Ex-Sanders Officials Launch Justice Democrats

Former Bernie Sanders campaign execs Saikat Chakrabarti, former director of organizing technology, and Zack Exley, former senior adviser, have joined with Cenk Uygur (The Young Turks net founder), and online progressive talk radio host Kyle Kulinski to launch a Tea Party, of sorts, for the left.

Justice Democrats is described as a new political movement to pressure candidates and government officials, and elect new ones, saying the Democratic Party was broken and the "corporate, establishment wing" was to blame.

According to a spokesperson for the new movement, one difference between them and the right-leaning Tea Party movement is that they have the backing of a media network, TYT (The Young Turks), the online news network claiming 173 million views per month on YouTube and Facebook.

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The group also says it will be a tight ship, with an executive director. "No politician will be safe simply because of their party affiliation, as Justice Democrats are prepared to run primaries against corporate, establishment Democrats," Justice Democrats said in announcing its formation.

Planks on the Justice Democrats platform include supporting net neutrality, backing a Constitutional Amendment on election reform, rejecting corporate donations, reregulating Wall Street, increasing the estate tax, preserving capital gains taxes, backing free speech on college campuses, legalizing drugs, blocking the TPP (President Donald Trump agrees, having already pulled out of the trade deal on his first day in office, drawing applause at a meeting with union leaders), and banning the NSA from bulk data collection.

TYT is on XM Satellite radio and is formerly on Air America. Uygar is former host of MSNBC Live. Uygar suggested following the Election Day surprise that opposition would be galvanized against Trump.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.