The Sanders Campaign, A Social Movement Disguised As a Presidential Bid

[Playinghardball]

By Steve Sherman.
April 12, 2016

I attended the Bernie Sanders rally in Midwood, Brooklyn, on April 8. The rally was held on the block Bernie grew up on, but this is not why I found it moving.

His stump speech, while brief, struck me as quite important. Two things stood out. First, he didn’t use phrases like “President Sanders will never...” “On day one in office I will...” “And I promise you...” The standard phrasing of presidential candidate stump speeches. Instead, he said things like “All major countries guarantee all their citizens access to healthcare. We need to as well, “ and “A college education is like what a high school diploma used to be. So we need to make public higher education free.”

He was not making promises so much as laying out an agenda we could all fight for, including, but by no means only, by voting for him. In fact, he said something like “change always comes from the grassroots. It can’t be top down.” He went on to speak about a number of social movements--workers fighting for unions, civil rights, women’s suffrage and expansion of job opportunities, gay marriage, fight for fifteen.

Although Sanders is often accused, not without some justification, of overemphasizing economic inequality, he in no way suggested that those struggles which might be seen as being struggles against “the millionaires and billionaires” were more important than those which might not be. He simply mentioned each as an example of the power of people to come together and force change. He also used phrasing like “women and their male allies,” “gay people and their straight allies”--in other words, he emphasized that struggles involve building coalitions across the lines that divide us.

His emphasis on grassroots change and social movements was entirely appropriate. In a sense, the Sanders campaign is a social movement disguised as a presidential bid, one which, miraculously has a chance to catapult its leader into the presidency, albeit that at this writing, about a week away from the New York primary, this remain a very long shot.

No matter. If Bernie Sanders were to declare tomorrow that he needed to suspend his campaign due to health reasons, it would still be the case that this social movement has accomplished a great deal, and provides much to build on in the near future.

The Sanders campaign is basically a reassertion of the liberal wing of the Occupy movement, on a much larger scale. The core of Occupy (and, in one city, Oakland, the dominant force) was anarchists, but the larger crowds attracted had a mainly liberal streak--anger that expressed itself in demands like “tax the rich” and “healthcare for all” without necessarilly calling for an end to capitalism. This is the stream of thought that is reasserting itself through the Sanders campaign.

Anarchists are largely absent. I state this only as fact, not to impugn anyone. I think calls for direct democracy remain quite relevant, and I suspect they will reemerge soon enough. But the Sanders campaign is distinguished by the forceful assertion of “liberal” demands to reform capitalism. In fact, his platform might be seen as one response to the inability of Occupy to properly formulate demands.


Read more here: https://indypendent.org/2016/04/12/sanders-campaign-social-movement-disguised-presidential-bid-4

[LongTomH]

1. K&R for Truth!!!!

This movement must continue; no matter how the primaries come out!!!!

[Rebkeh]

2. Many of the reasons I supported Occupy are in this campaign

They are why he has my vote. The movement continues and it will keep going regardless of what hapoens in November.

I'm in for structural change.

[ViseGrip]

3. Hillary's little town halls, and skits, is hardly campaigning. She's stale!

[thereismore]

4. This:

Claims that Sanders’ platform would’ve once been that of a mainstream Democrat or even a liberal Republican strike me as largely missing the point. His platform constitutes a dramatic reversal of the political common-sense dominant in the Democratic Party (let alone the Republicans) for at least twenty years. Obama, who in some ways was more recognizably liberal than Bill Clinton, always sought reforms with one eye on his financial backers and another on the sort of consultants who smother all enterprises in the US, public and private, profit and non-profit. Obamacare is precisely the sort of result of this mentality.

[Phlem]

5. K&R!!!!

[RoccoR5955]

6. Tell it!

I have noticed all along that Bernie more frequently uses the words, us, we, and our, and Clinton uses I, me and mine a lot.
Bernie has done what a lot of us have been trying to do on a small scale for a long time. He has been able to stimulate the community to get involved. Perhaps it is that people are starting to wake up after Occupy made us aware of what the banks and corporations are doing to us and out planet, and we are finally fed up. Perhaps we have been waiting for a REAL Liberal candidate, not the milquetoast people who call themselves "Progressives," because the RepubliCONs made it a seemingly bad word. Perhaps the kids are aware to the dire predicament that we are in and finally have seen someone who they have faith in to help change things in their favor.
Who knows? All I know is that I am damn proud to have the opportunity to vote for such a good candidate.

Oh, did I mention, I was born and raised in Brooklyn too, so I'm roootin' for the hometown kid!