Two years ago, after working for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, Saikat Chakrabarti co-founded an organization called Brand New Congress with a lofty goal: Launch hundreds of progressive candidates into congressional races.
Hundreds didn’t exactly pan out. But one major star emerged from that process: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who shocked the political world this summer with a primary upset over rising party leader Joe Crowley (N.Y.).
Now Ocasio-Cortez is headed to Congress, with Chakrabarti as chief of staff.
Though they’ve been in Washington for only a few weeks, they’re already making a splash — clashing with incoming committee chairmen, joining a protest in Nancy Pelosi’s office and agitating for newly empowered Democrats to stake out ambitious goals on climate change. Chakrabarti turned heads by saying on a call, “We gotta primary folks.”
It’s all part of a broader strategy to deploy inside-out organizing, Chakrabarti said. Staying connected to the progressive movement — and the public eye — through attention-grabbing demonstrations and social media is part of gaining policy leverage.
In other words: Don’t expect them to back down.
“When you shoot for big stuff, you stay true to the movement, you fight unapologetically on the inside, that is a very, very powerful way to pass the radical solutions that are necessary to face the radical problems that you have,” he said.
Chakrabarti isn’t naive about the prospect of passing major liberal legislation with a Republican Senate and Donald Trump in the White House. And he wants to seek bipartisan achievements, citing the Senate effort to end support for the Yemen war as an example.
But he also has his eye on the long game, name-checking everything from the abolitionist movement to the country’s economic mobilization during World War II.
He has big policy dreams, like a “Green New Deal,” which would tackle everything from mitigating climate change to transforming the American economy, and criminal justice reform. He wants to lay the groundwork now to make them realities.
“Another thing to really do over the next two years is to basically show the American people what will be possible if the Democrats win the House, the Senate and the presidency in 2020, and that means putting our best foot forward,” Chakrabarti said. “It means putting the most ambitious, the boldest, the biggest things we can, and then just build a movement around that.”
That approach doesn’t surprise Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats, the successor to Brand New Congress. She first met Chakrabarti on the Sanders campaign, where they regularly pulled 15-hour days.
“We’re in a very do-or-die moment, and I think he embodies the integrity of fighting for a better world,” she said. “He’s a progressive force.”
Though Chakrabarti is shifting from outside activist to inside player, he’s no stranger to career transitions. The 32-year-old Fort Worth native came to the Sanders campaign after growing disillusioned with the tech world. He co-founded Mockingbird, a web design tool, and then built up the product team at the payment processor Stripe. That followed a brief stint on Wall Street right out of Harvard.
Those earlier moves were propelled by a collegiate desire to start his own company, and the belief that technology was his generation’s way to change the world. Now he has his sights set squarely on the halls of power.
“You have to decide to create the society you want to create,” he said, “and that’s done through politics.” — Eli Okun
Photos by M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO.