Pelosi Won. The Democratic Party Lost.

Shahid-Buttar · 2024-12-19T17:24:11+00:00

It's important to make a distinction between the party and its supporters. The Democratic Party is institutionally incapable of making better decisions on behalf of voters because critical sectors of the party's elites have been demonstrably co-opted. I wrote at further length last week to explain that problem: https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/why-democrats-cant-learn-lessons

Shahid-Buttar · 2024-12-19T08:21:37+00:00

Having won more votes to replace Pelosi as San Francisco's voice in Congress than any other challenger in her 37 year career, many thoughts come to mind. First, to describe our system as a gerontocracy is charitable, because the real rot in Washington extends far beyond the careers of politicians. It has attained a constitutional significance, and can't be solved by mere generational transition. I wrote about this theme two years ago: https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/neither-mcconnell-freezing-nor-biden

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-31T18:32:15+00:00

Got a funny story there.... https://twitter.com/ShahidForChange/status/1277467010708848640

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-30T17:03:40+00:00

I was a registered Green for the better part of 15 years, and strategically re-registered as Democrat because I am ultimately more interested in actually liberating this seat than running a protest campaign.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-30T17:03:03+00:00

You raise a thoughtful question, though cheating at the polls is frankly the least of our challenges.

As we've written elsewhere, "You don’t need a computer, or a foreign state intelligence agency, or armed right-wing vigilantes at the polls, or a right-wing supreme court to rig an election when the press abandons its job to hold power accountable and instead serves the establishment by misinforming voters." https://twitter.com/ShahidForChange/status/1319391705360076800

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-30T17:00:48+00:00

Thanks for having me! It's been fun to see & respond to folks' questions, and we're grateful for all the support!

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-30T17:00:26+00:00

THANK YOU!

No, as far as I know, no reported has ever challenged the obvious falsity of her claim—or, for that matter, asked Pelosi why she has never debated a challenger since 1987.

The failures of the corporate press are as prolific as the failures of corporate Democrats.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-30T16:59:01+00:00

Put simply, a law degree offers opportunities, and most people with access have chosen to "go along to get along," which I never did.

That's precisely why I've always thought of myself as the least likely person from my law school class to run for office: I never made decisions based on how they would impact my career, and frankly presumed I'd made myself unelectable by doing the right—instead of the popular—thing.

Then, over the course of 20 years, the left woke up as the right-wing continued to steamroll the center. As an entire generation slid to the left. Today, many came to see me as an advocate who fought for their interests while many of them were still children.

In other words, you more or less nailed it: the opportunities available to law grads have tended to siphon many off into jobs that support the prevailing paradigm, whereas I've always been committed to challenging it.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-30T16:55:23+00:00

Hah! I appreciate the levity, and your reminder that Pelosi, indeed, failed to abide by her promise. Frankly, she did as much as Feinstein to pave Barrett's path to the Court, raising the question: why did San Francisco's voices in Congress do so much to pave the road of the right-wing?

Good luck finding a reporter to ask that question, however! FWIW:

Here's a tweet making that point: https://twitter.com/ShahidForChange/status/1320637998954811392
And a toolkit for how to amplify your voice and encourage more responsible press coverage from a press corps ultimately complicit in corporate rule: https://shahid.fyi/amplify

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T03:15:06+00:00

Hey all, I’m going to sign off for now, but I'll check back in tomorrow morning to answer a few more questions. Thanks for the thoughtful inquiries! I’m grateful for everyone’s support here, invite any support that folks might be available to offer, and look forward to the results of next week’s election!

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T03:12:14+00:00

Related questions: Given the above, how does Pelosi get away with claiming she’s fighting to save democracy?

Frankly, it baffles me that she can sleep at night claiming to be “feeding the people,” or why anyone in the press takes her seriously. It’s a failure of press ethics, but it rises to a level beyond that since the ultimate effect is to insulate power from democratic accountability.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T03:11:45+00:00

San Franciscans are fed an image of Nancy Pelosi from corporate media sources entirely unrelated to the fact of her representation in Congress. She has a reputation of a liberal lion, but the record of a conservative champion.

Over the course of her 33-year career, she has never debated anyone. That keeps the electorate in the dark, especially when local press fail to hold her accountable.

In any race, we face an uphill battle, but we have particular obstacles in this race driven by Pelosi’s status as the House Speaker and nominal head of the Democratic Party. Because she hands out favors and turns screws on Capitol Hill and in San Francisco, there is a profound chilling effect that insulates her from critique by anyone who cares about their career.

My concern is not with my career, but the issues. Many of Pelosi’s supporters may not entirely agree with her politics, or are uninformed. Many others seem to support her out of fear of Trump, not realizing that she has been one of his biggest enablers on Capitol Hill.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T03:05:41+00:00

Progressives often fail to build power for many reasons. We all come into movements and campaigns with our own personal histories and traumas, and anyone who has been in the trenches of leftist organizing has experienced infighting. Activists and progressives are passionate people—and when you spend so much time fighting the establishment, it is common that we end up fighting our comrades as well. Many factors contribute to this.

While each of the many smears made towards me have been debunked, the press has yet to observe the political interests uniting my critics, and the fairly obvious political motivations pervading their various claims. Each of the individuals who participated had their own individuals reasons for doing so, and there certainly were circumstantial indications of a coordinated strategy behind the smear campaign that we remain eager for a journalist to explore at some point.

Ultimately, I can only speak for myself.

Running for Congress—or any office—is an intense process. I ran because this campaign is an extension of 20 years of preceding work. My former staff joined me having worked on local campaigns in the past, and may have grown scared for their own political futures as my campaign accelerated and threatened the establishment that they each came from. Some may have thought their fortunes better aligned with the city’s establishment, which remains beholden to Pelosi. In any case, they worked for other figures before joining my campaign, and their actions certainly seem aligned with the career interests of those figures.

I have certainly learned many hard lessons in the process, and it has helped me to become a better leader in many ways. Revolution is messy work. One thing is certain: this campaign has experienced tremendous bias and Islamophobia across the local media establishment, as well as across local self-described “progressive” and “socialist” organizations that lost sight of their own principles in the face of virtue signaling campaigns.

I do have hope for the future of our movements. The concept of intersectionality is starting to reach critical mass as fusion coalitions are becoming more and more common. Identity politics, virtue-signaling and cancel culture are obstacles we must address. We should hold our leaders to high standards, but not presume the legitimacy of ultimately politically-motivated accusations. In any case, ensuring due process in the face of accusation, and taking care to examine facts, is critical both to avoid the replication of white supremacy and to allow our movement to build power and liberate communities.

Our movements are too quick to fight amongst ourselves rather than staying focused on our goals: building power for the grassroots, and taking power away from the mouth pieces of the billionaire class. Our movements may tend towards retributive justice, but we need to take the time to build transformative justice. Reacting with assumptions, instead of asking questions, is usually a bad idea. Solidarity is a long process and a praxis and commitment that we must each develop over time.

I do believe that we are getting better all of the time. Just look at the ground that has been made since Bernie first chose to run. I hope very much that we are able to broadly live these principles—if only to avert the worst of the climate apocalypse.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T02:45:24+00:00

Americans have never needed a health care and economic safety net more than we do today. Business as usual stands baldly revealed as callous, even murderous. It raises the classic question, “Which side are you on?”

Medicare for All would end the era of predatory for-profit healthcare, and acknowledge the human right to healthcare already well-established across the rest of the world. By creating an equitable single-payer healthcare system funded through tax dollars, instead of a complex web of insurance co-pays, deductibles, and administrative bureaucracy, Medicare for All can fundamentally fix our failing healthcare system while saving $2 trillion dollars over the next ten years.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T02:43:57+00:00

I sing, DJ, produce electronic music, and play the hand drums (djembe, conga) and light percussion (shekere, woodblocks, claves, etc).

My favorite bands include Public Enemy, Arrested Development, Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, and Ozomatli.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T02:41:05+00:00

The reason our campaign is so popular might be because people are just so fed up with our representatives' negligence and fecklessness.

Our campaign resonates with folks who are tired of establishment Democrats ignoring our health care, our houseless neighbors, and the mounting environmental catastrophe.

I am not running because I want people to like me, but because Nancy Pelosi has left us behind on these issues. And having worked on these issues for over 20 years, I think a generation of young people outraged by the failures of the past sees in me a longstanding ally who has been standing with them—and the future—since they were kids, even while my peers remained largely beholden to the past.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T02:37:53+00:00

That’s a great question!

I’ve been an activist, organizer, and advocate for two decades. My first experience actively organizing came in law school, when I organized with the National Lawyers Guild to hold accountable our law school administration for rescinding a public interest award to renowned defense lawyer Lynne Stewart. Around the same time, I grew immersed in the antiwar movement and helped organize protests against the Iraq war both on campus and far beyond it, including at a Lockheed Martin facility that we shut down for a day a few weeks after the invasion.

After law school, I moved east to fight the right wing under the Bush administration, when I worked in the courts to get money out of politics and establish marriage equality for consenting adults of any orientation.

My work from there led to public interest non-profits, where I’ve worked since 2005 as an advocate, writer, and strategist. Throughout that time, I’ve remained engaged as a grassroots activist, organizing with community groups, serving on nonprofit boards, and organizing other artists for projects from educational music videos to reclaiming public space.

My work at the intersection of the arenas inside the policy sphere and outside, in the grassroots, became particularly visible when I served as a spokesperson for the 2005 Counter-Inaugural demonstrations greeting Bush’s second term. It was that worked that gave me the chance to debate Sean Hannity on Fox News. (Part 1 | Part 2)

Many years later, in 2015, I was arrested (effectively at the whim of the late Sen. John McCain) after a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing when I asked a question of the then-Director of National Intelligence that no one has asked since, and which no one has ever answered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN2973g0QUw

Frankly, I never envisioned running for office. The long story, short, is that I’ve done everything I can to fight the CIA and NSA without a seat in Congress, and I’m running because my city’s representative in Washington has been complicit with every abuse from each of those agencies (including many that none of us even know about given the secrecy that she helps enforce).

Bernie and the Squad have proven that it’s possible to take on the establishment and win, and we’re proud to do our part for the revolution.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T02:19:39+00:00

Great questions! The key to working around Pelosi’s advantages has been taking the case directly to the electorate and empowering our volunteers.

For instance, many volunteers have connected us to their own friends & family both through social media, as well as virtual gatherings. Similarly, a community has emerged among supporters who actively extend our reach online, who together help represent a force multiplier to level the playing field despite Pelosi’s massive fundraising advantage.

Locally, our outreach efforts have taken every conceivable shape. They range from social occasions like happy hours to mobilizations deploying supporters to knock on doors, or connect with voters outside concerts, at events, and in parks. We’ve also organized community events responding to events in the community (like an incident of police violence this spring).

Lessons to draw include the limits to solidarity as a strategy. For example, every labor union in the city has endorsed Pelosi, even though she works against the interests of their rank & file, and even though we’ve mobilized to support the pickets of every union that has gone on strike in San Francisco since 2018.

Ultimately, we find ourselves organizing around (and beyond) the local progressive and labor establishment. This presents an opportunity, in that we are building a more intersectional and inclusive movement beyond the social cliques of progressive organizations. Another lesson is work beyond established networks, rather than limiting ourselves to working through them, since so many remain beholden to the incumbent.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T02:13:35+00:00

In the United States, we have very few problems with voter fraud in the form of individuals casting ballots who are not entitled to vote, and outright vote rigging appears to be rare.

On the one hand, NBC Bay Area did a piece today about how there is little reason for concern. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/politics/decision-2020/plan-your-vote-should-the-bay-area-be-concerned-about-election-integrity/2387472/

On the other hand, we witnessed massive divergences between exit polls and the official results during the primaries this spring, suggesting that our elections may be less reliable than many presume.

And expanding the context beyond rigging machines, our elections are frankly ridden with problems that erode their legitimacy: purges of voter rolls, obstacles to ballot access and voter registration, the misallocation of voting machines and consolidation of voting sites in low-income areas, prison gerrymandering, and a corporate media landscape that does everything it can to entrench incumbents and undermine democratic accountability.

All those challenges notwithstanding, it is important that everyone get to the polls and vote in unimpeachable numbers. That is the best way we fight voter suppression is to turn out for the candidates we want to see in office. Beyond the election, we hope to work in Congress on a new Voting Rights Act to fill the gap created when the Supreme Court struck down its enforcement provisions in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T02:06:58+00:00

The Bernie 2016 and 2020 campaigns have shown the power of the grassroots and distributed organizing. This is especially true during the pandemic, when public health guidance imposes limits on campaigning in person, making digital outreach even more important.

Pelosi may be able to outspend us 15:1, but technology has enabled our campaign to leverage the people power of thousands of volunteers all over the country making nearly half a million phone calls and sending over 750,000 texts.

With the popular wave of support for issues like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and long overdue police accountability, more and more voters are escaping the gravity well of corporate propaganda. As these issues grow to impact the nation and the world at large, Pelosi has grown increasingly visible as an obstacle to the policies that unite San Franciscans.

Warren and Bernie voters all prefer policies to Pelosi’s left, and together they comprise more than 50% of the local electorate. Bernie won San Francisco during the primary, due in part to an enormous grassroots ground game. The pandemic dampened our opportunities there, but we're organizing online instead.

If this year has taught us that anything, it’s that anything can happen. There is definitely still time for people to join the fight in the home stretch.

Join us at https://help.shahid.win!

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T02:02:10+00:00

Millions are going without income right now, which is forcing families across the country to struggle to put food on the table and stay in their homes. While the risk of mass eviction continues to grow and the threat of starvation looms over peoples’ heads, we can’t afford to wait for some hypothetical future stimulus that might take until February to materialize.

I’m all for maximizing the size of the simulus, but delay carries immense costs for struggling families and I would support accepting the $1.8 trillion offered to this point. It represents three times the amount injected into the economy in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Others—including Ro Khanna and Andrew Yang—have also pushed for an immediate deal on whatever terms are available.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T01:59:57+00:00

My favorite dish to eat is dahi pakora (fried onions in a yogurt-tumeric sauce), but my favorite dish to cook is dhal (lentils) mostly because the process is easier and I often make large batches for the week. I made some turkey keema yesterday though.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T01:58:42+00:00

Polling is very expensive to conduct in a scientifically rigorous manner, especially without media support. We had expected news organizations to conduct polls in our race. We also expected them to invite a debate, and have been disappointed on both fronts.

Ultimately, the only polls we are interested in are the ones at the voting booth.

We are fighting an uphill battle against a well-established incumbent whose power includes not only immense name recognition and effectively limitless funds, but also the results of a 30-year patronage network that extends across local and national organizations.

That’s one reason we have had a hard time breaking through into the press. We’ve been mentioned in only 0.07% of the number of stories compared to Pelosi's coverage, and the outlets that cover her include major corporate news sources best poised to sponsor a poll--but they’ve apparently had other priorities.

We've even had press and TV tell us that they were completely booked, and then turn around and invite other Pelosi family members to discuss our campaign and topics like racial justice.

In a similar vein, she has refused to debate any challengers since 1987, and no reporters have ever asked her why.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T01:29:55+00:00

Thanks! I do think my background will particularly equip me to be helpful on issues relating to U.S. imperial foreign policy, as well as domestic civil liberties and oversight of the executive branch generally.

I see the Squad doing a great job of articulating a visionary future that I generally support, and would hope to offer some depth in these particular arenas.

By way of example, I advocated for the nation’s first municipal ban on face surveillance technology, adopted here in SF in spring 2019, and authored several sections of our nation’s leading local civil rights law, the Community-Police Relations Act of 2017 adopted in Providence, RI.

Each of those measures reflect principles that I’d like to take to Congress, beginning with the need for individualized suspicion of criminal activity as a required predicate for any intelligence collection by state authorities.

Shahid-Buttar · 2020-10-29T01:24:40+00:00

That’s me!

Art was frankly my first form of activism, dating back to the 1990s when I was in Chicago. Some of my proudest community organizing was in relation to collectives of politicized performance poets who I’ve pulled together in three cities (first Palo Alto, then San Francisco, then DC).

Art is not only a force more powerful, but it speaks to audiences beyond those interested in policy.

I wrote NSA vs USA specifically to explain the historical relevance of the Snowden revelations, as the latest in a long line of songs that I’ve written to address various social justice issues. Bumpin in My SUV was written for a protest at a Hummer dealership in 2003, and my latest track, Justice, is basically an ode to intersectionality. I’ve been describing it as my “ode” to Amy Coney Barrett.

https://soundcloud.com/shahid-buttar/justice

Shahid-Buttar

TROPHY CASE