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Bernie Sanders

An Open Letter To Bernie Sanders Supporters

August 14, 2015 C. Robert Gibson, www.occupy.com , , , ,
By C. Robert Gibson in Occupy - Dear Bernie Sanders supporters, Shut up and listen for once. When black women interrupt your candidate, don't call them "thugs." And when protesters hijack your hero's microphone to have their story heard, it doesn't mean they're paid provocateurs in some elaborate plot involving George Soros and Hillary Clinton. You know who else propagates wild conspiracy theories about George Soros funding left-wing protesters? Glenn Beck and Allen West. So congratulations, white progressives – your fanaticism for Bernie has turned you into the thing you hate. Bernie Sanders says the only thing that will guarantee his election is a "political revolution." But when that revolution tried to speak, you suppressed it. Unlike Occupy Wall Street, this movement wasn't started by or largely made up of white progressives.

Interrupting Sanders Exposed White Supremacy Of US Left

August 10, 2015 Jamie Utt, www.changefromwithin.org , , , , ,
By Jamie Utt for Change from Within - Hhere’s the thing – what’s powerful about these interruptions from Black women is less how it has changed the tone of the Democratic campaigns and more about what they have exposed in the White left. I see these protests as less about the individual candidates themselves and more about how their White base refuses to center Black lives and Black issues. It’s notable that White Bernie supporters, who consider themselves the most progressive of us all, shouted down and booed Black women who dared to force Blackness into the center of White space. Because let’s be honest, every Bernie rally is White space. When I watch and hear the reaction of a mostly White Seattle crowd to a Black woman naming that the event is taking place in the context of Indigenous genocide, the new Jim Crow, and the everyday violence that Black, Brown, and Indigenous people face in Seattle, I’m ashamed.

The Value Of Protest

July 22, 2015 Tim Dechristopher, www.timdechristopher.com , , , , ,
By Tim Dechristopher - As a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders, my first reaction to hearing about yesterday’s Black Lives Matter protest at Netroots Nation was disappointment. This looks bad, I thought. Bad for Bernie, who is the only presidential candidate with any chance of challenging structural injustice. Then I watched the video of Sanders responding to the protest, or should I say, failing to respond and instead just speaking over and past them. He tried to just continue with his stump speech and seemed annoyed with the disruption. Several times he looked at moderator Jose Antonio Vargas as if he expected Vargas to control these women, once asking, “Are you in charge here?” The closest he came to discussing policing issues directly was mentioning his success with community policing in Burlington, VT, a city that was pretty much all white and pretty much irrelevant to the discussion of racist policing.

Sanders Demands Release Of Full Text Of Trade Agreements

January 6, 2015 Office of Bernie Sanders, www.sanders.senate.gov ,
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday asked the chief trade representative for the United States to turn over the full text of a proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. The 12-nation pact, which could soon come before Congress, has been negotiated in secret but with input from corporations that stand to profit on the deal. In a letter to United States Trade Representative Michael Froman, Sanders called it “troubling” and “unacceptable” that the only sources for Congress to assess what would be the largest global trade deal in history are a few leaked documents. Proponents of the pact are pushing for a fast-track process for Congress to take up the deal with no opportunity to revise it. Especially under those circumstances, Sanders said, members of Congress must be given time to read and analyze the agreement in order to consider the implications.

Let’s Not Be Fooled By Bernie Sanders

August 17, 2014 Thomas Scott Tucker, , www.PopularResistance.org , ,
Bernie Sanders ends his recent column "Let's Stand Together" with this piece of advice: "Let's not be fooled." Quite right. Let's not be fooled by any politician appealing to high ideals when they are in the business of war and empire. Sanders not only defends military contracts that benefit his constituents in Vermont, he also joined the 100 to 0 vote in the Senate to give unalloyed moral and political support to the state of Israel during its most recent bombing campaign against Gaza. . . Sanders is the lone avowed socialist in Congress, though in official partisan terms he was elected as an independent. This has two practical consequences, neither good. In Congress, Sanders caucuses with the other career Democrats. And Sanders does nothing to build the base of any independent party of anti-corporate resistance. Thus any challenge he might raise against Hillary for the presidential nomination amounts, first and foremost, to a vanity campaign.
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