{"id":41284,"date":"2025-05-16T12:08:01","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T19:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=41284"},"modified":"2025-05-16T12:08:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T19:08:02","slug":"power-isnt-given-its-taken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/05\/16\/power-isnt-given-its-taken\/","title":{"rendered":"Power Isn’t Given. It’s taken."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Defeating MAGA requires transforming the Democratic Party first. That means confronting its leadership, not playing nice.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
CORBIN TRENT<\/a> MAY 15, 2025<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Corbin Trent<\/strong> \u2014 Born in East Tennessee to a family of union workers, civil rights fighters, and draft dodgers. I\u2019ve been flush, I\u2019ve been broke. I\u2019ve run a food truck, flipped houses, and helped launch Brand New Congress, Justice Democrats, and AOC\u2019s campaign. I\u2019ve seen both parties walk away from working people\u2014and I\u2019ve been fighting ever since to bring power back where it belongs. Now I\u2019m using my voice and my story to call bullshit on the system\u2014and help build something better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Hogg, the DNC, and the Illusion of Boldness<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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David Hogg is a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. He\u2019s also running a PAC to primary sitting Democrats. That\u2019s pissed off a lot of people\u2014mostly party insiders, elected officials, and the usual curmudgeons who think being in the DNC means you owe blind loyalty to incumbents. But his choices are also frustrating folks who should be cheering him on. I\u2019m one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I co-founded Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats. I was AOC\u2019s strategist and comms director when she occupied Nancy Pelosi\u2019s office with the Sunrise Movement. I believe in primary challenges. I know what they can do. But they must be bold. Strategic. Relentless. They have to mean something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Hogg\u2019s efforts don\u2019t feel like that. They feel like branding. His PAC, Leaders We Deserve<\/em>, is only targeting \u201csafe blue\u201d Democrats\u2014no leadership, no gatekeepers, no real confrontation. He\u2019s even said he wants to make Hakeem Jeffries Speaker of the House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, he wants to change the party without challenging the people running it. Maybe he\u2019s afraid that taking on leadership means risking defeat. And sure, that risk is real. But if you\u2019re not willing to fight, you\u2019ve already lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the Democratic Party is failing to meet the moment\u2014and it is\u2014then its leadership is responsible. Jeffries, like Pelosi before him, represents everything broken about today\u2019s Democratic Party: careerist, lawyerly, performative, elite, and aimless. He offers no vision beyond \u201cnot Trump.\u201d No mission. No urgency. Just better manners while the country burns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s not just Jeffries. Look at the rest of party leadership: Clark, Aguilar, Lieu, Neguse, Schumer, Durbin, Klobuchar, Warner, Warren, Baldwin. The only near exception is Patty Murray, who taught parenting classes before getting into politics in the \u201980s. The rest are lawyers. Almost all went to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia. They\u2019ve been in government forever. They recycle the same tired answers to crises they\u2019ve never had to live through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They know how to draft bills but not how to build power. And it shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 118th Congress, 94% of House members have a college degree. Two-thirds have graduate degrees. Half the Senate are lawyers. In contrast, just 38% of Americans have a bachelors. Only 0.4% are lawyers. Yet, Congress is full of them. And that matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They\u2019ve transformed government into a place only they understand\u2014a maze of legalese and procedures. Bills are thousands of pages long. Ideas that could be explained in plain English drown in \u201cnotwithstanding the foregoing\u201d and \u201csubsection (b)(3)(ii).\u201d The system isn\u2019t complicated by accident. It was built by people trained to operate in courtrooms and bureaucracies\u2014not to build bridges, fix schools, or keep the lights on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the same thing that happened in factories when the MBAs and consultants pushed out the people who knew how the machines ran. They buried common sense under spreadsheets and jargon. The result? Dysfunction. Waste. Stagnation. That\u2019s Congress now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But it wasn\u2019t always this way. In the 1940s, Congress looked more like the country. In 1945, just 56% of House members and 75% of Senators had college degrees. There were more veterans. More union members. More people who\u2019d worked in the trades, served their communities, or had a job before politics. Today, working-class people make up over half the country, but only a sliver of Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Congress had zero women or zero Black members, we’d call it a crisis of representation. But when it’s missing half the workforce\u2014the folks without degrees, without connections, without safety nets\u2014we act like that’s just how government works. Like struggle doesn’t qualify you to lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look, you can’t expect working-class and middle-class policies from a Congress that’s never lived those lives. It’s not that lawyers and Ivy Leaguers are evil. They just haven’t made decisions with $14 in the bank. Haven’t skipped medicine to make rent. Haven’t prayed their kid doesn’t get sick before payday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we elect people who’ve been insulated from everyday American struggle, we get laws built for their reality\u2014not ours. The complexity isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. You can\u2019t expect representation for working people if there are no working people in the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When we launched Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, we didn\u2019t just endorse candidates\u2014we went out and recruited<\/strong> them. But not from the usual places. We weren\u2019t looking for people who wanted<\/em> to be in politics. In fact, we saw that as a red flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We believed the best leaders were too busy holding their communities together to be chasing political careers. They were running small businesses, working jobs, raising families, showing up at union meetings, church potlucks, and town halls. They had roots. They had responsibilities. And they had to be drafted\u2014because they weren\u2019t doing it for ambition. They were doing it because something was broken, and they were willing to make the sacrifice to fix it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the bet: that we could find those people, convince them it was worth it, and back them with a team, a mission, and a map. That\u2019s what separates a movement from a brand. A brand follows candidates. A movement recruits them\u2014and gives them something to belong to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But we didn\u2019t finish the job. We brought in great candidates, but we failed to bind them together. We didn\u2019t build the deep infrastructure, shared commitments, or living mission they needed to weather the storm of Washington. Our platform leaned heavily on the 2016 Bernie campaign, but it wasn\u2019t forged into something durable and unified. So, they went in alone. There was no real Squad. Some got isolated. Some got co-opted. Some just got tired. That\u2019s on us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other orgs hit the same wall. Indivisible turned resistance energy into local chapters but struggled to scale a national strategy. Run for Something<\/em> got young people on the ballot, but never connected them to a bigger mission. Leaders We Deserve<\/em> is following the same path. It sounds bold. But without a plan, without confrontation, without a mission\u2014it risks becoming just another brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Meanwhile, MAGA has a mission. A vile one\u2014but a mission nonetheless. Build the wall. Ban Muslims. Kill the administrative state. Privatize everything. It\u2019s crystal clear. Specific. Simple enough to organize around. That\u2019s how they took over the courts. The bureaucracy. The conversation. That\u2019s how they are rewriting the rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t need to mimic them. But we need something just as legible. Just as transformational and bold. Just as audacious. That\u2019s what Mission for America<\/a> is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not a slogan. It\u2019s a step-by-step plan to rebuild America\u2019s economy, restore public power, and take back the future. Public housing. Public transit. Public healthcare that competes directly with private insurance. National industrial policy. A clean energy buildout. Government that doesn\u2019t just regulate markets\u2014but enters them, competes, and delivers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also a recruitment tool. For engineers. For builders. For caregivers. For the people who keep things running, not just the ones who write memos about it. We don\u2019t need more lawyers of color or LGBTQ+ Ivy Leaguers. We need more people who\u2019ve budgeted for groceries, fought with insurance companies, and waited on hold with the VA. Representation isn\u2019t just about identity, it\u2019s about lived experience and whether you\u2019ve ever had to fix your own car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why Saikat Chakrabarti<\/a> is running against Nancy Pelosi. Not as a stunt. Not to make a statement. To win. To put a real alternative on the ballot. To show that change doesn\u2019t wait for permission. That we don\u2019t have to whisper about leadership failure. We can say it. Run on it. And build something better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His campaign is a Bat Signal\u2014to anyone ready to challenge the status quo, organize with purpose, and fight for something bigger than a brand. He\u2019s not waiting. He\u2019s moving. That\u2019s what leadership looks like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because at the end of the day, it\u2019s not enough to win elections. We have to win power and use it. That takes more than candidates. It takes coalitions. Commitments. A living mission people can join, contribute to, and carry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t fix Congress without talking about who\u2019s missing. You can\u2019t represent the people if you\u2019re terrified of confronting power. You can\u2019t change a party by trying not to offend it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If David Hogg wants help build a better party, he\u2019s got a choice to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t lead without a fight. And can\u2019t win without picking the right ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defeating MAGA requires transforming the Democratic Party first. That means confronting its leadership, not playing nice. CORBIN TRENT MAY 15, 2025 By Corbin Trent \u2014 Born in East Tennessee to a family of union workers, civil rights fighters, and draft dodgers. I\u2019ve been flush, I\u2019ve been broke. I\u2019ve run a food… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41284"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41285,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41284\/revisions\/41285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}