Let’s pull this Bernie thing off. We should focus all of our energy here. I think the strategy is to connect with people on a human level. I get and even admire the tactic of Bernie or Bust. We gotta play hardball, I get that. But it is a tactic. A negotiating position. It’s not even an issue, because Bernie is going to win this. What it will take to win our revolution is unity and solidarity among the largest grouping in the world, the international working class. Name it. That’s what it is. Anticommunism has been so thoroughly victorious […]
A Longer View
The first lines of my novel, White Knight, read: “Barney Blatz, a white man, stares at his bony fingers on the keys of the manual Olympia typewriter. ‘Babe. Do you think the title should be “Fight Racism” or “Smash Racism”?’ he asks.” Blatz, married to a Black woman, is an organizer in the Black community, a child care teacher who organizes the parents against the school system. It’s set in San Francisco in the late seventies, as the sixties movements stumble toward Reaganism. The subtitle of the novel is How one man came to believe that he was the one […]
Impossible?
They say it will be impossible for Bernie to catch HRC’s big delegate lead, but Bernie has proven over and over that just because something’s impossible, doesn’t mean he can’t do it. Bernie entered the race promising to take the big money out of politics, which is of course impossible. But then he just did it. In one year he has raised money on the same competitive level as all the other candidates, but without taking a dime from big money. This is an enormous political accomplishment, almost on a par with Obamacare or the Iranian agreement. It shows that […]
This is what democracy looks like
Happy Vernal Equinox, everyone! Here is what I think needs to happen. The Bernie Sanders movement – not the campaign – needs to come together and consolidates its gains. Regardless of whether Bernie wins or not, we need to develop the organization to carry out our vision. I’m willing to put in some time into this. We need have some serious convenings. I don’t know the best way. By cities? By neighborhoods? I know this much: the revolution will be organized one-by-one. The revolution is a lot about tearing down the barriers between us, figuring the hell out how to […]
Be Prepared
Significant escalation in the election process: the people shutting down Donald Trump’s rally in downtown Chicago. We honor the courageous demonstrators. Yes, we understand that this was a setup, that Trump thinks it’s in his interest to foment chaos and argue we need a strong man to whip the country in shape. But the history of the world consists of unintended consequences. I think that might be a corollary of the uncertainty principle. The capacity of human beings to imagine a vision and successfully fulfill it is not high. Something bad usually happens on the road to utopia. But presumably, […]
The Big Picture
Fellow Bernie folks: We’re being tricked. We’re being bamboozled. We’re being fed bread and circuses. This election is not a god damn football game. We act as if it were, to the point of vilifying our opponents solely for the purpose of enhancing our rivalry. This strikes me as highly counter to the democratic socialist ethos that we are attempting to build. You are what you eat. We need to step back, get serious, and focus on the bigger picture. I’m sure we all have different visions of the revolution. Our visions together will combine into some kind of heck […]
The Black Vote
Less than eight months ago, a white supremacist gunned down in cold blood nine people, pillars of the Black community, as they prayed in their Charleston, South Carolina church. Is it any wonder that the Black community is afraid of Trump? Is it any wonder that they would vote for the person that the media has been telling them – rightly or wrongly – all along has the best chance of beating Trump? For white progressives, Trump is a clown, a buffoon, a fascist who threatens to make us sick or move to Canada if he wins. For people of […]
It ain’t over til it’s over
Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in Nevada by 649 votes. Hardly a landslide. More like a statistical quirk. Is this enough to allow us to descend into the slough of despond? I don’t think so. Our worst enemy isn’t Clinton or Trump. It’s our own discouragement. Bernie Sanders entered the race less than a year ago saying that the key issue in U. S. politics was to get the big money out of elections. And then, guess what. He did it. He just did it. He developed a nationally competitive presidential campaign without taking one dime from the billionaires, funded […]
From I to we, me to us
As the Sanders tsunami rolls across the country, the demographics most stubbornly resisting it aren’t African Americans, or Women. There are two. The first demographic I call the cynics. These are the people, some of whom are our good friends, who agree with everything Bernie says but simply don’t believe that the country is ready for someone as left as him and think Hillary has a better chance of working with Congress. To them I say, look, it’s about LEADERSHIP, it’s about character, it’s about integrity, it’s about ORGANIZING, and damn have you seen his campaign so far? He identifies […]
A model for the revolution
What most analysts of the election don’t seem to understand is that Bernie Sanders, in his campaign that has been improbably financed by millions of people instead of a handful of billionaires, has tapped into the people’s yearning for democracy, for a voice in the future of our planet. It has nothing to do with how many angels can dance on the head of single payer, or whether college should be free or just less expensive. In the very process of building his campaign, Bernie has unleashed the power of authentic democracy. His differences with Clinton have little to do […]