Comrades,
Following the emergency Steering Committee meeting on April 14th, the Steering Committee voted unanimously to recommend a YES vote on Resolution 2022-04-GR01, to revoke our chapter’s endorsement of the Brandy Brooks campaign. Below are more details about our reasoning.
Timeline:
- On Saturday, April 9th, the Steering Committee met in a closed session with the aggrieved party. They detailed their experience as a staffer with the Brandy Brooks campaign. In that conversation, they discussed multiple instances of sexual harassment they faced from Brandy, over the period of several months, and shared that they had corroborating evidence in the form of contemporaneous text messages. While we were informed of a restorative justice process, internal to the campaign, we learned that Brandy later walked back aspects of that process. The severity of the allegations required that the Steering Committee act quickly. The Steering Committee and Montgomery County leadership decided to cancel that weekend’s MoCo canvasses as a precautionary measure.
- With this information in hand, Steering invited Brandy Brooks and the Montgomery County Electoral Leadership to a closed session on Tuesday, April 12th, to discuss the allegations. The Steering Committee presented the allegations to Brandy and her Campaign Manager in this closed session, and invited her to respond. Following her response and an opportunity to ask questions, the consensus of the Committee and the Montgomery County representatives was that she significantly breached our values and our trust and that our chapter’s endorsement should be revoked by the General Body.
- On Wednesday, April 13th, the Steering Committee released an internal statement on Slack to alert membership to the credible allegations and formally suspended any campaign activities on behalf of the Brandy Brooks campaign. Later that day, the Brandy Brooks campaign released a statement stating their intention to take a two-week break from campaigning.
- On Thursday, April 14th, the Steering Committee released a public statement with more detail regarding the allegations, with the permission of the aggrieved party. Later that evening, we held an emergency open Steering Committee meeting which would serve as a first read of Resolution 2022-04-GR01. At this meeting, the aggrieved party came forward and shared their experiences with the attendees. Another former staff member also attended, and corroborated the allegations. At this meeting, we also set the date for the Special General Body Meeting on Thursday, April 21st.
- On Friday, April 15th, The Washington Post released a story with more details about the allegations, including quotes from the aggrieved party and Brandy.In addition to instances of sexual harassment, the article corroborates that the employee faced retaliation, through the rescinding of a job offer, when they did not reciprocate Brandy’s attentions.
Resolution:
Our chapter’s endorsement of a political campaign is a statement as a chapter and as a movement that we have faith in a candidate’s ability to exert our values as a public official. It is a commitment that we will dedicate resources, time, and volunteer labor to support that campaign. In December, twelve candidates applied for our endorsement and only four received it. Many of us on the Steering Committee voted to endorse Brandy and the decision to revoke endorsement is one that we take very seriously.
The same standards that we use to deliberate about whether or not a candidate should receive our endorsement should be the ones that we apply when deliberating whether a candidate should continue to hold our endorsement. The knowledge we hold today, about the details of the allegations and the subsequent lack of accountability, would justifiably cause significant concern during an endorsement process. Everything we know now leads us to believe that Brandy is not fit to have employees work for her and would not be fit for public office, let alone to retain our endorsement. As such, it has become clear that we cannot in good conscience support her campaign if she decides to continue it. While only Brandy can decide whether to end her campaign, it is the right of our membership to decide whether or not we as a chapter should continue our endorsement. Our position, as a Steering Committee, has been and remains that Brandy has violated our values as a candidate.
Our notion of justice is restorative, not punitive, and we welcome Brandy to engage in such a process and grow as a person. However, given the allegations that she walked back the campaign’s internal accountability process and retaliated against the employee, it seems clear to us that Brandy is not yet ready to take responsibility for her actions and to be accountable to her staff, supporters, and DSA comrades. Our chapter name, resources, and the time of our volunteers cannot continue to be put into a campaign in which worker safety has been repeatedly threatened. We recommend voting Yes on Resolution 2022-04-GR01 to revoke the Chapter’s endorsement of Brandy Brooks for Montgomery County Council.