Bernie takes his revolution to the streets [View all]

[Uncle Joe]

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The Vermont senator’s team was ready to act quickly on the stranger’s request because it dovetailed with its plan to harness his state-of-the-art digital infrastructure and grassroots army of volunteers to keep Sanders’ promise to help American workers from the campaign trail. While other candidates have also stood on picket lines and used their email lists to raise money for progressive groups, the scale of Sanders’ efforts appears to be unparalleled in the 2020 field.

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“He knows that when he talks about a revolution, there are some segments of people who don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager. “That’s why you see us trying to demonstrate that much more clearly — to give you a sense of what he would be like as a president.”

Sanders has tapped his email list to push his fans to join picket lines and labor rallies at Veterans Affairs hospitals, University of California campuses, Ralphs grocery stores, Reagan National Airport, a Kaiser Permanente campus, and McDonald’s restaurants in at least 12 places, including the first-in-the-nation caucus state Iowa and delegate-rich California. His efforts haven’t been limited to labor events: Sanders has also used his campaign apparatus to recruit volunteers to get out the vote for Queens District Attorney candidate Tiffany Cabán in New York and to boost turnout at a protest at a proposed migrant detention center in Oklahoma.

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Sanders’ campaign said it has sent hundreds of thousands of emails and a half-million texts to his supporters to push them to attend more than 50 strikes, protests and other events this year. It's a significant investment for a presidential campaign, considering there's only so much time or money Sanders' supporters are willing to give overall, and he's asking that they commit themselves to causes that only indirectly benefit his candidacy.

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https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/19/bernie-sanders-labor-protest-2020-1455151