I don’t know if party politics is supposed to be a zero sum game, where each side gets something it wants and reaches a consensus to ignore the rest, but I have seen that in the hearts of many Bernie Sanders delegates at the Democratic National Convention, last week, there was a feeling of being ignored by the Democratic Party.
In following friends of mine on Facebook®* who were in Philadelphia as Bernie delegates from Georgia, it seems they felt alienated and silenced by the process, despite the Clinton/Kaine campaign slogan of “Stronger Together.”
“[T]he party has tried to, at first, kill me with kindness, and when I did not comply, tried to silence me…make me disappear,” according to Lisa Ring, a Sanders delegate from southeast Georgia. “The party does not value honesty. Nor does it value integrity. It values money and power.”
The entire convention experience was an “inspiring and depressing festival of corruption and rebellion,” said Atlanta Bernie delegate, Scott Brown.
Ring, whose comments came in the form of a lengthy post, wrote how many Sanders delegates felt excluded. “If the party had allowed us to speak, disagree, criticize,” she said, “and in general, be the diverse crowd we are supposed to represent, this would be a unified party now.”
“We represent millions of votes/voices that you clearly don’t want to listen to,” said Angela Eells, a Sanders delegate from Walton County, Georgia, in admonishing the DNC for its muzzling of Sanders supporters. “Once we realized they were silencing us,” she said, “we went and let the world know that democracy does not exist in the [D]emocratic party.”
She called the convention “the biggest farce production I’ve ever witnessed,” and an “orchestrated…’Illusion of Unity.'”
“I think there was a disconnect in people who have never been involved in party politics before,” explained Ted Terry, Bernie delegate and mayor of Clarkston, Georgia. In a separate interview with P&T, Terry, who is also the state director of the Sierra Club, urged “the newly initiated” to be patient and work within the political process of the Democratic Party. “It makes more tactical sense,” he said.
“We will eventually have more power and take more control over this process,” Terry added.
But for many of the newcomers, the process of the convention, at least, left a bad taste of disaffection and disenfranchisement. Even during the final night, Thursday, they felt embattled.
“We were determined to represent our constituents and not be run off by our own party,” describes Ring in her post. “Unfortunately, since our own state party created a system of stifling us by over-chanting us and physically blocking us, they have permanently lost some hard working Democrats.”
The “stifling” Ring is referring to is that while some Bernie delegates were protesting by holding up signs and chanting things like “Ban fracking,” and, “No more war,” Hillary delegates and supporters – including Democratic Party of Georgia chairman Dubose Porter – blocked them from cameras and shouted them down with positive chants.
“The convention was one big orgy of ‘USA!’ chanting party unity,” complained Brown.
“It was like a battle of passive aggressive protests,” according to Terry. “Just like the ‘Bernie or Bust’ people were making noise and holding up signs that were kind of derogatory, the people who were trying to support Hillary and listen to the speeches were like, ‘Well, we’re not going to shut them up. We’re just going to stand in front of them because we have a right to stand here just like they have a right to stand here.'”
While Terry said he was sympathetic to the Bernie supporters’ passion – he was a Sanders delegate, after all – he said he thought they had carried on for too long. “There’s a point,” he said, “where persistence becomes petulance, and I think some people crossed that line… You don’t win by burning bridges; you don’t win by excessive petulance. You win by building bridges.”
His reaction was doing what he came to Philadelphia to do. “I cast my vote for Bernie. At that point, it was just like, ‘Alright. What’s next?’ Next is defeating Donald Trump.”
Eells, who is still not sure who will get her vote in November, said despite “feelings of deep sadness, defeat, anger,” the entire experience also left her feeling “determination, joy and vindication and above all PRIDE [emphasis hers].”
“There will never be a way for us to communicate to anyone outside that room how difficult it was for us but our ability to overcome, rise above, do our elected job and propel this movement,” she said.
And the activism will go on in spite of the imperfect choices come Election Day. “For me,” Terry said, the takeaway is “the fact that Bernie was saying we’re going to continue this movement, we’re going to continue this progressive revolution, but we’re not going to do it at the expense of allowing Donald Trump to win the presidency – the stakes are just too high.”
“We are now all a united front against Trump,” Brown said, in what appears to be angry sarcasm. “We have all accepted the fact that we must take millions of corrupting dollars from any corporation, billionaire, lobbyist, bundler, or sleazebag we can in that effort.”
“The lesser of two evils gives us a lot of room to be evil,” he warned. “And the (Anti-)Democratic Party will not disappoint.”
Brown is encouraging people to vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, because “All the Clinton supporters, delegates, super-delegates, and supporting party insiders I’ve talked to, before, after and during the DNC, all are supremely confident that Hillary will beat Trump in November. So that means she doesn’t need my vote. Or yours.”
But Ted Terry offered some consolation to those who fear the Democratic Party has left them behind. “Once the hurt feelings kind of subside,” he opined, “and some of the people are a little more clear-eyed, they’ll hopefully realize it’s not, like, hopeless.”
Terry went on to explain that his support for the nominee notwithstanding, the Sanders revolution isn’t over. He went on to list several issues yet to be resolved. Among them, “We need to stop the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal) from passing in the lame duck.”
Eells, in a separate interview with a local paper, said she won’t stop fighting. “I am fighting against fracking because I believe that we have a right to have clean drinking water,” she said. “I am fighting to overturn Citizens United because corporations should not be able to buy elections.”
Lisa Ring is also moving on, promising to continue to work for progressive change in Georgia in standing up for causes and candidates. But she has one request. “All that I fight for is the opportunity to participate in democracy. Let us all work together, let each voice be heard, and may we achieve a more just, honest, and compassionate nation. Please join us in any way you are able.”
I’m raising my hand. Are you?
-PBG
*With the exception of the interview with Ted Terry, all quotes are from Facebook® posts from during and after the DNC in Philadelphia. Some editing has been done to correct spelling, grammar and punctuation. Used with the generous permission of the subjects.
PS. This is an amusing video about moving on from Bernie. Ted Terry is in it. If you’re still stuck, you may want to wait to watch it. Or, maybe it will help.
Prose and Thorn 
So if only they had been allowed to yell and scream and be jerks, we would all be unified now. Wait. They were allowed to do all that. Also, sometimes when you do that, other people who are doing the same thing are louder than you. Sometimes there are more of them. That is how this works. So the complainer states that people were yelling over them and their voices were silenced. It sounds like the complainer is implying that the people yelling over them should have been silenced. Wow, that is completely illogical. I call BS on the idea that we would be unified now. Some of the Sanders people went in with delusions that they would win at the convention. Sanders kept up this delusion for far too long, He did try to explain it to them at the very last moment. Some of them were young and naive, others claim to have experience, but if they did they would have understood he lost. He understood he lost. I am not sure why they didn’t. Some of the Sanders people are not Democrats, never have been and never will be. They went to the convention to raise hell and nothing else. No, there would not be unity now. They Sanders people did not want unity. They still don’t. That was never their goal. They wanted to win. Now many of them have pinned their hopes on Stein. I am sure they will be raging about how she was robbed and she really won after the election in November.
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