The Bernie Sanders movement is dead.

I write this in self-reflection and perhaps as a learning moment. This is how I got here and why I am leaving the movement.

Upon graduating from college in 2004, I moved to Washington, DC, from Ohio, seeking a career in communications or media — in hindsight, having no idea what I was doing.

At the time, I left a low-paying job at a local newspaper in Ohio behind to do an internship for NPR in hopes it would eventually set me on a path toward a better life. I had also been working on a few other side gigs in Ohio but barely made it. Something had to change.

My experiences below will set the scene for why I was a Bernie Sanders supporter in the first place.

In 2004, I was not very informed about the world around me. I had no experience, knew nothing, and was making mistakes left and right. I didn’t expect to stay in DC for 15 years, but it just happened. My journey there has shaped me for life.

When I arrived in DC, I had no money to my name. I had won a Bingo game the night before, which gave me just enough money to drive there and put the bare minimum on the student housing rental. I thought it was a sign of luck.

I lived in a housing unit with others like me, and their parents were paying their way. Most were interning in Congress, White House, the State Department and other government agencies, the media, or social justice organizations.

This was before NPR thought that they should pay interns. Most of these places did not pay their interns. At the time, this was a highly competitive program to get into. You had to be selected to work for free at most of these places. Those selected came from elite backgrounds most of the time. I recently read an article advising students to not go to journalism school, but instead get on-the-job experience. I had to laugh because you need a degree just to work for free to even be considered for a job.

To make ends meet, I found other gigs where I worked from 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. every Monday through Saturday. On Sundays, I would collapse from exhaustion. I had already graduated from college. I was slipping into debt while working so hard. For those who take on paid internships now, you can thank those and those like me for our advocacy.

Considering that the entire pathway into these organizations of the places that have the most power in our country is an unpaid internship, it is systemically set up to keep the working class out. What does this say about the ability of the working class to be heard when they are systemically kept out?

Eventually, I took a job at a nonprofit calling for 32-hour work weeks in 2005. Yes, the same policy that Bernie Sanders announced yesterday. If you want to know who did much of the advocacy on workers’ rights behind the scenes in DC, you’re looking at her. I worked on fair pay, access to sick days, pay for interns, transparency for female pay, union rights, and working for law firms and legal groups representing people treated poorly at work.

When I talked about my nonstop work for years, someone recently thought I was referring to a tech startup type of work. No, I worked in media and advocacy public relations and for many different retail and food service jobs for my entire life. Many of my jobs were hard and on my feet.

When Obama’s first law was signed, it was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which had been a part of my work for years. When that happened, I even did events with women’s magazine writers about fair pay. I eventually pitched the same women’s magazine writers to support Bernie Sanders for President based on my relationships with them.

I came from a working-class family — a real working-class family, not the kind that means you have a job — I clarify this as most people I have encountered lately seem to think that is what it means. Many people I have met in my political efforts are very confused about what it means to be working class. Working class, where I come from, and by most sociological definitions, means you didn’t have a college education.

I was the first in my family to go to college. My dad was a union auto worker, and his dad was an auto worker. They worked the kind of jobs where you came home with black hands. Both worked at the same factory most of their lives. My dad always had at least two jobs when I was growing up, and my mom had provided childcare in our home for many of the neighborhood kids. They worked so hard to live in the area that I grew up in. My dad wanted me to work at the factory, too. I wanted to go to college and have a different life. My mom’s family were cleaners. We were legit working-class people. We knew all about the dignity of work. It’s what I knew when I was growing up.

I quickly realized that most people I was around in DC didn’t understand me. I observed that many of my friends in DC were looking to speak with people in power who could help them get ahead, while I was always looking for people with less power whom I could help get ahead. I have been largely misunderstood my entire life, so it’s not a big deal. I have always been just a little different in my philosophy of life and money, which drew me to Bernie in the first place.

At any rate, the people I was around in politics were different because they came from widely different socioeconomic backgrounds. They did not understand why I worked so much. They did not know why I was always following the rules and was such a good employee. I had worked so hard to get myself there — even through college in the first place. They did not get it. Most still don’t.

At that time, very few of us were working class, and very few people were of color.

When I moved to DC, I was not interested in politics. I tried very hard not to get involved. It sucks you into it.

However, I did end up going into public interest public relations. I excelled at public relations on social justice causes, especially fighting for disenfranchised people. My background just led me to it. I was naturally good at it, and it seemed I had found my calling.

I worked my way through many different jobs in DC until eventually building myself a business in 2010 called MatchMap Media, making six figures doing public relations for social justice causes. I worked so hard. My last name was Charles before I got married. People would often comment that no one works like Charles. Doing the work I did was my entire life, and I loved it. This is the working class way.

When it came to connections within DC media and politics, I had them. It’s a small world there. People hang out. I was building a thriving business. Everyone knew me. Without those connections, you don’t make a successful media business in Washington, DC. I saw a very insider view of what was happening, and my dismay with it led me to Bernie Sanders.

I first met Bernie Sanders, I think, around 2007 when I was working for a public relations firm that had been promoting anti-war documentaries. He attended a “Body of War” screening about the Iraq War. It was a documentary by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro about the life of Tomas Young, a veteran who had been injured in the war and advocated against it.

One thing I like about DC politics is that it’s abundant. Everyone has opportunities, and there’s plenty of work doing anything you want if you show up and work hard. I was seeing and experiencing a different world than others.

I had opportunities to travel to all sorts of countries through my work. I had been in press events and meetings with some of our nation and the world’s most elite figures. Yet, I also had experiences where I was meeting with incarcerated people, people struck by poverty, and some of our most vulnerable people in society.

I can wholeheartedly say that my public relations work helped put many people in office today. It helped shape legislation and drive positive change in many ways. It helped shape our laws and rulings. I have had so many opportunities. I was blessed. People sought me out for work.

Yet, while in DC, I often attended government relations meetings while working for social justice organizations. We would sit in these meetings, and they would read off where each member of Congress stood on specific projects we were working on. Every. Single. Time. It was Bernie Sanders — the champion. Hillary Clinton — not Supportive. Nancy Pelosi — not Supportive. If there is one thing I noticed, Bernie Sanders showed up as a champion every time.

I couldn’t figure out why my friends kept supporting and even joining the staff of these politicians who didn’t seem aligned with the causes we were working on. It seemed perplexing to me.

By 2015, I had joined in on efforts to get Sanders to run for office, volunteering with a few different organizations. Once it became clear he was running, I got involved with several organizations to help promote him. I released a press release about his grassroots support when he finally announced he was running from the first day. I was one of the earliest Sanders for President people you could find.

I never wanted a job in the Bernie Sanders movement. I had a thriving business that was five years old, and I loved my clients. There was no way I would leave it behind. Yet, I wanted to volunteer to help push on the issues I supported. I thought the Bernie Sanders campaign would be the best way to help. I worked my ass off to do that.

I was not in this for power, resume booster, money, or to be recognized. I already had those things to the extent that I wanted them. If anything, I was trying to stay behind the scenes because I didn’t wish my nonprofit clients not to want to work with me. I had more potential to damage my career by getting involved with Bernie than promoting it.

I did all this for free because I wanted to see it happen. I turned down money in most cases — not because I had low self-esteem, but because I had already been making ends meet. I didn’t need it; I wanted others to take it. I just cared about the issues. I was fulfilled with the progress on the issues alone.

I spent the moment of his first launch on April 30, 2015, until he exited on April 8, 2020, working nonstop on his campaign — and on the campaigns of others like him. I had been working on it before those days and still worked on it afterward. I worked on the efforts to keep people voting for him after he dropped out to secure delegates.

Good luck if you could find someone more diehard Sanders supporter than I was. I was obsessed to the detriment of leaving behind all other life milestones — while most of my friends were having children, I was working on the Sanders campaign. I spent every waking moment. I was just devastated when he dropped out. I never had depression before in my life, but that might have been the closest I ever came to it.

I wanted to keep the hope going, but I didn’t have much hope in a pandemic. I was apprehensive that Trump would win.

While I supported Bernie Sanders from early on — it was always his cause that I was initially all about.

Sadly, four years later, the Bernie Sanders movement has ushered in some of the worst and most dangerous people I have ever seen in my life into politics.

While I started in Washington, DC, injustices always made me ill. I encountered terrible and unethical people. Yet none were so awful as some opportunists who rode their way into politics based on Bernie. The reason why I joined the Bernie movement in the first place is the exact reason why I am leaving it.

Here is what killed the Bernie Sanders movement in combination:

· The Democratic Party. The Republican Party. Their latest stunt is to declare war on third-party candidates. Infiltrators from the tech and other industries poured in millions of dollars. Billionaires stepped in with money to directly divert people from the cause. Public relations firms. That’s the systemic answer. But they didn’t do it alone. They had a lot of help from:

o PACs like Our Revolution, including the San Francisco group SF Berniecrats, who ultimately oppose everything Bernie Sanders supported. These organizations constantly misrepresent what is happening and have done more harm to the movement than good.

o Opportunists and people coming from a scarcity mindset that will screw over anyone to get ahead. I did public relations for some of these people. As soon as they got into positions of power, they flipped and didn’t do anything they said they would do. They saw the Bernie movement to get in power and do nothing.

o Racist, Sexist, Xenophobic, Homophobic, and outright morally bankrupt people who do not care about anyone — far worse than I had ever seen in my time in DC. They don’t care about any political cause. They are not friendly people, but they found an opportunity to have a voice in the Bernie movement. These people were uplifted, not by Bernie himself, but by the people around him, rather than the diversity of those in the movement. It caused people to want to leave.

o People who don’t understand theory of change, strategy, and vision. People who were only in it for a short time, not the long-run movement, and just the need to look cool and trendy. Many of those people were born with a silver spoon, and it is hard to tell if they were there to infiltrate or were just not very smart. Some of them caused friction that made no sense.

o People who rode the Bernie Sanders wave into a career in the media and punditry and then sold out.

The nail in the coffin for me was when Bernie Sanders, it seems, followed Jane Kim’s judgment and endorsed Dean Preston, one of the worst people in politics right now. I am tired of writing about how bad Dean Preston is, but he is terrible. He makes me physically ill. He’s a racist, cult leader, millionaire, making money off our movement, who has no resemblance to Bernie Sanders at all. Please review my past posts to see how bad he is for everything.

Dean Preston is a multi-millionaire grifter who is co-opting and infiltrating our movements.

In an exclusive with the San Francisco Chronicle, Bernie Sanders is quoted saying:

“Dean is part of a new generation of progressive leaders who are not only prepared to stand up to special interests but also dare to address striking levels of wealth and income inequality at their core,” Sanders said Tuesday in a statement. “We need bold leaders like Dean Preston in every state, at all levels of government, who are willing to take on the corrupting influence of powerful interests and do the people’s work. That’s why I’m endorsing Dean for reelection to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.”

Bernie: Dean is not prepared to stand up for anything. He has never done that. He’s a multi-millionaire out to make a profit. He goes against everything you said you stand for. He does racist things, and he creates fake news websites. He’s a disaster. Stop listening to those corrupt people around you. If Dean Preston is in every corner of government, we will all be in trouble because he is a propagandist pushing disinformation to make himself richer.

Jane Kim is quoted saying:

“Bernie is such a high-profile progressive champion that he’s going to provide a lift to any candidate seeking to represent a progressive point of view,” Kim said. “If low-information progressive voters are wondering who to vote for, they will look to that.”

Did she say that? Low-information voters? My ass. She just said that people are so dumb that they are just going to look for what Bernie says and vote for Dean Preston even though he is a terrible person. That is against everything that Bernie Sanders ever supported. It’s Not Me, Us.

I was already so sickened after this, but moments after reading it, then I received a text asking me to donate to Bernie Sanders. He is not running, so I don’t know what organization is asking me for this money. I certainly do not want the money going into the wrong hands. The timing of getting this text after seeing this tweet made me want to scream and throw my phone out the window. I have never been so insulted in my life. I had to take a break and calm down.

Given my experiences, I have resolved that electoral politics is not the way to make change. The Bernie Sanders movement has made themselves irrelevant. Bernie Sanders does not have his finger on the pulse of what is happening and is being misled. Dean Preston should lose. If he does, it will make Bernie look really bad. If he doesn’t, it will make Bernie look really bad.

As I said in past posts, I am unsurprised because those on his former staff told me he would likely be endorsing Dean Preston and Jane Kim to take over Nancy Pelosi’s spot. If this happens, our entire country is screwed. That will be the worst mistake of our lives in terms of wealth inequality.

I am more worried about Dean Preston than I am about Donald Trump in terms of the level of propaganda and disinformation I have seen this man spread. These are terrifying people. Not because of what they believe in. Supposedly, if they are telling the truth about their beliefs, I agree with them. But they do not tell the truth. They lie.

I tell the truth. I don’t make many friends because I tell it like it is. This is some messed up shit. And I will never support any of it again. I feel disheartened about the time I spent putting these people in power. They are riding my hard work to screw us all over, and I am mad. No one will listen to me; they haven’t been for years. So, I don’t know why I keep showing up. Blame your losses on someone else but me. I can’t do it any longer. This doesn’t seem right, and I don’t care what anyone thinks.