Bernie Sanders Campaign Staffers Write New Rule Book For Political Organizing

NEW YORK, Oct. 11, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A book written by two of Bernie Sanders' senior campaign advisors will be released November 18 by Vermont-based Chelsea Green Publishing. Becky Bond and Zack Exley led the campaign's efforts to recruit and engage volunteers at an unprecedented level, which was crucial to Sanders capturing 46% of pledged delegates toward the Democratic nomination.

RULES FOR REVOLUTIONARIES offers a riveting behind-the-scenes narrative of how a small "distributed organizing" team operating on the fringes of the Sanders campaign was able to identify, recruit, train, and activate hundreds of thousands of volunteers to make over 75 million calls, launch 8 million individually-sent text messages, and to hold more than 100,000 public meetings in an effort to put Bernie Sanders' insurgent campaign over the top. This is what the authors call "Big Organizing,", which in the book they have broken down into 22 new "Rules" that overturn the old playbook that has dominated politics for decades.

RULES FOR REVOLUTIONARIES, set to be released after the election results are in, lays the groundwork for the next phase of organizing to bring about a desperately needed political revolution. Bond and Exley were inspired to join the campaign by Sanders' revolutionary message. They were able to mobilize this extraordinary volunteer effort by putting into practice science-based evidence showing that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the big money approach to elections (TV advertising, robocalls, direct mail) is not what moves voters to the polls; what matters is individual volunteers having conversations with voters. This is great news for everyone who is engaged with social change. Indeed, if people organize, they can go up against big money and win.

In conjunction with the book release, Bond and Exley will take part in a "barnstorming" tour across the United States, showing organizers and activists how to put into practice the new rules and the ideas in the book. "The big vision, big goals and big organizing that these revolutionary new rules enable, that is what this book is about," the authors write in the book. "If we put these new rules into action. . . then we start to win the radical changes necessary to address the pressing issues of our time."

SOURCE Chelsea Green Publishing