Because I live there, inside the city. And I've spent time on the South Side and on the West Side, and sat in meetings of my neighboring Alderman where I was the only white person in the room. And I've spent days packing school supplies and slogging hot dogs onto buns all day in the heat to pass out to kids on the annual 27th ward Back to School picnic in Union Park. And I can tell you that fair housing isn't any better than it was back in Sander's day of glory back decades ago.
So am I impressed by a photo of a college kid taken 55 years ago? Not particularly. I bet there's a picture of me occupying the Courant Institute of Math back in the late 60s at NYU, protesting government contracts with the military industrial complex. (Actually, it turned out that the university had cancelled all its contracts well before the occupation occurred--a fact that made me decide the occupation was kind of irrelevant, so I ended up going home.) I never doubted it was Bernie Sanders in that picture. (And yes, I not only know who Danny Lyons is. I have actually met Danny Lyons--years and years ago, I admit, when my husband was responsible for promoting some of his early films.)
A picture. A moment in time. A day in the sun, full of sound and fury (but signifying very little). But what happened next? I won't call it white flight, because the motivations were certainly different. But college done, the rebel moves off to lily white upper Vermont, where he's been for the past kazillion years. And sure, he votes the right way when something comes up (who that is not a Republican does not?), but it has not been his big issue since that day in August 1963. His issue is the billionaire class and big banks--a legitimate issue. But to make it connect to the issues of race and class in this country you have to subscribe to a complete trickle-down theory of economic justice. And I don't subscribe to it at all. It's in large measure a way of avoiding real issues of deep racism in this country. Ain't ever gonna trickle down that far.
So I'm not impressed by that picture. And it wouldn't change my mind about a damned thing. I'm looking at the broad picture, not an old college photograph. Way too much is being invested in an old photograph.
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