Some Feel “Bern” to Run for U.S. Congress, Local Offices
(APN) ATLANTA — While U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for President of the U.S., some supporters of the Sanders Campaign have started a new political action committee, the Brand New Congress (BNC), to put power in the hands of the people.
BNC is made up of progressive grassroots leaders from across the country, as well as former Sanders staffers and volunteers. It is a people-powered evolution of the revolution to take back U.S. Congress for the people.
The goal of BNC is to run a Congressional slate in 2018 to get people in Congress to advance forward Sanders’s sweeping political reforms.
These Reforms include rebuilding the economy; adopting one hundred percent renewable energy; adopting a living wage; criminal justice reform; healthcare for everyone; addressing climate change; ending mass incarceration; getting the influence of big money out of politics; and much more.
BNC wants to recruit working people with a track record of integrity and service who have never held public office, but who have backgrounds and experience in many areas.
“We want to run four hundred progressive candidates nationwide for the House and Senate who are proven leaders and won’t sell out,” Issy Allison, a Sanders delegate from North Carolina, said at the kick off campaign of the BNC in Atlanta.
The strategy is to replace U.S. Congress all at once with lawmakers who agree with Sanders’s policy positions. The campaign will run everyone under one plan and it will look like a presidential campaign with 400 heads.
Candidates will be able to plug into a national campaign infrastructure like Sanders’s campaign that raised small donations on line, so once elected, they can spend their time on policy work, not fundraising.
Two young progressives at the Atlanta meeting were Gabriel Shippy and Eric Bell.
Gabriel Shippy is the Chair of the Young Democrats of Hall County and a member of the Hall County Board of Elections.
Shippy told Atlanta Progressive News that he plans to run for the congressional Ninth District House seat in 2020. That position is now held by U.S. Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA).
Eric Bell is running for the District 3 Clayton County Commissioner. He is a Morehouse College graduate, naval veteran aviator, and an educator. For more information on Bell’s campaign go to BellForUs.com
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