Dear Bernie,

Let’s commit to staying in the fight together, making global change through local organizing. Whether we get you elected or not, the struggle will only have just begun.

We are amongst the mil­lions of donors and hun­dreds of thou­sands of activists who have pushed your cam­paign for­ward against seem­ing­ly unbeat­able odds. What can we say? We love you. Some of us have felt this way for years, as we watched your long march from mav­er­ick May­or of Burling­ton, Vt., to solo social­ist in the U.S. Sen­ate. Some of us were only more recent­ly smit­ten by your bolt-from-the-blue pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, which has inject­ed life and hope, and a small bird, into the life­less and hope­less Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape. This is a hap­py moment for our rela­tion­ship. We are slow­ly turn­ing the tide against the lib­er­al machine in the pri­maries, rid­ing high on a surge of pop­u­lar support.

Things are good right now, but we want to talk about the future. We want some­thing long-term, we want to make some­thing togeth­er that is built to last. We want to talk about how we can turn this moment into a movement.

This is a hard con­ver­sa­tion for many of us to have. We’ve been hurt before. Many of us have devel­oped a deep and healthy mis­trust in elec­toral pol­i­tics, mov­ing to work­place and com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ing to build pop­u­lar pow­er. There is a rea­son for this. Many of us poured our hearts into the pres­i­den­tial bids of the Rain­bow Coali­tion, or the long-shot cam­paigns of Ralph Nad­er and oth­er Green Par­ty can­di­dates. Many of us turned out to put Oba­ma in the White House on the backs of what was until then the largest grass­roots mobi­liza­tion in a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in history.

Whether they won or lost, all of these elec­toral cam­paigns left lit­tle behind but bro­ken hearts, and in the most recent and notable case, bro­ken promis­es. On a deep­er lev­el, we feel that the changes we seek can­not sim­ply be vot­ed into exis­tence — we want to bring par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy to life in all spheres of soci­ety. For many of us, par­tic­i­pa­tion in elec­toral pol­i­tics feels like an abu­sive relationship.

We want this time to be dif­fer­ent. Let’s build some­thing real togeth­er. Let’s make not just a polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion, but a social and eco­nom­ic rev­o­lu­tion by build­ing not just a cam­paign for pres­i­dent, but a last­ing movement.

We thought of four ways that our rela­tion­ship could go to the next level:

1. Build our own lists. The con­flict with the DNC and NGP-VAN shows us that we can’t trust the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty machine with our orga­niz­ing infra­struc­ture. We need our own mem­ber­ship lists that they don’t control.

2. Let us become mem­bers and orga­niz­ers. Change will not hap­pen with one elec­tion or one politi­cian. We need a social move­ment. Social move­ments are made up not of one politi­cian speak­ing out on stage against the estab­lish­ment, but of mil­lions of indi­vid­u­als stand­ing up and work­ing togeth­er. Cre­ate a path­way to mem­ber­ship in your cam­paign, which would bring with it more respon­si­bil­i­ty and a long-term commitment.

If your five mil­lion donors became mem­bers, we would be larg­er than any labor union in the Unit­ed States and on par with the NRA, which has more effec­tive­ly held a gun to the head of the gov­ern­ment than any polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion in US his­to­ry. If we pro­vide train­ing to help mem­bers become orga­niz­ers, there is no rea­son why we couldn’t dou­ble or triple the size of your base, large enough to make the polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion per­ma­nent and per­va­sive — and extend it into work­places and com­mu­ni­ties as an eco­nom­ic and social revolution.

3. Prac­tice democ­ra­cy. What sets your cam­paign apart is the promise of democ­ra­cy. Let’s make that promise real inside the cam­paign. Allow us to become not just donors, vot­ers, or con­sumers of Bernie, but pro­duc­ers of this polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion. For­mal­ize a demo­c­ra­t­ic process for cam­paign mem­bers to decide on cam­paign planks and plan actions.

This will allow you to out­flank Hillary’s lat­est gam­bit to mar­ket her­self as the ​“inter­sec­tion­al” can­di­date by giv­ing an open invi­ta­tion to labor, racial jus­tice, fem­i­nist, envi­ron­men­tal, LGBTQ, anti-war, and oth­er social move­ments to become not just talk­ing points or staff posi­tions, but full coali­tion part­ners in the cam­paign. It will also reas­sure those of us who have been hurt by politi­cians in the past that this will remain a rela­tion­ship of equals, and you won’t for­get about us when we get you elect­ed. And it will help turn the polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion into a rev­o­lu­tion of every­day life — where democ­ra­cy becomes some­thing we prac­tice every day in our neigh­bor­hoods, work­places, unions, and com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, not just every few years at the bal­lot box.

4. Take the fight local. You’re a fight­er. That’s what we love about you. Let’s com­mit to stay­ing in the fight togeth­er, mak­ing glob­al change through local orga­niz­ing. Whether we get you elect­ed or not, the strug­gle will only have just begun. If you are in office, you will need a mas­sive grass­roots appa­ra­tus to unseat Repub­li­cans and pres­sure or remove mod­er­ate Democ­rats to see through the polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion, and extend it into an eco­nom­ic and social rev­o­lu­tion. If the cen­trist machine steals the elec­tion, then we can work togeth­er to pres­sure the gov­ern­ment for our demands direct­ly or elect demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist rep­re­sen­ta­tives at low­er lev­els of government.

And no mat­ter who wins the elec­tion, we need to orga­nize for change in our work­places and com­mu­ni­ties — mak­ing a polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and social rev­o­lu­tion through orga­niz­ing at the local lev­el. So let’s keep the cam­paign offices open (as many as we can afford to, at least) after the elec­tion, and turn them into hubs for orga­niz­ing. If we build an orga­ni­za­tion capa­ble of cam­paign­ing beyond the elec­tion cycle, and in work­places and com­mu­ni­ties as well as in the polit­i­cal sphere, we can’t lose.

What do you say, Bernie? Can we make this work?

The last year has been mag­i­cal. Let’s keep the mag­ic alive, let’s give our cam­paign a future we can believe in.

Love,

Your Sup­port­ers

You can see the full list of sig­na­to­ries, which has now reached over 1,000, and sign on to the let­ter your­self, here.