To my fellow Bernie-Bros upset that Warren stayed in for Super Tuesday

On movement work, listening work, and better power analysis

Okay, I guess I’m doing this writing on the internet about politics thing again. This one is directed at all the angry guys on the internet convinced we just lost our best shot at real change because of women being traitors. Cause I love ya, and I know you’re angry, and I’m also frustrated that we had a split vote going into Super Tuesday, but you’re doing it wrong. You are in fact doing exactly what you’ve been conditioned to do by the system we are working to change.

(And jayzus the woman/snake/traitor thing, like really, we’re doing garden of eden and eve thing here?)

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So let me make my beliefs clear first. If you tell old Black folks that they are dumb for not trusting that whites want to suddenly share the wealth and don’t trust them to vote for Bernie over Trump or calling women who want to pack the Supreme Court to protect abortion traitors you are part of how systems of domination perpetuate themselves. This is how they work, this is the kind of thinking that they create.

Do you see that this is how it works? That your internalized white supremacy and misogyny is encouraging you to punch in the wrong direction because it’s easier and feels righteous. I know you feel betrayal. And I urge you to sit with that feeling and realize it is the same feeling of fear and scarcity that might lead someone to yell “That immigrant stole MY job.” She stole OUR votes. That’s not how these things work. It’s not HER, it’s your own brain and short-term thinking and the constraints of a system that is hard to see.

Malcolm X once said that “if you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” Let’s add to that and say “If you’re not careful, the winner-take-all system of electoral politics in this country is gonna have you fighting each other, instead of noticing what is happening.”

It feels right, yes. You are angry. She was wrong. They were wrong. If your nervous system is jacked cause you are pissed or scared, you are gonna drop into your fears and the stories that live there are stories about enemies, not about allies. And create enemies out of people that have a lot of the same interests as you.

The constraints of the system are set by the system. The system is built in a way that encourages always thinking about power as transactional, something someone takes through victory and wields, rather than something that people build together and then use together.

Like seriously. Feel your emotions first. Breathe and run and yell. Mammals don’t think well when activated. They fight/flight/freeze. You are not using your whole brain. I know you are sad and angry and hurt. You know who else is sad and angry and hurt? Lots of people you keep yelling at that they were wrong for wanting something like you want but thinking another choice was the best way to get there.

You are being betrayed, yes. But right now you are being betrayed by your own brain for believing that this one day was your only chance and it failed because of HER or because of THEM. No my friends! That’s not how this works at all. That’s how we lose. That’s how we lose this election and that’s how we lose building movements.

Like do you know what happens if Bernie runs in the general? I sure don’t. When all of cable news goes apeshit about his plans? And then we lose to Trump and lose the left of the Dem party for a generation. Or not. We don’t know. We can never know the results of the future based on a snapshot in time. I need you to ground into a little more actual not-knowing even though it feels scary.

We don’t know how we will win or when we will win.

But you know what we can know — who has our backs and who will fight with us and take care of us no matter how things go down.

You cannot judge success of transformational movements by projecting forward and back from one moment in space time and declare “victory if only”. We win by building coalitions of people that know they have each other’s best interests at heart and will have each other’s back.

Let me say this again for the people in the back. Elections convince you that all your hopes lie in one moment or one chance. What if those hanging chads were different? What if Comey didn’t speak? What if, what if. And yes, those things make a huge difference, but that’s part of the problem of the political system we are working to change, that small chaotic events can feel like the difference between everything and nothing.

So here’s your whole mission. The whole thing. You convince people that we can take care of each other better than Biden. You convince people that we can take care of them better than Trump. You convince people that they don’t always have to feel like someone else took the last piece of pie.

And that requires trust and time. And listening and empathy. It certainly requires not telling people they sold “us” out before there is enough trust to even know that there is an “us” here.

Also guess what. With a movement like that you don’t always need a ballot box or an election or a hero politician be it Bernie or Liz. Sometimes you just take things back your own damn selves.

It has never been about one moment in time where we win or lose. The future is unknowable. But we can take care of each other, listen to each other, keep building and keep working.

Imagine a politics where it is not a binary between win or lose. Imagine a politics that doesn’t make people choose between such false and constrained choices and hate on those making a different choice because it feels better or safer. Imagine that even now we are growing a movement of people ready to demand change. Not ask for it, not beg for it, not pray for it, not hope for it, not elect someone to do it for us, but that has the power to say this is what we demand, you all can figure out the best way to do it, but we’re not asking, we’re telling.

And imagine all the things that movement can do.

Look around you at all the things you see that represent progress to you. For real, pick any major thing that represents progress to you and look at its history. I’ve got a secret. Almost none of those things came from the ballot box. We won them ourselves, through movement work and agitation, and /after/ we won them, some politician rubber stamped them.

And so it will be, even if we elect Bernie. The whole reason I like the guy is because he recognizes that this is how power works.

Stay the course my friends. Love each other fiercely. For us white men working in the movement, be careful. Misogyny and white supremacy comes out the most when we feel the most scared or attacked.

If you know someone crying today because they thought Elizabeth Warren was the best and brightest and they saw their dreams reflected in her being in the Oval Office, pull them close, we need those dreams protected.

It has never been about one election, and it never will be. Use this as a moment to look deep inside at the parts of yourself that still believe in the lies this system of white supremacy and scarcity and inequality and misogyny told you. I love you. Keep going.