Why Bernie’s supporters are energized by Jeremy Corbyn and the British election result

Jeremy Corbyn's success in the British elections has inspired American progressives, according to a leading activist. At the People's Summit this weekend, grassroots organizer Moumita Ahmed saw firsthand how Corbyn's performance electrified Bernie Sanders supporters. Moumita, who created the enormous viral page Millennials For Revolution, told The Tab how the progressive agenda is now going to push forward to the 2018 midterms and beyond.

Has the British election and the success of Jeremy Corbyn affected the progressive movement in the US?

Absolutely. That election really energized us. Going into the summit, it really helped to see Jeremy Corbyn, who's further to the left of Bernie, be able to come so far. A lot of Bernie folks went to work on Corbyn's campaign – Momentum's message was very similar: "For the many, not the few." To see our message not just resonating with Americans was amazing. To see that Jeremy Corbyn has come so far and and almost won is incredible for us. It makes us want to keep going. It refocuses our movement. It strengthens our resolve – no matter what the Democratic Party says, we are the future. We are the majority.

Some at the People's Summit were pushing for Bernie to run again in 2020 – what do you think?

It's hard to say, because it's too early to be thinking about 2020 when we have the midterm elections. Right now the Democratic Party doesn't have a long term goal and strategy of recruiting progressives. Like a lot of people, I think that if Bernie runs in 2020, I'm totally down for him. At the same time we want more people on the left to get involved – and we're starting to.

The only thing I really care about isn't Bernie being the nominee but the Democratic Party and the DNC putting in the effort to run fair elections, so that going forward in 2020 the people's choice is on that slate. Not someone who has name recognition or who has raised a bunch of money.

How are things looking for midterms?

Bernie did a roll call of candidates of Berniecrats and progressives that have won with our message. That was really great, especially for those pushing for the People's Party. That's the opposite of what we want, especially after Jeremy Corbyn. The strategy is very clear, very obvious – we need to run in local seats and win. We need to change the party leadership and the way to do that is doing grassroots work from the bottom up. Part of doing those roll calls is showing people it is possible, we are winning. It's just going to take a lot of people to get involved at locally.

It sounds like the summit was a success.

Yeah, we're fired up. This summit has reinvigorated us. Having Bernie there was really good, it really helped. He's good at putting everything into perspective. Going forward we're ready – this summit we had a meeting for our group and a ton of young people turned up, we're so ready to go. The youth turnout in the UK really gave us hope. Donald Trump shocked the world when we won, and Brexit was a similar scenario. To see young people fight back and organize with Jeremy Corbyn like that was incredible. Over 70 percent of young people voted for Corbyn in the UK. Our generation will start to see our purpose and what we're capable of.