Global Left Celebrates Sanders 2020 Bid as Chance to Build 'Worldwide Progressive Movement'

[eridani]

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/05/global-left-celebrates-sanders-2020-bid-chance-build-worldwide-progressive-movement

Bernie Sanders has called for an "international progressive front" to combat surging xenophobia and right-wing authoritarianism in the United States, Europe, and Latin America—a rallying cry that has left-wing politicians across the world enthusiastic for the Vermont senator's 2020 presidential bid.

"From South America to Europe to the Middle East, leftist leaders are celebrating his candidacy, viewing him as an iconic democratic socialist with the potential to lead a worldwide progressive movement at a time when right-wing populism is on the rise across the map," Politico's Holly Otterbein reported Thursday.

"In Canada, Israel, Germany and Spain, progressive politicians have also hailed the Vermont senator on social media and in interviews," Otterbein continued, "often speaking favorably of his 'Medicare for All' proposal, noninterventionist foreign policy and advocacy for the 'Green New Deal.'"

As Common Dreams reported last November, DiEM25 and the Sanders Institute—founded by Sanders' wife Jane O'Meara Sanders—launched the Progressive International with the goal of organizing the global left to both defeat the right and address the world's most urgent crises, from climate change to endless war to soaring wealth inequality.