This is feedback those of us backing Sanders were getting for some time, and we brushed it off for way too long.

A lot of women in my life--not just white women--told me they were aligned with his policies but just too turned off by dirtbag harassment. https://twitter.com/LucretiaThott/status/1249703551531724803

Speaking for myself, part of the reason I brushed it off for so long was just seeing the Neera Tanden-type establishment Dems weaponize this argument early and often in ways that were just transparently disingenuous.

But honestly, I ignored women I know and trust to be genuine early on because I heard their arguments as trickled-down talking points of Very Online establishment Dems.

I didn't listen to the fact that they were seeing and naming this shit firsthand, not just regurgitating.

Also, I've written about this before: Twitter's algorithm operates in a way where we see the most controversial content from our opponents, and very little of their less divisive content.

That means each side is mostly just seeing the worst of the other.

So, I was seeing the worst of the Tanden faction takes to the exclusion of more even-handed content about misogyny in the Bernie left, and folks who weren't Team Bernie were seeing the misogynist shit to the exclusion of more equitable/intersectional Bernie supporter content.

Those of us who consider ourselves left did our cause a real disservice not putting down our frustration with the Neeras of the world and taking the time to listen to women & especially WOC in our lives who were increasingly naming their discomfort with toxic class reductionism.

I come out of labor and economic justice organizing, and I'm very used to rich people using shallow identity politics (as opposed to deep intersectional politics) to dishonestly suggest that poverty and worker justice are somehow issues of the privileged.

The critique of class reductionism wasn't that, though.

It's a critique of left-outness, not a critique of economic justice.

It's a critique of a politics so centered around class that it forgets (often deliberately) the ways that other forms of oppression manifest themselves.

If I'm being real, I felt that problem in a very personal way in 2016, when the campaign mismanaged the aftermath of my experience of sexual misconduct at the DNC.

I felt it again when other reports of sexual misconduct on the campaign were brushed away in early 2019.

I think for a lot of us who have been in movement for a long time, Bernie felt like Our One Shot in many ways.

A moonshot that might actually take.

And we let ourselves tread too lightly vis a vis some of our movement principles because it seemed like such a huge potential win.

I have a lot of experience organizing in emergent movement, in moonshot moments.

I'm good at it, but also, they've always seemed like moments with the potential for sea change and watershed and tipping points and all those attractive fantasies of sudden mass conversion.

The more experience I get, though, the more certain I become that when we play revolutionary without holding true to and insisting upon the upholding of core principles of liberatory movement in our ranks, we just end up creating dangerous reactionaries who lead us astray.

In the Bernie "revolution," we as a supportive base let up on our core principles, and that is a large part of how we set ourselves up to lose.

We allowed a racist, sexist, ableist dirtbag left subculture to emerge and very visibly assume ownership of the grassroots online.

Those of us who knew better, who have been in movement a long time, didn't do what we needed to do to disavow that toxic subculture and reclaim grassroots ownership, not until it was too late.

We didn't hold the campaign accountable for catering to them until it was too late.

We wanted the sea change, we wanted the watershed, we wanted the tipping point.

We were impatient.

We didn't want to appear to give credence to the obviously disingenuous attacks coming from the establishment Dems, so we compromised when we shouldn't have.

That's how we lost.

Part of this is about the fact that folks deeply in movement know that this is not a game.

We are not playing chess.

When we lose, people die.

A Bernie victory would have had the potential to save lives in a very real and literal way.

It's easy to say "oh don't compromise your values" when this is a game or cosplay or a hobby.

Folks who are deep in movement are folks who are deep in real life organizing.

We are people who have watched people we fight alongside live where we won and die where we lose.

We need to own that we compromised, but we also have to show ourselves some compassion and remember *why* we compromised.

It wasn't okay.

But for many of us, it was very much human and very much coming from a place of keenly knowing that the stakes were and are life-and-death.

At the same time, knowing those stakes, we don't have the luxury of sitting out the hard movement lessons here.

Accountability and deep intersectionality can feel like practices that slow us down, especially in moments of urgency and emergency.

We need to sit with the reality that we live in a time of where crisis is accelerating and escalating in unprecedented ways.

There is always going to be an emergency.

We have to stop buying into the urgency of white supremacy, the lying voice that whispers to us that we don't have time right now, that we just need to put off dealing with our own internalized behaviors of totalitarian domination until after the emergency.

We have to sit with and absorb the fact that when we postpone justice work in the interest of quick numbers-building, we create the perfect host environment for reactionary infections that will ultimately wound us, like Occupy-trained Nazis or the dirtbag left.

The slow will never be comfortable.

It shouldn't.

Every moment that we live under the politics of totalitarian domination is a moment where more vulnerable people will die unnecessarily.

There's no comfort in patience when you live with that knowledge.

At the same time, if we do not make our peace with the need for sustainably-paced movement deepening and growth, we end up training our enemies, losing ourselves, and ultimately will fail in our struggle for justice.

We can't be complacent.

But we have to learn to build in just ways.

We can invest in the electoral, but we can't let ourselves equate or mistake electoral number-massing for the methodical and relational work of movement.

We can't privilege the numbers over our core work.

Where we do engage electorally, we have to learn to do it as leaders, not followers.

We need to learn to demand accountability of candidates and their campaigns, not just sit back hoping that they'll do justice for justice's sake.

When we do that electoral engagement, we have to remind ourselves daily that elections are about electing targets, not heroes.

We have to treat politicians as humans, people we will necessarily need to pressure to do what is right-- in office, but also on the campaign trail.

We were too quiet with Bernie.

We invested so much hope in him, & we let that investment keep us from speaking up when we should have, from demanding he be the candidate that movement needed and deserved.

There's a lot of good about Bernie, but we stopped treating him as human.

There's a critique I make about about Pelosi & other senior Dems a lot: they demand to be respected & deferred to as statesmen, as elders.

But, part of the bargain of becoming a respected elder is ceding institutional power to the next generation.

You can't have it both ways.

One thing I like about Bernie a lot is that he's clear that he is striving to amass institutional power, and does not expect to be treated with the deference we show to statesmen/stateswomen and elders who have withdrawn from institutional power.

We showed it to him anyway, though.

We treated him as an elder and practiced deference in a moment where we should have been demanding accountability.

We got caught up in the idea of electing a hero and an elder instead of a target.

Part of the uncomfortable patience of movement has to be giving folks who could be movement elders room to work to stay movement leaders if they so choose.

Part of creating that room is holding those leaders accountable even if we'd rather treat them as elders.

Deliberate pacing and uncomfortable patience are not my strong suits.

They're difficult skills that take time to learn.

At the same time, I'm increasingly realizing that these are the skills our movement is most lacking and most in need of at the moment.

The world teaches us in strange ways.

COVID has many of us in a place where we're having to explore and feel out and learn uncomfortable patience and deliberate pacing, whether we like it or not.

The virus has us in a place where deep relational organizing is vitally and very obviously necessary, where the life-and-death stakes have never been so immediately clear to everyone, even the very privileged.

At the same time, this virus has also put us in a position where we're having to re-imagine what organizing looks like at a time when organizing's most powerful tools-- the face-to-face, the 1-1-- are inaccessible in their traditional, offline forms.

It's a moment where patience and intentionality have never felt more uncomfortable, and at the same time it's a moment that demands patience and intentionality in ways that are difficult and often unsafe to refuse.

I'm not religious, but I'm more and more drawn to the notion of prayer these days, its ability to powerfully give voice and space to our hope and intentionality in moments where patience is almost unbearably uncomfortable but also very much necessary.

It's my prayer that this moment of painful but necessary patience becomes a moment that guides people to liberatory movement, not because our takes are the hottest but because our mission and work is fundamentally life-affirming and life-saving.

It's my prayer that those of us in movement find new ways to welcome new and returning friends to the space and work of liberatory movement while holding our ground on the values that undergird it.

It's my prayer that we continue to hone our recognization of this moment as a moment where our work to fight for and defend our communities becomes more important than ever, most especially for the most vulnerable.

For that reason above all, it's my prayer that we accept the lessons of paced intentionality & uncomfortable patience that the election and the virus have conspired to teach us.

It's my prayer that we center radical inclusivity and compassion, even when it means slowing down.

I'm hoping these are lessons I learn, that I internalize & begin to practice.

I'm hoping we do this together.

Call it a prayer, call it a call to re-center, call it intention-setting.

Whatever you call it, it's reflection this work demands of us always, but now especially.

The politics of totalitarian domination-- of white supremacy, of misogyny, of ableism and passive eugenics-- is a politics of death.

Liberatory movement is a struggle for life.

The stakes are so incredibly high.

We can't afford not to reflect.

We can't afford not to learn.

We can't afford not to practice the humility that creates space for self-reflection, and we can't afford not to make sure our movement is accessible and welcoming of the vulnerable and the oppressed.

None of us are free until we all are free.

And when it comes to the politics of totalitarian domination, the freedom in question is very literally a freedom to live, a truth that is touching even the most privileged right now.

We can't afford not to learn, because we can't afford not to win.

That, in the end, is the truth we can't afford not to sit with.

(The end)