I am with you — since I was a child wondering why my enlisted father and working mother somehow needed government assistance to feed us, since I stood in the poor-kids’ line for lunch, since I worked my way through college and grad school with student debt I still owe.

I have knocked doors in the days before the Iowa caucus, been a delegate to the DNC, stood on fields at midnight to hear the gospel of hope and change, danced in the streets upon our candidates’ elections.

I am with you, because you have been with me.

And since I love you, I have to tell you the whole truth: our voters deserve better from us. And since I know you, I also know we are capable of so much more.

We can build a party people can believe in. We can be the party that represents economic, social, and environmental justice for all, but our message must be clear, and we must act in integrity with our words. At our state conference last month, we overwhelmingly passed resolutions supporting guaranteed healthcare as a human right, free public education from pre-K through college or trade school, a living wage and fair compensation for all, investments in environmental protection and renewable energy, restoration of voting rights to former felons, public financing of elections to eradicate the corrupting influence of big money in politics, and other policies that serve the people. Let us turn our resolutions into a people’s platform that we can clearly communicate to all Floridians, and that can guide the priorities and decision-making of our party, our candidates, and our elected officials.

It is not enough, however, to simply speak our values; we must live them. Sexual harassment in our own party, for example, diminishes and undermines our efforts to stand up for equal pay, equal rights, and equal access to healthcare for women. In a party that stands for justice for all, we cannot stand silent or be accomplices to the abuses of people with power and money. When we look away, or worse yet, facilitate the misconduct of the powerful, we create the conditions for systemic injustice and oppression. We must create space to speak truth to power.

We can give our party back to the people, and spread the power of the few to the many. We can give our grassroots the training, tools, technology, and transparency they need in order to understand and fully engage in our efforts — but we must also give them the power. Rules that have consolidated governing control of our party in the hands of a few must be surrendered to make way for true democracy. Those who feel real ownership of our party will also feel inspired to knock the doors and make the calls we will need to hold onto our seat in the Senate and take back the governor’s mansion. This Chair’s election, for example, will likely be decided by the weighted votes of a few party power brokers; the time has come for the people to have a genuine say in the leadership and direction of the Florida Democratic Party. We must also ensure our rules apply equally to all of us, and that they aren’t circumvented or ignored by, and for, those with power, money, or privilege.

We can adamantly refuse to compromise our values, and reclaim our party from special interests. Let us build a party funded by the people that is really for the people. Our fates should not be decided by billionaires in backrooms. It is time to follow in the footsteps of Obama and Sanders and get serious about building a small donor fundraising program that works for Florida. In Brevard County, where I now serve as Chair, our party’s fundraising has increased by 79% this year by increasing our number of contributions by over 500% in the first 3 quarters of 2017 compared to 2016. While change will not happen overnight, we can plan to transform our funding base intentionally and methodically, increasing our percentage of small donations significantly over time.

It’s also time to wrestle ourselves free of the massive overhead of consulting firms who profit from both parties and benefit financially whether we win or lose.

We can return to our roots & inspire our neighbors with our love for justice and for one another. We must start at the roots by focusing on seats up and down the ballot, and by rallying grassroots support in every race. In Brevard, against all odds, our party turned three “long-shot” races blue in a deep red county by knocking doors, making calls, and meeting our neighbors.

Those three races cost a combined total of about $6,000, and our efforts won us the Florida Democratic Party’s “Golden Gavel” for knocking the most doors of any county in the state . In Rockledge, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly 20%, we won by nearly 30% by increasing Democratic turnout from less than 10.5% in the last off-year municipal election to nearly 30% this year — and we elected Sammie Brown Martin, the first black woman ever to serve on the Rockledge City Council. In Cape Canaveral, where Democrats are outnumbered by nearly 40% by Republicans, Angela Raymond defeated a former Republican Councilman. In Malabar, a tiny town where Democrats are outnumbered by Republicans by 80%, Danny White won, too — by knocking the doors and meeting his neighbors.

It’s hard to inspire our neighbors, though, when we’re fighting against ourselves. We must heal the wounds of our past, and come together to win the elections that lie ahead.

This is our party. We’re all in this together. I do not know if we dare to do what is required, but if we want to change Florida and our country, we must start by changing ourselves.

About a week ago, I started receiving calls and messages from people here in Brevard and across the state asking me to run; at first, I just laughed. And then I got a call from a group of young people in South Florida who were at a bar together on a Friday night. And my heart broke wide open. My candidacy wasn’t birthed by bigwigs in backrooms, but at a bar in Broward where young people still dare to believe that the Democratic Party might be where hope lives for them and for all of us. It is their hope, and not the machinations of men who have held power for far too long, who will decide the fate of our party. And it is the job of our party to keep that hope alive.

So, I told them I’d run for Florida Democratic Party Chair if we’re all in this together. We set a goal of raising $2,500 for our campaign, and identifying 250 pledges of monthly donations and 250 volunteer pledges.

Last night, we reached all our goals.

So far, in 5 days, our movement has swelled to nearly 1,400 members on Facebook, 118 campaign donors who’ve given over $6,000, 255 pledged monthly contributors who will give over $41,000 per year upon our election, and 252 pledged monthly volunteers who will work nearly 30,000 hours per year — or the equivalent of about $450,000 a year in labor.

If we can pull off commitments of nearly half a million in 5 days without a plan, a budget, or any organization, imagine what we can do together when we, the people, have real power in our party again.

With the support and blessing of so many across the state, I announce my candidacy for Chair of the Florida Democratic Party.

Let’s build #OurParty together. Join the movement at ThisIsOurParty.com.

With love & solidarity,

Stacey Patel

Stacey Patel, a candidate for Chair of the Florida Democratic Party, is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School of Public Policy and has over 20 years of diverse professional experience in organizational transformation, social media fundraising, project management, small business ownership, non-profit leadership, and performing arts administration. More information about her candidacy is available at ThisIsOurParty.com. The election for Chair of the Florida Democratic Party is scheduled during a meeting of party leaders which will be held at Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando at noon on Saturday, December 9.

We are with you. We love you beautiful people and we want to be in this together. We really do. We want the same things. We promise.

Just like you, we want UNITY. We believe together we can do much more than defeat Trump; we believe we can radically transform our country. We won’t settle for the false unity of conformity & perpetuation of the status quo because we know deep down that without authentic togetherness, we’ll be unable to defeat Trump in the general. More importantly, we realize that only together can we create the social, environmental and economic justice we all seek.

Just like you, we want VICTORY. On July 13, a Quinnipiac survey found that Hillary is now behind in all three key swing states — Ohio, Florida & Pennsylvania. According to Gallup, she is also, by far, the least liked Democratic presidential candidate in the last seven decades. This moment is too important, and the stakes are too high, to take the chance that she may not defeat Trump in November.

Just like you, we love DEMOCRACY. We cannot sacrifice our Party’s integrity to engineer election results. Recent leaks published in the New York Times make it clear that this election was rigged. None of us can tolerate that, or settle for results from a primary process that was less than fair.

Just like you, we want to define our FUTURE. Bernie earned vastly more voters under 30 than Hillary & Trump combined. We have an unprecedented opportunity to expand our Party and build the future of our country by embracing their passion and engaging them in our efforts.

The best way to ensure UNITY, VICTORY, DEMOCRACY and our FUTURE is to vote Bernie during the roll call vote next week at the DNC. At the very least, we need to have a heartfelt conversation during the convention to determine together how we will ensure UNITY, VICTORY, DEMOCRACY and our FUTURE. Our country’s depending on us.

We love you & our country too much to let this election tear us apart.

We hope you’re with us.

Love,

The Revolution

#lovetherevolution

When we lined up for school lunches, there were two lines: one for the kids who could afford to pay full price, and another one for me. I could not.

Those who ridicule welfare moms would say this was a failing of my parents.

A failing of the father who was a Vietnam vet, who spent 20 years enlisted in the Air Force, and whose son went on to do the same.

A failing of the mother who worked whatever jobs she could find — even cleaning hospital rooms after surgeries — while raising four children and moving constantly around the country as a military wife.

A failing of the parents who raised me to graduate first in my class and to devote my life to service instead of cash.

My parents did not fail me. They just lived in a country that does not value public service, that does not value motherhood, that does not care about children. Not really.

So I ate government cheese at times. We slept on the floor in the kitchen with the refrigerator door open for air conditioning sometimes. And I stood in the poor kids’ line in the school cafeteria.

When my mother’s brother committed suicide, a victim of a drug war that also killed my brother and has produced enough shame to kill us all, my mom had to beg for money from my uncle’s employers to be able to afford the plane ticket to identify his body.

By no means have my family or I experienced the worst poverty has to offer — but I have seen enough to know that our country tolerates & even celebrates these daily injustices against the vast majority of Americans because we have decided that injustice is our accepted punishment for the supposed “failure” of poverty.

I refuse to live, anymore, in a country that treats the poor like their poverty is their own shame, some kind of moral failing. It’s a lie. It’s a sham. It’s meant to keep us quiet, to keep our noses to grindstones, to prove we’re somehow worthy of the scraps of the system.

But the truth is: poverty is not our failing. We do not belong in separate lines, in separate zip codes, in separate schools, in separate communities, in separate stores. We are no less. We are no different.

Our poverty is just the cost of a system rigged to benefit those greedy few willing to sell us all out to line their own pockets. They are willing to destroy our environment, to send new moms back to work before they’ve bonded with their babies, to leave our veterans sick on the streets without homes or healthcare, to enslave young people with inescapable student debt, to make it impossible for some kids to even consider going to college. They build prisons for profit rather than public schools for our children, send our sons and daughters to war for oil, leave our children hungry, homeless and without healthcare. All for money. They are willing to let people die not because there are not cures or treatments, but because they do not consider these lives — our fathers, our mothers, our sons and daughters — worth the cash.

They tell us there’s not enough for us all. That too is a lie. Frankly, we have pillaged the rest of the planet to make sure we have vastly more than our share. They tell us there’s not enough so that we’ll turn against one another fighting for scraps, so that we’ll spend every hour in meaningless jobs that don’t pay enough to feed our children, so that we’ll be too tired to fight.

And I, for one, won’t take it any more. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

It’s time for us to stand up. This is our chance to take our country back. We have been waiting for economic and social justice for far too long.

We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to set our country on a radically different course.

I sadly know some of you have already secretly surrendered. Maybe you believe the media lies, or the DNC nonsense, have stolen our election. It’s far easier to admit defeat once again than to gather the courage to believe that another way is really possible. We have practiced giving up. We have been told again and again and again that we will never win.

I’m begging you to realize that our apathy is exactly what they’re counting on. They want us to be too tired, too sick, too poor to care. They want us to come home at night too tired to make one more sign or one more call. They want us to spend our hours drinking or doing drugs to make ourselves feel better because our numbness is what they’re counting on. They want us to be too caught up in the quest for cash to realize our own wealth will never matter as long as everyone around us is suffering. They want us to succumb to the radical, infectious apathy we see in our friends, families and communities so we don’t dare knock on one more door. They want us to spend our energy in despair at Trump’s buffoonery. They want us to hand our cash over to corporations for Christmas and call it a celebration. They want us to watch football instead of debates.

But we will not.

Because if we give up, they win. If they distract us with bread & circuses, they win. They hire campaigners. They make promises to corporations for cash. They sell us out for votes.

They win.

So, I dare you to believe. I dare you to stand up. I dare you to say with me, finally and forever, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

Just this week, 700,000 members of the Communications Workers of America endorsed Bernie, and over a million members of Democracy for America. Bernie’s campaign has now received over 2M contributions averaging less than $30 each. Our victory is more than possible, but it is far from assured. As we saw this week, Bernie does not have the system. He does not have the machine. He has only our hearts and our hands — so we must work like we never have before. People far braver than any of us have died for revolution. I’m not asking for that — but I am aware that the road will not always be comfortable or fun. Sometimes, it will be hard. But we will always be together. And that will be enough to carry us through.

We have just over a month, 43 days, until the most pivotal moment of the election — February 1 — the Iowa caucus. If we win there, everything changes. Like President Obama before him, a win in Iowa could set up a domino effect leading to victory in the states that follow. If he loses, we all lose. There is little hope he could recover. It really is that important.

I’m asking you, I’ll beg if I have to….until then, devote yourself to the future of our country and our planet, to our children and our children’s children. I know there is Christmas. I know there is New Year’s. I know there are parties and vacations. But, truly, what is it that you really want this holiday season? I know you have worked hard all year. I know you deserve a break, but if we do not seize this moment, it will pass us by. Give yourself, your children, our country and our planet this gift for the holidays:

· Create a phone banking event at map.berniesanders.com. Then, get on the phones & phone bank at berniesanders.com/phonebank.

· Canvass in your community, and make sure your friends, families & neighbors are registered to vote.

· Come out from behind your computer and take your activism to the streets. Clipboard at street fairs; chalk sidewalks; light up the night with glowing art that calls for revolution; rally; write secret love notes to Bernie and leave them in places you know they’ll be found. Follow your creative genius wherever it leads.

· Take a road trip to Iowa or South Carolina to turn out the vote in early primary states.

· Join the movement that’s growing in communities across the country — and if there’s no one in your community, start one. Commit yourself wholeheartedly to a volunteer role on the campaign.

I will be taking a leave of absence from work for (at least) the next 3 months; I know not everyone can do that — but all of us can dedicate our free moments. And it will make all the difference. Polls currently show that if we can win the primary, Bernie will win this election and become the next president of the United States.

Martin Luther King once said: “Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.”

You can be sure other candidates will pay millions to organize their campaigns. We need to bet our togetherness, our passion, our hearts, our gifts against all that cash. We need to put it all on the table. Everything we’ve got.

People ask me all the time why I’m voting for Bernie.

I’m voting for Bernie because even though I’m no longer poor, even though I’m one of the lucky few who somehow found my way out, I’ve seen too many other beautiful souls along the way whose radical potential has been lost to our planet due to the shame, sadness and symptoms of poverty. Because I’ve seen too many of us squander our gifts on lives not meant for us because we’re scared we won’t be able to feed ourselves or our children.

And in my heart, I’ll always be the little girl who stood in the poor kids’ line.

No child, no adult, no human, should ever suffer such senseless shame at the hands of a system that is so radically unjust.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

Let’s get to work.