Raising her voice at the DNC

Malvernite Anne Flomenhaft, a 21-year-old rising senior at Manhattanville College, experienced something last week that few will in their lifetime. She was a delegate — the youngest one from Long Island — at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Flomenhaft, an active Bernie Sanders supporter and a volunteer for his campaign since 2015, said that her main mission — now that her candidate is out of the presidential race — is to help defeat Donald Trump and make sure Hillary Clinton keeps her promises. “Things like raising the minimum wage and keeping her stance against the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Flomenhaft said, were some of Clinton’s stated causes. “We want to make sure she holds true to these issues through the whole campaign trail.”

Flomenhaft said she became interested in politics when she began watching political conventions on television. “But that was when I was 17 and didn’t know how the nomination process worked,” she said, adding that she learned that and much more last week — like how the convention worked, and why Bernie Sanders supporters weren’t a favored group.

It wasn’t until her freshman year in college that she really got involved in politics. “I was looking for an internship, and there was a congressional primary race going on between Kathleen Rice and Kevan Abrahams,” said Flomenhaft, who went to work for Abrahams. That opportunity eventually led to her involvement in the grass-roots Long Island for Bernie campaign.

Flomenhaft said she was very surprised to be chosen as a delegate, but, then again, her background working on Sanders’s campaign and the fact that she was young and female made her an ideal choice. “They try to get a diverse group of people in there,” she said.

Asked to describe a day as a delegate, she said that one day began with a state delegation breakfast, at which Sanders and Gov. Andrew Cuomo spoke to 200 to 300 people. That was followed by a delegation meeting of about 100 people, and then by a caucus meeting, at which various interest groups spoke about the policies they should be pushing legislators to adopt. After that, a meeting of Sanders supporters focused on health care issues and stopping the TPP. Then, at 3 p.m., the convention began, and continued until 11:30 p.m. And then there were the after-parties.

One of the best things about the delegate experience, Flomenhaft said, was meeting with other political organizers and discussing why they supported Sanders. “That was probably my favorite part,” she said, adding that she would ultimately like to get involved in public policy or a think tank, or use her skills to help elected officials.