UPDATE LINKS AS OF 1/28: DNC Chair vote is in 3 days! Who do we want as DNC Chair on February 1?? And why?

[Donkees]

11. Faiz Shakir:

I offer my candidacy at this late moment only because I have concrete ideas and the necessary experience of how to use an organization with tens of millions of dollars in resources and nationwide staff to attract working class support. I have consistently built strong and effective teams. I proudly led Bernie’s 2020 campaign, founded the nation’s leading working class media outlet More Perfect Union, built People Power organizing at the ACLU during the first Trump term, landed my first political job in the DNC HQ (on the Research team), and have learned a great deal about leadership from being on the staffs of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

I’m looking forward to sharing with you my desires to reimagine what the DNC does. I envision:

– a DNC that is an organizing army which lends support to striking and organizing union and non-union workers (like those recently at Amazon, Boeing or among manufacturing workers and nurses), and joins with tenant unions and community organizations fighting economic exploitation and price gouging on the ground (ie, those who are organizing against unaffordable rent increases, unreasonable utility rate hikes, hospital closures, the undermining of public schools through school vouchers, stopping privatization of reliable government services like the post office or the VA);

– a DNC that becomes its own powerful media outlet, doing compelling original content in different video, text and graphic formats guided by a mission of featuring working class heroes taking on corporate greed, educational pieces about the aims and ambitions of the Silicon swamp surrounding Trump, and using our historical archives to showcase the proud legacy of Democratic fights for the common man;

– a DNC that seeks out and hosts convenings with Trump voters who previously voted Democrat and voters who sat out the last presidential election in order to challenge our assumptions of how to improve the brand;

– a DNC that identifies areas where Democrats have consistently failed to field candidates in general elections and recruit and resource working class candidates to run for those seats;

– and a DNC where membership is much more than merely making a passive contribution but also actively involves the grassroots in surfacing interesting policy ideas and building civic organization around community service, faith, sports, culture and entertainment.

Most importantly, we have to strategically pick big fights with the elite and selfish oligarchs now entering government “service” not just to decry their looting but to paint the picture of how we would wield power in a very different way.

If we are clear-eyed, competent, and action-oriented, our fellow Americans will respond positively in the next few years to a Democratic Party that honestly realigns itself with its roots in the working class. Building power for working people — that’s my personal mission and purpose, and I want to bring that to the DNC.