Despite Bernie Sanders’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton, the party faces fears of civil war: ‘It’s important for progressives not to be taken for granted’

No sooner had the question been posed of where angry young activists would go after the Bernie Sanders campaign than a group of angry young activists provided the answer: to the streets.



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The surprise walk-out of protesters from a conference of US progressives in St Louis this weekend forced the cancellation of its panel on “translating millennial votes into power”. But here was more vivid testimony. Despite Sanders urging his supporters to back Hillary Clinton in an official endorsement a few days earlier, the energy once captured by his campaign – and beyond it, in the Black Lives Matter protests – appeared already to be slipping out of the hands of Democrats.

Hands Up United – a group born of anti-police violence protests in nearby Ferguson – brought both the Netroots convention and surrounding freeways to a standstill, accusing the largely white delegates of becoming “occupiers” in the “disunited States of America”. “Mic check, mic check,” they chanted, in an echo of the Occupy movement that used voices in the street to amplify its message.

Across the corridor in another unofficial Netroots spin-off, a different group of activists were plotting to do the same on a bigger stage in Philadelphia, where the Democratic party is holding its national convention in a week’s time. Democracy Spring is planning non-violent civil disobedience on a daily basis, scheduling sit-ins and mass arrests until the party promises to scrap the system of super-delegates that so enraged Sanders supporters during the long and bitter nomination contest.

Similar direct action is expected in Cleveland this week, where the Republican convention coincides with a new upsurge of support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and has seen the city already take on the appearance of a military encampment.

Organisers of Netroots – which was set up in 2006 to celebrate internet bloggers “gathering virtually in the new public square” – put on a brave face despite being upstaged by events in real public squares.

“Our next president just pledged to do everything we have been campaigning for,” said executive director Raven Brooks after Clinton addressed the conference via a recorded video and promised to take modest steps toward campaign finance reform.

“The progressive left is in the ascendence in this country,” added Keith Ellison, one of the few Democratic congressmen to back Sanders but, like many leaders in Washington, now falling in behind the Clinton campaign.

Despite the official optimism about post-Sanders unity, behind the scenes, the mood is described as “subdued” and the movement as on a knife edge.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hillary Clinton greets members of the audience during the rally where she received Sanders’ endorsement. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

“For many progressives, and Democrats in general, it’s a wait-and-see moment around [Clinton’s] vice presidential pick,” said Stephanie Taylor of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), who called the imminent decision “a proxy for what we can expect from her administration”.

“If she picks someone like [Massachusetts senator] Elizabeth Warren who has this track record of fighting for the issues that people care about ... that will be a signal that will energise greatly the Democratic base,” Taylor told the Guardian in an interview. Picking the moderate Virginia governor, Tim Kaine, or the US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, would do the opposite, she warned.

Despite some recent gestures toward the Warren and Sanders wing of the party, progressives are nervous due to Clinton’s refusal to budge on trade, where the Obama administration has been trying to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement through Congress.

“There are very powerful corporate interests who are very strongly opposed to blocking TPP,” said Taylor. “It’s the ugly reality of corporate capture that we are seeing.

“If Clinton picks someone like Tim Kaine who voted for fast-track, that – combined with the glaring omission of TPP from the Democratic platform – will depress energy and will be an anaemic choice,” she added.

“We can’t take Donald Trump for granted. He can attack Democrats from the left now on trade unless we shore up opposition to TPP. In a moment that is so populist in this country, we don’t want to leave doors like that open.”

The wrong choice of vice-president could quickly kill the delicate spirit of unity, but the PCCC is resigned to the fact that the kind of the civil war seen in Britain’s Labour party between populists and centrists might still be warranted.

“It’s a fine line because you don’t want civil war, but it’s important for progressives not to be taken for granted,” said Taylor.

Clinton loyalists hope it won’t come to this, and point to agreement on other “unity” issues, such as tackling student debt, as signs that they are listening to the populist mood.

“We are not going to get there unless we elect Hillary Clinton to be president,” said Ann O’Leary, the campaign’s education adviser.

“I am not naive. Many of you probably did not support Hillary Clinton in the primary and I am OK with that, because we are a unity party and I think it’s incredibly important that you tell your friends that we have just developed the most progressive higher education platform that the Democratic party has ever had.”

For recent converts to the Clinton camp, such steps are signs that the Sanders struggle was worth it.

“A few years ago, debt-free college was a pipe dream. Now it’s like, ‘Let’s get this done,’” said Rep Ellison. “It shows that if you organise and confront the system, you can move it.”

But he acknowledges that progressives need to keep the pressure up.

“We have got to have a very alive movement after the election,” added Ellison. “The election is not the end of anything; it’s the beginning of the movement. [The Obama slogan] ‘yes we can’ felt like it turned into ‘yes he can’, and we can’t let it become ‘yes she can’.”

Others are demanding something more immediate from the Clinton campaign to prove that it truly understands the mood.

Kai Newkirk, campaign director of Democracy Spring, said Clinton’s new promise to introduce a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United ruling on campaign contributions was only a tentative step toward reform.

“It’s awesome. It’s totally dope that we are going to do that. We can feel that they are feeling the heat,” he told a group of activists, clicking their fingers and waving “sparkles” with their hands to show agreement.

“These are all good steps, but we are pushing for something more: to get party leaders as well as her to give up superdelegates as a sign of good faith.”

To underline what is at stake if campaign finance reform is not tackled head-on, other progressive candidates explained how rigged the system has become.

“The day job of most congressmen is to be a sycophant: telling jokes to rich people and becoming royal court watchers gossiping about the dreams of the wealthy,” said Zephyr Teachout, a recently nominated Democratic candidate for New York’s 19th congressional district who is following the Sanders model of relying on small donations. “Two people can equal my six months of fundraising with one stroke of a pen.”

Like a younger version of Warren, Teachout is all too aware of the dangers of letting the Sanders movement drift away from mainstream politics.

“People are extremely angry and shut out and numb, and our job is to grab that before people totally get numb and drop out,” she added. “Don’t you dare give up. We need to fight for a democracy that we have yet to achieve.”

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Her victory in a recent Democratic primary gives hope to some veterans of past populist insurgencies.

“Bernie is no longer a candidate for the presidency, but we have political revolutionary candidates up and down the ballot,” said Charles Chamberlain of Democracy for America, a group set up in 2004 after Howard Dean’s failed bid for the nomination. “This is a long term movement. Repetitively over and over again, Sanders smashed the conventional wisdom that you have to run to the middle to get independents.”

Other would-be inheritors of the movement in Congress are more cautiously optimistic.

“Sanders ran the most successful progressive campaign in the last 50 years, so it gives us hope that the Democratic party can still be the home of progressive values,” said Alan Grayson, who is running against the Florida Republican Marco Rubio for the state’s crucial Senate seat.

“Our democracy is not quite dead yet,” added Grayson. “We are not at the point where the oligarchy has everything it wants … the Sanders campaign is a sign that we are doing something; that there is a possibility that we can have a functioning democracy in this country.”

But not everyone gathered at this fast-fragmenting coalition of progressives in St Louis was so sure.

“We live in the age of Ferguson,” warned one of the uprising’s most charismatic leaders, the Rev Osagyefo Sekou. “The occupation of public space, the rejection of traditional leadership and calling into question systems that previous generations sought to become a part of.

“The age of Ferguson demands that we ask a different set of questions,” he added. “Much of it is not going to happen in electoral politics; it’s going to be young people in the streets. I am not saying don’t vote. I am saying vote and. Voting is not the end goal. Voting is harm reduction.”

• This article was amended on 20 July 2016 to clarify that among Democrats strong support for Sanders in the past does not necessarily mean reluctance to support Clinton now.

