Bigger Than Bernie. Micah Uetricht
and prepared to stand up and fight, they are far more powerful.
Bernie Sanders has been exemplary on this front not just in word, but in deed. His campaign in 2016 was unconventional in many respects, but it was what he did afterward that showed the extent to which he believes in using electoral politics, as both a candidate and office-holder, to build movements of the working class outside the state.
Organizer in Chief
Sanders told John Harwood that if he won, he would be the “organizer in chief.” No president has ever articulated their role this way—not even President Barack Obama, who was himself a former community organizer. What would being an “organizer in chief” look like? What Sanders did after losing the 2016 Democratic primary to Clinton gives us a good idea.
Naming and Shaming
Sanders has both personally gone after major corporations and wealthy CEOs, and used his campaign machinery to support striking workers and other protests. For example, in June 2018, Sanders took the stage at a rally attended by hundreds of Disneyland workers in Anaheim, California. “I want to hear the moral defense of a company that makes $9 billion in profits, $400 million for their CEOs and have a 30-year worker going hungry,” he said. “Tell me how that is right.” He added, “The struggle that you are waging here in Anaheim is not just for you. It is a struggle for millions of workers all across this country who are sick and tired of working longer hours for lower wages.”
The union that represents the workers, UNITE HERE, was at that point in contract negotiations with Disney. Sanders chose to use his platform to help them win their contract fight. A few days later, he wrote an op-ed for the Guardian in which he publicized the workers’ testimonies he had heard in Anaheim and wrote,
What these workers are doing, standing up against the greed of one of the most powerful and profitable corporations in America, takes an enormous amount of courage. If they are able to win a livable wage with good benefits from Disney, it will be a shot heard around the world. It will give other low-wage workers at profitable corporations throughout the country the strength they need to demand a living wage with good benefits.
The next month, Disney agreed to pay its unionized workers at Disneyland a minimum of $15 an hour; in August, it followed suit at Disney World in Florida. Sanders didn’t create the fight at Disney himself, of course—workers there were already unionized and fighting for better pay and working conditions. But he used his massive bully pulpit to support these workers, in a way that went far beyond the typical photo ops that Democratic candidates pause for on picket lines and at union conventions during campaign season.
Then, in late August, he blasted Disney for securing large tax breaks for itself while many of its workers were still paid so little. After that, Sanders generalized the fight by introducing legislation in November to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour—a change that would affect 40 million people, or 25 percent of the workforce.
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