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.