No person in the world could implement our agenda just by winning the election, because the billionaires won't give up. Pharmaceutical companies will fight us when we work to lower drug prices. Health insurance executives will do all they can to stop Medicare for All. Polluters and oil companies will go all out to stop our climate control action. Sanders will need an unprecedented grassroots movement to transform our nation.

::::::::

(I have grown so weary of the rest of the field of political campaign fundraisers, all of them always with their hands out, asking for money WITH NO REASON OR ISSUE AT HAND, just this pressing urgency, like "we have to meet this demand by midnight a few days from now." Sorry, folks~~~ with me that just doesn't cut it. It makes no sense, most of their approach, whose effect is amplified exponentially when you get twenty a day....

Even the increasing thousands of homeless outside of Starbucks strewn across this nation know that to ask for money, you have to give a reason, or something about what you need it for. In an era when there are so many national and international issues crying out for our rigorous and focused attention, I can only dismiss such pleas as naive or inexperienced, and most likely doomed to failure, precisely because they miss the point that the issues at hand are far more important than their momentary need to ask for your money. It is just basic effective psychology that should tell them how to do it better. Some of them come repeatedly from some presidential candidates that are very high in the hierarchy for 2020, but I prefer not naming names.

Faiz Shakir's insights are consistently well founded and incisive.

Harry Reid's former deputy chief of staff commented, "Reid did not make a big decision without consulting Faiz. There's no one he trusted more on how the progressive community would react on something and no one whose advice he took more seriously on pushing him to the left."

Shakir informally advised Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, which drew the ire of the Hillary Clinton campaign team.

According to the Podesta emails, Clinton's campain chair John Podesta chided Shakir for advising Sanders. "Gave him a very hard time," Podesta wrote to Neera Tanden about Shakir's involvement. "I have to say this does not go down easy with me."

This long note from Bernie's campaign manager Faiz Shakir is refreshing, clear and believable. With his undergrad degree from Harvard and law degree from Georgetown, he is 40. Most recently, he served as Political Director of the American Civil Liberties Union for a little over two years.)

>>>>

This election needs to be about so much more than beating Donald Trump. It is a mistake to think that this election is simply about beating one man an aberration of a president and that everything will simply return to "normal."

The reality is that "normal" in our country before there was a President Trump still meant an immoral lack of healthcare, unlivable low wages, rampant corporate greed, a racist criminal justice system, and a corrupt political system. So, no. It is not enough to just defeat Donald Trump. Returning to "normal" is not acceptable.

Here's how we can do much, much more than that.

Below, I give you a preview of our strategy to win the Democratic nomination, defeat Donald Trump, and transform our country. This is what it will take, and if you can be a part of it, please make a contribution to Bernie 2020 now so that we can build the movement needed to win the election and our issues.

People Trust Bernie to Fight

When it comes time for campaigning, a lot of politicians tend to make big promises to voters, and then if they win, actually do what their biggest funders want them to do. It's no secret that those are often at odds with each other.

There will be several people in this election who can point to polls that they may be able to defeat Donald Trump. But there is only one person who can both defeat him AND transform the country afterwards.

Bernie Sanders has a lifetime of consistency on the biggest questions of our time: fighting for Medicare for All, taking on corporate power, fighting for racial justice, solving climate change, and making our country more fair for more people.

You know that Bernie believes in these issues to his core. There's no question. He's going to stick to what he believes.

We are going to make sure that every voter knows this too, because we think the way to win is with a candidate who can be trusted to fight for the right thing.

Deep Investment in Organizing

Having slick television ads alone is not going to win this election, and it's certainly not going to help pass Medicare for All. The way to truly transform our country is by organizing our communities from bottom to top.

We need to be out on the doors and on the phones, speaking with our friends and neighbors and classmates and coworkers. We need to build a movement of people who are deeply invested in this work, and our campaign needs to invest in that movement.

If we want to win, it will require all of us together. And we think that together, our campaign is the best situated to organize the kind of movement that has never been seen before.

Empowering Our Supporters (You!)

This is your campaign, working in your communities, speaking with people you know. You are eager to get to work, and you know how we can win. Already, our organizing kickoff brought together 60,000 people at 4,700 events who immediately got to work contacting voters. We unveiled our voter contact app, called BERN, that lets anyone start organizing their communities. No other campaign comes close to doing that ... yet.

The work to win the election and to transform our country needs to be organized by people who want to make it happen. That's you, and so we're putting our trust in you to make this organizing work in your community, and we're committed to giving the resources needed to make that a reality.

Unequivocal Rejection of Big Money

You can't change a corrupt system by taking its money, and you can't win an election against Donald Trump by relying on the billionaire class to fund your campaign and super PACs.

If we are going to win this election, it needs to be with a movement funded by people donating what they can afford people making investments in Bernie 2020 as a way of saying they've had enough of the billionaire class buying our elections.

We're proud to be the campaign that is most reliant on money from small contributions, but that also means that there is no super PAC or wealthy benefactor waiting in the wings like some other candidates have so it's on all of us to help fund this campaign.

Challenging the Status Quo

We're not going to be afraid to call out parts of the establishment that think what we're doing is too radical. We know that Donald Trump is not just an aberration he is a logical conclusion of a corrupt political system that has left so many people so far behind.

If all we do in this moment is try to turn back the clock to a pre-Donald Trump time in Washington, DC, we will have failed. That is simply not good enough, and we will make clear both during this campaign, and after we win during the fight to implement our agenda, that it is time for a new way of thinking.

That might make some establishment types uncomfortable. Too bad.

Accountability to Our Movement

I may be the campaign manager of Bernie 2020, but this is not about me. It's not just about Bernie, either. It's about all of us, and because of that, I think it's critically important that our work during and after this campaign is based on accountability.

We're going to do what we think is necessary to win, and we also need to do what is necessary to keep our movement strong. You are as much a part of this as I am, and I'm proud to see myself as part of our movement together.

Continuing the Political Revolution

The most dangerous mistake that we can make is thinking that our work is done after Tuesday, November 3, 2020.

No person in the world, not Bernie Sanders, and no one else could possibly be able to implement our agenda simply by winning the election. Because when we win, the billionaire class is not going to give up easy. Pharmaceutical companies will fight us when we work to lower drug prices. Health insurance executives will do all they can to stop Medicare for All. Polluters and oil companies will go all out to stop our action on climate change. And on and on.

President Bernie Sanders will need an unprecedented grassroots movement along his side each day of his presidency in order for us to actually transform our country.

What We Need

So that's our strategy to win the nomination, defeat Donald Trump, and transform our country. It's about standing up for what's right. It's about fighting the political, financial, and corporate establishments. It's about working together in our communities, and it's about building a lasting movement.

I'm about to ask you to make a contribution, and I hope that it is clear why. But first, I want to be up front with you that our average contribution which used to be $27 has been almost half that in the last couple weeks. It's OK for now, but we would really like to see if you can dig a little deeper if you're able to.

So, are you ready to get to work on this strategy? Contribute to Bernie 2020 now to build our campaign together in a way that no one else can. Thank you for all you do for our movement.

In solidarity,

Faiz Shakir

Bernie Sanders ~ Campaign Manager

Authors Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/592985284186083/

Authors Bio:

Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.

We added "2020" to the title.


I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.


I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.


Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).


For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....


My highest accomplishments thus far are

1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.


2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.


These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!

This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.


In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev