ABSTRACT
By looking at the relations between Bernie Sanders and the grassroots coalition that supported his candidacy in the 2016 Democratic Party, Chapter 7 examines the practices through which grassroots populists construct collective identity. Belying populism’s reputation for homogeneity, grassroots supporters enacted practices that foregrounded the disparate visions and disagreements at the heart of their coalition. This tendency was most evident in movement narratives that highlighted the decentered sites of power (e.g., Occupy and the Fight for $15) that made Sanders’ campaign possible, and in grassroots-led initiatives (e.g., the People’s Summit) through which disparate actors negotiated issues and built cross-cutting relationships in order to carry “the People’s Revolution” beyond the 2016 election. On the other hand, public protests by Black Lives Matter activists at rallies and on social media signaled the limits of the coalition’s radical democratic enactments of “the people” (too often embodied in the white, masculine, middle-class “Bernie Bro”). Focusing on the decentering and disruptive practices in and at the margins of the coalition, the chapter argues that radical democratic populisms need to engage in practices of identification and dis-identification to sustain broad-based grassroots movements.
