party to become more inclusive and unifired, as well as more people centered and less influenced by neoliberal, center right, is not going to happen anytime soon.