At more than 2,600 watch par­ties across the coun­try, some 40,000 sup­port­ers — joined by hun­dreds of thou­sands more on social media — watched Bernie Sanders launch Our Rev­o­lu­tion on August 24, an off­shoot of his cam­paign ded­i­cat­ed to car­ry­ing the polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion through Novem­ber and beyond.

In the days leading up to the launch parties, eight of Our Revolution’s staffers—out of 15—resigned in protest when former Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver was brought on to run the team.

The group has already trained its sights on a num­ber of pro­gres­sive objec­tives, but also spurred debate on what the future of the broad­er move­ment might look like: Who can claim it, how is it orga­nized and should Sanders’ own inner cir­cle play a role?

As Sanders said, ​“I think the ques­tion on the minds of a whole lot of peo­ple is, ​‘Okay, we ran a great cam­paign. We woke up the Amer­i­can peo­ple. But where do we go from here?’ ”

Our Rev­o­lu­tion hopes to chan­nel the enthu­si­asm of Sanders’ base into con­crete polit­i­cal vic­to­ries, from the school board to the Sen­ate. It joins a com­plex and hard­ly coher­ent ecosys­tem of orga­ni­za­tions, indi­vid­u­als and cam­paigns look­ing to tap into the momen­tum gen­er­at­ed by the Sanders cam­paign — and the donors and vol­un­teers that fed it. Among its allies are some of the biggest orga­ni­za­tions to back the Sanders cam­paign, includ­ing Peo­ple for Bernie, Nation­al Nurs­es Unit­ed and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca (CWA).

Our Rev­o­lu­tion Board Chair and for­mer CWA Pres­i­dent Lar­ry Cohen empha­sizes that Our Rev­o­lu­tion plans to con­tribute to this ecosys­tem, hop­ing to be as ​“col­lab­o­ra­tive as imag­in­able” and work with exist­ing orga­ni­za­tions. ​“The goal is not to replace any­thing,” he says. ​“It’s to expand the move­ment base, and help elect Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty lead­er­ship and can­di­dates who reflect those values.”

Some for­mer Sanders cam­paign orga­niz­ers, how­ev­er, have bris­tled at what they see as a top-down effort that’s out of touch with the expe­ri­ence and con­cerns of the grass­roots. ​“I think it’s real­ly impor­tant that the peo­ple on the ground have the pow­er and the say, that they’re not just fol­low­ing the direc­tions of the peo­ple above them who are manip­u­lat­ing that work for their own ben­e­fit,” says Tascha Van Auken, co-founder of the New York City-based vol­un­teer net­work Team Bernie NY. ​“We didn’t have a lot of lead­er­ship from the Bernie cam­paign for most of the time we exist­ed, until the last four weeks [before the New York pri­ma­ry], which were arguably the most con­fus­ing four weeks of the entire campaign.”

Con­sid­er­ing its small, cen­tral­ized staff, Our Rev­o­lu­tion will need to fig­ure out quick­ly how to relate to autonomous orga­niz­ers like Van Auken. A series of local chap­ters and indi­vid­u­als will coor­di­nate with statewide coun­cils to pick can­di­dates and issues, aim­ing to attune them­selves to local concerns.

This year, Our Rev­o­lu­tion is back­ing sev­en bal­lot ini­tia­tives (from cam­paign finance reform in Mary­land to sin­gle pay­er health­care in Col­orado), mobi­liz­ing to stop the Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship and sup­port­ing sev­er­al dozen can­di­dates (main­ly for state House and Sen­ate seats). Beyond 2016, Our Rev­o­lu­tion hopes to build a base of activists and elect­ed offi­cials who can trans­late the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty plat­form — which includes the expan­sion of Social Secu­ri­ty, debt-free col­lege and a pub­lic option for Oba­macare — into policy.

Accord­ing to Cohen, Our Rev­o­lu­tion cam­paign­ers will endorse and fundraise for can­di­dates only ​“where we can make a dif­fer­ence in the out­come, rather than just any­one who’s pro­gres­sive.” The group has endorsed promi­nent Sanders del­e­gates like Tul­si Gab­bard (D‑Hawaii) and Prami­la Jaya­pal (D‑Wash.), each up for con­gres­sion­al elec­tions this fall.

Van Auken sup­ports those orga­ni­za­tions who choose to col­lab­o­rate with Our Rev­o­lu­tion, but remains skep­ti­cal. ​“I do not trust that they’ll learn from the mis­takes of the cam­paign, that they’ll give the grass­roots the space and sup­port they need to grow,” she says. ​“Empow­er­ing peo­ple doesn’t mean giv­ing them an order. … [It] means lis­ten­ing to them and real­ly tak­ing their expe­ri­ence on the ground seri­ous­ly — and chang­ing what you’re doing in rela­tion to what you’re hearing.”

Oth­er grass­roots groups have been more inter­est­ed in work­ing with Our Rev­o­lu­tion, includ­ing one of the largest, Peo­ple for Bernie. ​“We are aligned with Bernie when it comes to pol­i­cy and we’re very excit­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ties and ways in which we can trans­form local pol­i­tics in a large-scale way,” says Win­nie Wong, group co-founder. That said, she was care­ful to point out that orders won’t be com­ing from the top.

“The Peo­ple For Bernie do not need [Our Revolution’s] per­mis­sion to do any­thing,” Wong said over email. ​“It would be like an occu­pi­er ask­ing Bill DeBla­sio for per­mis­sion to set up a sleep­ing bag on a pub­lic sidewalk.”

A Rev­o­lu­tion Divided

There has also been ten­sion over Our Revolution’s inter­nal struc­ture. In the days lead­ing up to the launch par­ties, eight of Our Revolution’s staffers — out of 15—resigned in protest when for­mer Sanders cam­paign man­ag­er Jeff Weaver was brought on to run the team. A ninth resigned short­ly after the launch. Many of those who resigned crit­i­cized Weaver’s aver­sion to more decen­tral­ized, less tra­di­tion­al forms of cam­paign­ing through­out the pri­ma­ry. They dis­agreed with Weaver’s plan to solic­it funds from cer­tain big-mon­ey donors for tele­vi­sion ads.

Asked about the staffers’ depar­ture, Cohen says that pri­or to the offi­cial launch, the staff and board had not been final­ized. “[Weaver] was always there,” Cohen adds, ref­er­enc­ing Weaver’s posi­tion in the group and Sanders’ pri­ma­ry cam­paign. ​“The ques­tion [was] what his role would be.”

Claire Sand­berg, for­mer dig­i­tal orga­niz­ing direc­tor for the Sanders cam­paign and Our Rev­o­lu­tion, says Weaver’s deci­sion to reg­is­ter Our Rev­o­lu­tion as a 501(c)(4) was a key point where she and oth­er cam­paign staffers diverged. A tax des­ig­na­tion used by advo­ca­cy groups and non-prof­its, 501(c)(4)s can sup­port can­di­dates — but are legal­ly for­bid­den from coor­di­nat­ing direct­ly with them. As Sand­berg points out, this cre­ates a chal­lenge for an orga­ni­za­tion whose mis­sion is to sup­port peo­ple run­ning for office.

Tim Cano­va, for instance — who had Our Revolution’s back­ing against for­mer par­ty chair Deb­bie Wasser­man Schultz in Flori­da — claimed he was ​“left hang­ing” after receiv­ing the Sanders camp’s enthu­si­as­tic endorse­ment in May. Sand­berg explained that, due to legal con­straints, Our Rev­o­lu­tion was unable to return Canova’s phone calls, and is legal­ly pre­vent­ed from meet­ing pri­vate­ly with any can­di­date to dis­cuss things like cam­paign strat­e­gy or vot­er turnout. On August 30, Cano­va lost his primary.

Sand­berg also notes that it would be dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, for Sanders him­self to serve as a spokesper­son for the group, giv­en his posi­tion as a sit­ting mem­ber of Congress.

“I wouldn’t be able to do my job in Our Rev­o­lu­tion as it is cur­rent­ly con­sti­tut­ed,” Sand­berg says. ​“Weaver has admit­ted that the rea­son he chose a 501(c)(4) struc­ture was for the express pur­pose of accept­ing big checks from bil­lion­aires,” a strat­e­gy she called ​“anti­thet­i­cal” to the val­ues Sanders out­lined through the course of his cam­paign. Instead, she sug­gest­ed Our Rev­o­lu­tion might have been incor­po­rat­ed as a fed­er­al (not Super) PAC, which can take in con­tri­bu­tions of up to $5,000 and coor­di­nate direct­ly with candidates.

The split over Weaver is about more than Our Revolution’s tax sta­tus, how­ev­er. ​“All the things that were the most suc­cess­ful about the cam­paign — besides Bernie him­self and his mes­sage— were the small dol­lar fundrais­ing oper­a­tion, social media and grass­roots orga­niz­ing,” Sand­berg says. ​“And those of us who ran those pro­grams had to fight Jeff tooth and nail, every day, to get the most basic resources.” The Sanders cam­paign spent more on adver­tis­ing than any oth­er pri­ma­ry cam­paign — Demo­c­rat or Republican.

Sand­berg also says those who resigned had expressed frus­tra­tion with the lack of diver­si­ty in Our Revolution’s lead­er­ship. At that point, the board had been com­prised entire­ly of white men, but on August 29 it was expand­ed to include activists and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers of a vari­ety of gen­ders and races. Sand­berg calls this a ​“hope­ful sign.” (Her pre­vi­ous com­ments in this piece had been made before the new board mem­bers were announced.)

But behind the dis­agree­ments lies a shared com­mit­ment to fur­ther­ing the prin­ci­ples that drove Sanders’ can­di­da­cy. ​“Turn­ing the Bernie cam­paign into a last­ing polit­i­cal move­ment is still the best oppor­tu­ni­ty we have to empow­er work­ing-class peo­ple in this coun­try, and to win on the issues that mat­ter,” Sand­berg says. ​“The move­ment will go on. The peo­ple who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pri­ma­ry cam­paign want a polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion — and noth­ing less.”