The Democratic establishment tried to write me off…in my own city

I had a meeting with my state rep today about endorsing Keith Ellison for DNC chair. She loved it. My state rep told me how disappointed she was with DWS’ record as the chair of the DNC and she was all for a change in party leadership. She and I talked for 20 minutes, we talked about collaborating on a Facebook post for her public page, and she pointed me in the direction of the chair of my city committee. My state rep mentioned that I could ask her about a hearing for a formal endorsement of Keith Ellison by my city committee, and I left the meeting enthusiastic about how receptive to change my representative was. I’m going to protect the city committee director’s identity for the time being because I’m a nice person and maybe she was just having a bad day, but she was condescending, rude, and discredited all the hard work I have done for the American Left.

Let’s call her Julie. Julie picked up the phone and I spoke to her very briefly about why I was calling. Her response was that I was wasting my time. She told me that a city committee endorsement would do nothing to further my agenda of electing Keith Ellison as the DNC chair, and that my efforts would be better spent convincing the chairs that represent my state democratic party to actually vote for him. Seems fair enough.

She then asks me, “do you even know what the DNC chair does? Why do you even support Keith Ellison? Do you know anyone else who is running?” Again, her tone was kind of rude, but I explained to her that the reason I supported Ellison was because of his platform of enacting open primaries in all 50 states for the democratic elections. Julie comes back and says that the primary rules are determined by each states’ secretary of state, and that even if he did support open primaries, that my reasons for supporting him aren’t good enough.

Here’s where it gets good–she starts questioning my credibility as a progressive. She asks what I’ve done for the party. I volunteered for Bernie Sanders in the primary. I sucked it up and campaigned 100+ hours a week for Hillary Clinton despite my dislike of her, because I realized the alternative was much worse. I held a voter registration drive for the democratic primaries in college. I stormed my state capitol with Black Lives Matter and attended candlelight vigils for the innocent black men and women gunned down by injustice in this country, protesting institutional racism. I did not go on birthright to boycott AIPAC and its influence over American foreign policy. I attend my city committee meetings. I contact my state legislators and mayor to create public pressure for progressive causes.

But there is one thing that I did, which is support a local democratic candidate for State Senate who lost to our current incumbent. I did not particularly like this candidate because toward the end of the campaign, a SuperPAC spent $200,000 on his behalf because of his stances on charter schools. I did not agree with his stance on charter schools, but because the policy in question was a ballot initiative, I overlooked this part of his platform. Accepting SuperPAC money a week before the election was extremely upsetting to me, but I had sunk 4 months into the campaign at the time and was not about to quit a week before the election.

Because I supported the insurgent candidate and not the incumbent (and I am ultimately very happy they won), Julie said to me, “You just lost all credibility as a progressive, kid.”

The head of the democratic establishment in my own city attempted to disenfranchise me, because of one thing I did that she did not like. She was rude to me the entire phone call because she assumed I was a dumb kid, and at the end of the conversation she tried to silence me by writing me off as not a progressive, therefore not worthy of expressing my opinion.

I have stood up time and again for what is right, even when it wasn’t easy. I put my entire life on hold to campaign for HRC. And because I supported one candidate Julie did not like, she told me I lost all credibility as a progressive. She wrote me off. She is a middle aged woman and I am a 22 year old young person looking to enact change.

Julie tried to write me off as a dumb kid who didn’t know what he was talking about. What she doesn’t know is that I’m a tenacious kid, and Julie doesn’t know what I am capable of. I am not backing down. In fact, I’m doing just the opposite. I’m ramping the fuck up.

