Bernie Sanders’ segue from pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to barn­storm­ing author was seam­less. In between the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion in July and hit­ting the stump this fall to boost Hillary Clinton’s stock in bat­tle­ground states, Sanders cranked out a 450-page book, which hit book­stores Novem­ber 15. The author was not far behind, with sold-out appear­ances from Boston to San Francisco.

'We need to push the Democratic Party to once again be the party of the people.'

Often, quick­ie books from trade pub­lish­ers hop­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on an author’s new­ly-achieved celebri­ty are noth­ing more than ghost-writ­ten schlock. Cam­paign mem­oirs — like the autho­rized biogra­phies or ghost­ed auto­bi­ogra­phies of pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls — aren’t often mem­o­rable either, even when they dis­play some evi­dence of real can­di­date involve­ment or reflec­tion. But like Sanders’ 2016 cam­paign, his book, Our Rev­o­lu­tion: A Future to Believe In, great­ly exceeds expectations.

In the first third of the book, we get an insid­er account of his plunge into pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics when few in the cor­po­rate media, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty or the AFL-CIO took his demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist ​“fringe” can­di­da­cy seri­ous­ly. Sanders also recounts his ear­ly life in Brook­lyn, his activism at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go dur­ing the 1960s and his four-decade career in Ver­mont pub­lic life.

The author’s descrip­tion of the grass­roots strug­gle to trans­form munic­i­pal gov­ern­ment dur­ing his eight years as Burling­ton may­or is par­tic­u­lar­ly instruc­tive for pro­gres­sives think­ing about run­ning for local office. As Sanders proud­ly writes, the elec­toral coali­tion ​“formed in 1982, became the foun­da­tion for pro­gres­sive third par­ty pol­i­tics in Ver­mont. Not only has it con­tin­ued in Burling­ton to this day, elect­ing two pro­gres­sive may­ors after me, it has spread statewide.”

With rep­re­sen­ta­tion in both hous­es of the Ver­mont leg­is­la­ture, the Ver­mont Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (VPP) has, accord­ing to Sanders, become ​“one of the most suc­cess­ful and long-stand­ing third par­ties in Amer­i­ca.” Its sin­gu­lar sta­tus was fur­ther con­firmed on Novem­ber 8, when Sanders-backed David Zuck­er­man, a VPP state sen­a­tor and work­ing-class ori­ent­ed organ­ic farmer, got elect­ed lieu­tenant gov­er­nor — mark­ing the first time a pro­gres­sive, oth­er than Sanders, has suc­ceed­ed in a Ver­mont-wide race.

A post-cam­paign agenda

In the remain­ing two-thirds of Our Rev­o­lu­tion, Sanders out­lines his agen­da for the coun­try and talks about what it will take to achieve it. His sub­stan­tive pro­pos­als will be famil­iar to the mil­lions of peo­ple who vot­ed for him, and include rec­om­men­da­tions on every­thing from health care, crim­i­nal jus­tice reform, trade, Wall Street reg­u­la­tion, bank restruc­tur­ing and free pub­lic high­er edu­ca­tion to com­bat­ting cli­mate change, cre­at­ing clean ener­gy jobs, over­haul­ing ​“our bro­ken immi­gra­tion sys­tem” and get­ting big mon­ey out of politics.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly — for some­one from a state with large rur­al areas and rel­a­tive­ly few homi­cides — Sanders’ agen­da does not empha­size gun con­trol, although he does con­fess to hav­ing mis­han­dled that issue on the nation­al debate stage.

In a well-doc­u­ment­ed chap­ter called ​“Cor­po­rate Media and the Threat to Our Democ­ra­cy,” Sanders updates his long-time cri­tique of the hand­ful of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions that own a lot of the media and have an out­sized influ­ence on what peo­ple see and hear. Sanders him­self was, of course, a case study in hos­tile or non-exis­tent cov­er­age by major news­pa­pers and TV net­works for much of his campaign.

Both as a cam­paign his­to­ry and pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy guide, Our Rev­o­lu­tion brims with the same right­eous indig­na­tion and relent­less opti­mism that drew big­ger and big­ger crowds to Sanders’ ral­lies. It con­cludes with the author’s oft-repeat­ed call for fol­low-up activ­i­ty now at the local level:

“Run for the school board, city coun­cil, state leg­is­la­ture. Run for gov­er­nor. Run for Con­gress. Run for the Sen­ate. Run for pres­i­dent. Hold your elect­ed offi­cials account­able. Know what they’re doing and how they’re vot­ing and tell your neighbors.”

Going local with ​ “ Our Revolution”

Sanders’ encour­age­ment and sup­port for like-mind­ed can­di­dates began dur­ing his own ​“test­ing the waters” tour of the coun­try, as a not-yet-declared con­tender for the White House. He was invit­ed to Rich­mond, Cal­i­for­nia, in 2014 by Green may­or Gayle McLaugh­lin and oth­er pro­gres­sive city coun­cil can­di­dates fac­ing an avalanche of cor­po­rate spend­ing against them by Chevron, the largest employ­er in town.

Sanders writes that his town hall meet­ing ​“turned out to be one of the largest and loud­est audi­ences that I had spo­ken to since I began trav­el­ing around the coun­try.” In Rich­mond, four can­di­dates he backed two years ago won their elec­tions, as did two more mem­bers of the Rich­mond Pro­gres­sive Alliance this fall. This time, they were endorsed by Our Rev­o­lu­tion, the post-cam­paign orga­ni­za­tion cre­at­ed by for­mer cam­paign staff and Sanders vol­un­teers. Richmond’s top vote get­ter was 26-year-old Melvin Willis, an African-Amer­i­can Bernie fan, rent con­trol advo­cate and local orga­niz­er for the Alliance of Cal­i­for­ni­ans for Com­mu­ni­ty Empow­er­ment. Else­where in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Our Rev­o­lu­tion-assist­ed can­di­dates won may­oral races in Berke­ley and Stockton.

Nation­wide, Our Rev­o­lu­tion endorsed 106 local, state, and fed­er­al can­di­dates and 34 bal­lot ini­tia­tives. Fifty-eight of those can­di­dates were suc­cess­ful; twen­ty-three of the bal­lot mea­sures suc­ceed­ed, includ­ing sev­er­al deal­ing with cam­paign finance reform. Among those backed by Our Rev­o­lu­tion was Mike Con­nol­ly, a lawyer and com­mu­ni­ty activist in Cam­bridge, Massachusetts.

Like Zuck­er­man in Ver­mont, Con­nol­ly com­pet­ed in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry to clear the field. He nar­row­ly defeat­ed a 12-term Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent backed by most Bay State unions and near­ly all his Bea­con Hill col­leagues. On Novem­ber 8, Con­nol­ly won the seat, run­ning unop­posed in the gen­er­al elec­tion. Three oth­er Our Rev­o­lu­tion-backed leg­isla­tive can­di­dates in Mass­a­chu­setts, all incum­bents, also won their pri­ma­ry bat­tles and/​or gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paigns as well. They were state Sens. Pat Jehlen and Jamie Eldridge and state Rep. Mary Keefe.

Con­nol­ly is now work­ing with Our Rev­o­lu­tion sup­port­ers to build a new state struc­ture that bet­ter links issue-ori­ent­ed cam­paigns with elec­toral politics.

“We need to push the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to once again be the par­ty of the peo­ple,” he says. ​“We need to turn pol­i­tics around so that it is move­ment-cen­tered and dri­ven by the grassroots.”

At a Boston book tour stop in late Novem­ber, Sanders stressed sim­i­lar goals in his talk to an esti­mat­ed 1,000 peo­ple. Bernie’s most­ly young fans paid $33 to attend and got a copy of Our Rev­o­lu­tion. The author was in fine form, shar­ing clear, con­cise, and use­ful insights into the lessons of his cam­paign and the chal­lenges under Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump. Dur­ing the ques­tion peri­od, a young Lati­na woman who was think­ing of run­ning for office her­self, asked for Sanders’ advice.

“It’s not good enough for some­one to say: ​‘I’m a woman! Vote for me!’” he told her. ​“No, that’s not good enough. What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insur­ance com­pa­nies, to the drug com­pa­nies, to the fos­sil fuel industry.”

The crowd chant­ed ​“Bernie, Bernie” but the future clear­ly belonged to Sanders-inspired can­di­dates of the sort he described, fol­low­ing in his foot­steps and get­ting involved in pol­i­tics at the local, state and nation­al levels.