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Showing posts with label African-Americans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label African-Americans. Show all posts
Patterns of Resistance: The Resistance History of the United States (Part 1)
by C. A. Matthews
In last week’s article I
promised to provide some patterns of resistance to defeat the patterns
(or poetry) of chaos that our oligarch rulers practice. Did you start
reading Tad Stoermer’s The Resistance History of the United Stateslike
I recommended? It’s okay if you didn’t. This article won’t ruin your
read later by giving out too many “spoilers”. (You’ll still want to read
the book.)
And
don’t worry if you’re not American or have much knowledge of US
history—many of the examples Stoermer uses to illustrate the different
patterns of resistance aren’t commonly known by most Americans. It’s
sort of the point of the book. The oligarchy, the billionaires who
essentially rule us all, have been keeping these kinds of historical
examples quiet since day one of the United States. They really don’t
want Americans (or anyone else) to know how often and how well ordinary
people have resisted their abusive, authoritarian power. So, even if
you’re not a history buff, I know you’ll find the stories Stoermer tells
very eye-opening and enlightening.
First
a quick recap of last week’s post about the oligarchs’ pattern of
control or“the poetry of chaos”. Things may appear chaotic in the world,
but upon closer examination we can define predictable patterns of
behavior by the oligarchs who cause the “chaos” that keeps us feeling
overwhelmed and incapable of fighting back.
I summed up the oligarchs’ pattern in a three step process... (Read summary in the full article by clicking the link below.)
...Stoermer describes nine resistance patterns or principles in The Resistance History of the United States that
We the People have used and can continue to use to take on the
oligarchy. I’ll provide a short synopsis of each, but I encourage you to
read the book to gain deeper understanding from the historical figures’
stories. It will make more sense to you to learn who it was that used a
certain resistance principle, how they used it, and how effective it
was in their resistance.
Stoermer
tells us that these principles/patterns don’t have to be practiced in
any particular order, and they don’t all have to be used all at once.
Revolutionaries/resisters are free to pick and choose what works for
them in their particular situation...
To learn all about the patterns of resistance (and how they were used in US history), please copy or click on the following link:
There
you'll be able to read the rest of this article, find related links,
see more graphics, and leave comments. You can become a free
or paid subscriber and
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articles just for paid subscribers, too.
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article is the 585th blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began
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for Conscience & War at 1-800-379-2679.
You
never know what you’ll come across at your local library. I’m just
surprised we didn’t come across this DVD earlier. You may have seen The Good Lord Bird,
a mini-series of seven episodes based on the novel by James McBride of
the same name. It played on Showtime about six years ago, but we hadn’t
seen it, and it sounded like an interesting title.
As
we watched the series, I started thinking about the state of things
today and how it’s a good time to watch a show about an abolitionist who
literally shook up a nation. John Brown is often credited with being
one of the main catalysts that started the American Civil War. I think
his experiences as an activist could teach us a lot.
Ethan
Hawke gives a stunning performance as a man who wouldn’t take no for an
answer when it came to doing whatever he deemed necessary to end
slavery. A self-described “militant Christian,” Brown wasn’t afraid to
use force if he felt it would gain the freedom of the enslaved. But was
he as “crazy” and dangerously impulsive as he’s been described? We’ll
never know for certain, but Brown was both revered and feared in equal
measure throughout his lifetime—and even beyond—so much so that he often
warrants only a short footnote in a high school history text.
It
seems American activists who aren’t afraid to stand up to the immoral
powers-that-be in Washington DC aren’t people we’re supposed to learn
about. Funny that.
The Good Lord Bird
is a fictionalized account of John Brown’s last days, but the show
stealer is a precocious enslaved boy, Henry a.k.a. “Onion”, portrayed to
perfection by Joshua Caleb Johnson. Somehow Henry is mistaken for a
girl after his father is killed in one of Brown’s shoot outs with slave
owners. Contrite, Brown “adopts Henrietta” as his own child. Henry is an
excellent narrator of the saga, telling us all he experiences with
innocence and passion. He follows the resolute John Brown and his sons,
along with an “army” of a dozen or so whites, blacks, and even a Native
American to their ultimate confrontation with the pro-slavery government
troops at the Harpers Ferry federal armory.
Watching
this story of John Brown’s life got me thinking: We really could use a
“new John Brown” in the US. We need a compassionate and courageous
leader who isn’t afraid to tell truth to power. It doesn’t have to be an
middle-aged, white male, either. It could be a “Joanna Brown” or a
person of any age, race, ethnicity, religion, or gender identity. And
why settle for one when we could use dozens of John Browns spread across
the country? Americans definitely need charismatic and decisive leaders
who aren’t afraid to take their “troops” into battle against the evil
foe of the oligarchy.
What
characteristics should we look for in this new John Brown(s)? I say
that one thing in activism that has been ignored in recent years is...
To read and find out what characteristics make for a genuinely American leader, please copy or click on the following link:
There
you'll be able to read the rest of this article, find related links,
see more graphics, and leave comments. You can become a free
or paid subscriber and
receive weekly email posts, along with occasional special
articles just for paid subscribers, too.
This
article is the 574th blog posting of The Revolution Continues. We began
in June 2015, and we're still going strong. Please keep reading,
sharing, and subscribing to help TRC continue for another eleven years. Thanks!
February is Black History Month. I thought I'd explore topics linked to the
African American experience. One thing that's always been a puzzle to me as a
mostly white person born in the 20th century is what it was like to be considered 3/5 of a person.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, read this short article. It might come as a surprise to many Americans that while enslaved people
weren't entitled to vote, own land or even their own bodies they were considered 3/5 of a person when it came to the population census. This meant
that the South had way more representation in the US House of Representatives
than it had voters. This is one reason why slavery was allowed to grow and
spread across the country in spite of reservations held by other Americans.
Now, before you object and say something like, "Well, women and
children couldn't vote, either, so things
were pretty fair representation-wise for voting males between the North and South," just listen to yourself. You're assuming that only African Americans males couldn't vote, and you'd be wrong. Before 1920, most white women and children at least had
some legal rights, but at that time Asian immigrants and Native Americans didn't even count as persons at all.
Do you feel super awkward in saying the pledge with the phrase "with
liberty and justice for all" now? Do you feel extra stupid for ever thinking
the United States of America is now and has always been a "democracy"
where all human beings are treated equally? You should.
So, what's it like to be considered a partial person (or not even a person) without any legal standing? I think the
closest any modern American can come to empathizing with how demoralized enslaved people must have felt is when a person finds out he/she can't afford badly
needed health care.
Consider this scenario: You're deathly sick or in great pain. You go to a
local medical facility, and once there you are forced to plead for assistance
to ease your suffering. Hours later, you're finally told, "Sorry. You
don't have any private health insurance we can bill. You don’t have enough
savings in the bank to cover the costs of the treatment. We can't do anything for
you. Have a nice day."
In your agony as you crawl away, you realize all hope is lost. You might
look like a person, but you aren't really a person, are you? You have no legal rights or protections under the law not to suffer
and die needlessly because of your lack of money or health insurance status.
You're very much an object that can work a job, pay taxes, pay rent, pay off student loan debt, etc., but let's face it. If you don't have any health insurance or a personal fortune and you
become ill and need medical treatment in the US you simply don't
existlegally.
You simply
don't exist. Just like Native Americans, enslaved Africans, Chinese laborers, and so many others on this continent have
experienced over the last half-millennia, you are here but you're also not here at the same time. Perhaps we should call an individual caught in this horrible state of affairs a Schrödinger’s Person after the famous thought experiment involving a
cat.
That's about as close as I can get to what being considered 3/5 of person
must have been like for enslaved people. And what did it feel like for them once the
Emancipation Proclamation declared they were no longer enslaved?
Eventually African American males would be considered a "whole
person" as a voter. I suppose on paper it sounded wonderful, but Jim Crow
laws, poll taxes, and other devious ways soon prevented African Americans from voting.
These racist actions prevented "whole personhood" from ever fully
taking. Some of these tactics continue on to this very day under the guise of
gerrymandering districts, strict voter ID laws, and preventing ex-felons from being able to vote again.
Potential Black voters exist and don't exist at the same time. Sound
familiar?
The saddest thing about the 14th Amendment granting personhood to
African Americans is that corporations used it to argue (and win) the
right to be considered "persons" in their own right. This travesty led to recent Supreme Court rulings such as Citizens United, which equates money with free speech.
Corporations have never suffered
the evils of discrimination like African Americans and others have, but they possess all
the legal rights of personhood. Corporations have "free speech"
through spending large sums of money to purchase politicians' cooperation at all levels of
government. Bought-off politicos gladly do their corporate masters' bidding by relaxing
worker protections and environmental regulations. Corporations force their workers to increase productivity but share little of the company's profits with them, thus creating the "wage slaves" of the 21st century.
Are you starting to grasp now what being 3/5 of a person really meant and
continues to mean to all Americans to this day?
Isn't it time we emancipated ourselves from the tyranny of our corporate
slave masters? Isn't it time to consider an Earth Day General Strike?
Happy Black History Month. Never forget that you are a whole person with
legal rights. Never let the corporations take them away from you!
The Biden Boom of maintaining slave wages during inflation is par for the course for this slave driver as nothing fundamentally changes. pic.twitter.com/3YkThAeutU
— #Immediatist, because I hate slavery (@Lvld_Up) February 4, 2022
Peaceful
ends can only be achieved through peaceful means. Flooding the region
with more weapons and military financing is not the answer. The U.S. has
over-invested in the military and under-invested in diplomacy and
international cooperation. Additional military funding will only
increase tensions and further enrich defense contractors.
Now
is the time to engage in talks to protect human lives and dignity.
Please join us in urging Congress to invest in our shared security
through nonviolent means.
In peace,
Aura Kanegis Director, Office of Public Policy and Advocacy, American Friends Service Committee
A small-town Mississippi library is
facing tremendous financial pressure from its mayor after putting up a
display featuring pro-LGBTQ books -- and he's citing his conservative
Christian faith as the reason why, even though several of the books are
by Christian authors.
The display includes memoirs by a
transgender pastor and a survivor of gay conversion therapy, as well as a
collection of essays titled "The Queer Bible."
Now, Ridgeland Mayor Gene McGee is using his personal religious beliefs to justify withholding $110,000 from the library, even
though he lacks the legal authority to do so. The mayor says he won't
release the badly needed funds until the library agrees to remove the
books.
McGee's anti-LGBTQ bigotry doesn't reflect the Christian values of love, dignity, and equality.
Let's make sure he hears from a nationwide movement of Christians who
are sick of seeing our faith hijacked to censor books and exclude LGBTQ
people.
In an interview with the local
newspaper, Madison County library director Tonja Johnson said the mayor
told her the books "went against his Christian beliefs, and that he
would not release the money as the long as the materials were there."
In a stunning display of Christian nationalism -- abusing his office to merge personal religion with government --
Mayor McGee even told the library director that "the library can serve
whoever we wanted, but that he only serves the great Lord above."
McGee is not only turning his back on
Madison County's LGBTQ and non-Christian residents; he is also attacking
the religious freedom of all pro-LGBTQ Christians. He should listen to
Johnson, the library director, who gave this beautiful quote to the Mississippi Free Press about why LGBTQ books matter to the whole community:
"Those books are for all of us:
whether we can see ourselves reflected in those materials or so that we
can develop understanding, empathy and respect for someone else... We
all live in this world together. We sit next to people in church, we
work with people, we live next door to people, our children go to school
with children who don't look like us and don't have the same
experiences.
"If we're going to be together, we have to at least understand each other's stories."
Thank you for everything you do to love your neighbor and honor the image of God in LGBTQ people.
In peace, - Guthrie, Rev. Nathan, Karli, and the Faithful America team
"The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice." - Proverbs 12:15
***
One glaring sign of how inhumanely immigration is being handled right now: the backlog of cases in the U.S. immigration court is now over 1.6 million – that’s the size of the city of Philadelphia!
This backlog – including children, families, people in desperate need for safety – is
a damning indictment of a broken system that prefers spending
BILLIONS on militarized border security to treat migrants as criminals over supporting families with caseworkers to get people to safety. You know what’s cheaper than a deportation flight? A hearing in court.
One person who can fix this problem is Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.Will
you join us to demand he does everything in his power to restart processing so families can at last reach safety in the U.S.?
The immigration system that currently exists in the U.S. is flat-out dangerous for people seeking safety.
It completely denies children and families access to safety
by either deporting them through Trump-era policies, like Title 42, or
by putting them in the racist Remain in Mexico program where they are
forced to wait for months, sometimes years,
in border cities where they are disproportionately targeted for
extortion and violence.
That’s
why restarting and speeding up processing is so important: the faster
families are processed, the quicker they are out of danger and into
safety.
This is about families’ humanity, but it’s also just common
sense – like actual cents. Instead of spending $330 billion over the
last 20 years on border enforcement and detention centers, we could be
investing in caseworkers and judges that could
help families get to safety.
Our government must end its cruel treatment of children,
families, and adults to swiftly and safely admit people seeking the
refuge they need. Policies that block, expel, or jail those seeking the
right to protection in the U.S. have no place here.
Thanks for taking action,
Erin Mazursky | Organizing Director
Families Belong Together
The Bern By
Cindy A. Matthews Photos by Adrian Matthews
(Note: This is not your typical piece about a Bernie
Sanders rally, religiously citing the main points of his stump speech. I’m
assuming you’ve watched a few of his rallies online at Bernie2016TV or even the one or two rallies
C-span or a local station may have broadcast. This story is about how a Bernie
supporter experiences a rally.)
Oh
my… Our first chance to see Bernie Sanders in the flesh! He’s coming to within
a hundred miles of us!
Those were my thoughts upon reading an online press
release for Bernie’s upcoming rally at Eastern Michigan University’s Convocation Center. It was only 48 hours away--the rally, that is. We didn’t know there
would be a rally there until the rally date was almost upon us. In fact, most
others we met there said they’d had less than 24 hours notice. But this lack
of prior knowledge isn’t unusual I’ve been told. Bernie is crisscrossing the
country, trying to hit as many early primary states as possible, and his campaign
staff is throwing these events together as fast as they can. So, with very
little preparation and a lot of nervous jitters, we set off for the 90 mile
trip to Ypsilanti, Michigan early on an Arctic-cold Monday morning in February.
We estimated it would take an hour and half to get
there from our rural home. Toledo rush hour traffic was light and cooperated as
we circled the city. With a big push we made good time and only got turned
around once in town in our search for E.M.U.’s Convocation Center. (Becoming
lost is usual for us. Old people, old car, no GPS, and Google Map print-outs
aren’t always crystal clear on directions.) It was at least two hours or more
until the scheduled doors opened at 12:30 PM, and we had no problems finding a
parking spot at the arena. Grabbing our sign and stuffing everything in our
pockets (no backpacks or purses allowed), we ran to the line which was already
occupied by one to two hundred people already. The Convocation Center has a
capacity of 9500, so we felt certain we’d get in and see Bernie.
What’s it like to stand in a line that grows and
grows and grows by the minute? What’s it like to stand outside for hours on
cold, slick pavement in 20 degree Fahrenheit weather with a nasty damp quality
to the air and a wind chill somewhere in the single digits? Honestly, it sucks.
While we were glad we could actually see the front doors of the building in the
distance, I can’t imagine how frustrating it must have been for those a quarter
mile away, a half mile away or a full mile away.
Yes, that video of the long line at the rally
you’ve seen online is accurate and not fabricated. The line actually did go for
about a mile. We know this for a fact since we were directed to head that way
to go home by the traffic cops, and we noted the extra mileage from our
original route on Hewitt Drive to Huron River Drive where you see the line in
the video turning the corner. This alone gives credence to the report of 10,000
attendees at the rally and the rumor there had been some overflow folks stashed
somewhere. All I can testify to is there were a helluva lot of people in
Ypsilanti excited to see Bernie Sanders.
The thing that kept the “Berners” going (while
waiting patiently for the rally to start and simultaneously suffering potential
frostbite) was the camaraderie. We chatted about Bernie and his ideas. We chanted
“Bernie” occasionally. We were entertained by Hare Krishna members who danced
up and down the line beating on their drums and wearing the saffron-orange
robes and beads. (Thank goodness they wore closed-toes shoes and not sandals.)
This event being hosted by Eastern Michigan, a
medium-sized university campus located next door to the University of Michigan,
a mega-sized university, there were college students in the line. Surprisingly,
there were a lot of other ordinary town folks, too. Now remember, we and most others
didn’t know Bernie was coming to Ypsilanti until a day or two in advance. There
wasn’t much time to get time off work, arrange babysitting (and we saw quite a
few young ones from “Bernie Baby” up to school age), or get out of a scheduled
college exam. Somehow, ten thousand people thought it was important enough to
do all this at a moment’s notice. Talk about commitment to a cause!
The group of young people in front of us told us
they’d all lied about needing to go somewhere important to get out of their
minimum wage jobs so they could see Bernie. They knew their boss wouldn’t give
them the time off to see a candidate he didn’t agree with, and he certainly
wouldn’t have given all four of them the same time off. But, somehow, they
managed the time and stood in line with us, wearing inadequate clothing and
shoes. As a mom of twenty-somethings, I worried about their health. A sweatshirt
hoodie with no coat, hat or gloves in single digit wind chill temps for several
hours isn’t enough to ward off frostbite. They told us they like Bernie’s
position on the “Fight for 15”. Think how better clothed and fed these young
adults would be with decent paying jobs.
There were “middle-aged people” like us there, too.
I did a high-five with a gentleman who yelled “Old People for Bernie!” The ages,
races and socio-economic spectrum of Southeastern Michigan were all
represented. Despite what some political pundits have insinuated, Bernie
Sanders brings in men, women, young, old, white, black, brown, yellow, red (our
friend in front of us said the local Hurons were represented), retiree,
college student and working class alike.
At last they let us inside the building--blissful
warmth! The Convocation Center probably isn’t the best heated place, but after
being outside for so long in the damp cold it felt great. I wish we had
attended Bernie’s Cleveland rally back in November since it occurred before
Bernie received his Secret Service detail so I could compare the security
measures, but alas we missed him then. This rally was a good example of what security
will be like from here on out.
They opened the doors around 12:20 PM and
suddenly you felt like you stood in a crowded airport terminal--in fact uniformed
TSA agents manned the walk-through metal detectors and handled the wands.
Everything has to come out of your pockets and be put on the table for
inspection. This includes all your metal-backed campaign buttons, which have to
be unpinned from your coat, hat, and shirt before you can go through the
detector. (That was a challenge for yours truly with her multitude of Bernie buttons.)
However, we made it through security in record time (much better than an
airport scan) and scrambled for a good seat to see the main event. Volunteers
passed out “A Future to Believe In” stickers and some signs, taking contact
info from newbies who hadn’t yet joined the political revolution online.
We ended up sitting directly across from the podium and behind the press risers, which held approximately 50 photographers (with about 30 reporters on their laptops to their right on the floor). Not the best spot in the house, but far from the worse spot. Convocation Center is a basketball/hockey arena and it has “blind spots” in its corners where your line of vision to the stage is blocked. Like most sports arenas, the acoustics sucked and a person standing on a stage across from you by several dozen yards appears the size of an action figure who can fit in your hand. The electronic screens above were used well, so we could see Bernie in close-up.
Of course, I really wanted to see Bernie face to
face (even shake his hand) but that wasn’t meant to be. The volunteers and
others they let stand on the concrete floor in front of the podium stage had to
do just that--stand up for two hours until the rally began and then stand
through the hour and a half long rally. Physically, we wouldn’t have been able
to endure it, and you’d have to really “love your neighbor” to enjoy being
squished in the mob as it pressed closer and closer toward Bernie during his
remarks. This is when you really start to notice the Secret Service.
The men in black (I didn’t notice any female
agents but they could have been there) surround the stage/podium area and also
the “mush pot” of humanity standing on the floor. Their steely eyes scan the
crowd constantly, and they immediately envelope Bernie when he walks off stage.
They are the only people not cheering or smiling, so you know they’re busy. As
well as the Secret Service and TSA agents, there were campus cops, local sheriff’s
deputies and arena security personnel in the building and on the grounds. No
exaggeration, but this is probably the most policed event I have ever had the
privilege to attend.
Waiting for the rally to start, we chatted with our seat
neighbors and learned more about how they came to become followers of the
senator from Vermont. An older gentleman behind us introduced himself and said
he was a “learner” who wanted to know more about Sen. Sanders. He had been
reading about Bernie in the print media (and it appeared he’d read alternative
print publications that report more on Bernie than the mainstream ones) but he
wasn’t fully aware of Bernie’s online presence. His ears really picked up when
we discussed how only about six corporations own (and manipulate) over 90% of
the media outlets in our country. We gladly filled him in on the independent web
sites and Bernie videos to check out.
A young working man behind me said he’d been
listening and watching Bernie videos online that friends and acquaintances had
sent him and they got him thinking, “This is a politician we can trust. He
thinks we’re intelligent voters.” College students seated around us tended to
be leaning toward Bernie’s policies on solving their student loan debts and
free college tuition. I probably should note that in our section of the arena
we were in the minority, that is, we were most noticeably “white” in a sea of
African-American faces. Yet the mainstream media wants us to believe Bernie
doesn’t reach--and attract--black voters? Boy, have they got that wrong!
Scanning the arena, I noted that Bernie attracts
Muslim women wearing their traditional head scarves as well. Bernie attracts
grandparents, middle-aged parents, and young parents with babes in arms. Who
doesn’t he attract? Oh yeah, selfish and greedy Wall Street billionaires.
The rally began about ten minutes later than
scheduled. University of Michigan Health Care nurse Katie Scott from the
Michigan Nurses Association came on to give her brief introductory remarks. Her
11,000 member union has endorsed Bernie. She said she was happy Bernie
supported universal health care so nurses and other medical professionals could
practice their calling to heal the sick without the hassles and greed of
private insurance companies. We spotted a big sign stating, “Physicians for
Bernie” in the crowd as well.
After Katie stepped down from the microphone there
were lots of false starts, and we wondered if Bernie was in the building yet. The
Secret Service agents give nothing away. You cannot tell when Bernie is actually
there until the last second, and in a crowded and noisy arena, you can’t tell he’s
in the room until you spy the top of his shiny head and ring of white hair
popping up between the outstretched arms of his cheering fans. So, just as I
was about to sit back down to regain my breath the cheers began again. Our man
has arrived! Everyone jumped to their feet and screamed and stomped on the
bleachers below us, rattling and echoing in the hard concrete arena a million
times over. I’m amazed Bernie isn’t deaf yet from all these loud outbursts of
adoration.
Jane Sanders, his wife, appeared among that ocean of
humanity, too. She waved to the crowd and then quickly exited the stage. I
couldn’t see her from where I sat, but my husband said she stood at the back of
the stage and filmed the crowd with her tablet device. I suppose some of Bernie’s
campaign ads feature Jane’s video of crowd reactions? Cool!
Bernie’s voice cracked a bit at the beginning of his
speech, but it grew stronger and more solid as he carried on. I didn’t think about
it until later, but perhaps his voice wasn’t gravelly due to stress. After all,
he’d been speaking in Nevada the night before and at multiple rallies for days
on end. I believe his voice sound rough at the start because of emotion. His
first remarks outside of saying how glad he was of seeing such a great turn-out
and how “Yooj” (which we all echoed several times to much laughter) it was, was
a statement of where he’d been earlier in the day and the reason behind his
delay: Bernie had gone to Flint first.
I suppose we can claim to be the first rally audience
to hear Bernie’s statements regarding the parents he spoke to in that
beleaguered Michigan city, poisoned by its public water, and how it’s adversely
affecting their children. Bernie appeared heartbroken. The way he paused and
took a breath between words, describing how horrified and sad he felt when a
parent told him how her child’s mental abilities had slipped away over the
past year, a child who had been a good student until now…
I’ve just come from a meeting, which was one of the
most difficult meetings that I have ever attended in a long political life,
where I’ve seen a lot and I’ve heard a lot. I’ve just met with seven or eight residents
of Flint, Michigan. I’ve obviously read the newspapers, been somewhat involved
in the issue, but I didn’t really did not know how ugly and how horrible and how
terrible what is going on in that community. It is beyond my comprehension that
in the year 2016 in the United States of America we are poisoning our children.
(...)
I just talked to a mother who has a kid who was very
bright--she did schoolwork very, very well. In the last two years she’s seen
her child’s ability to do schoolwork markedly deteriorate. Can you imagine being
a mother seeing your own baby’s, your own child’s intellectual development
deteriorate in front of your very eyes? And that is happening all over that
city. All I can say right now--and I don’t want to be overly political--I’ve
called for Snyder’s resignation, that’s fine--but if the local government can’t
protect those children, the state government can’t protect those children, then
the federal government better get in and do the right thing.
I wish I was closer to the podium to see if tears had flooded Bernie’s eyes. It
sounded to me like they had.
As a parent and grandparent, Bernie really gets
it--he gets how it hurts to not be able to take care of your babies and the
betrayal you feel because the very institutions you were taught to trust have
betrayed your trust, mainly because you are poor and black and your Republican
governor and his rich campaign donors could care less. Bernie called for
Governor Snyder’s immediate resignation to a deafening roar of approval. I hope
Mr. Snyder heard us in Lansing and steps down.
The remainder of Bernie’s talk fell along the lines
of “change doesn’t happen from the top down, but from the grassroots up.” We
are the grassroots--we are the people, he informed us. We are us not me. Bernie repeatedly emphasized that it will take a movement and
that it can’t be just about one person, the president, to bring about positive change
in our government or our world. We all need to be involved in the process. We need
a political revolution.
Bernie Sanders is the true leader of our political
revolution.
The ten thousand souls who braved the
sub-freezing cold in Ypsilanti, Michigan on a Monday morning are the beginning of the revolution. We have more in
common than we’ve been led to believe by the corporate billionaire capitalists,
the mainstream media manipulators of public opinion and the establishment
political party apparatchiks. We, the people, will vote together for Bernie
Sanders in 2016. A mile long line, minimum wage jobs, overbearing student debt
and cold weather won’t stop us.
The Toledo Bernie Light Brigade and other Berners at the IBEW Local 8 Union Hall this past Saturday.
While Berners caucused out west, at the IBEW Local 8 Union Hall in Rossford, Ohio we phone banked and canvassed for Bernie. It was our first venture in canvassing and we'll admit--it's tiring! But we had a beautiful spring-like day so it was a great day to be out walking and knocking on doors. (Why oh why couldn't Monday in Michigan have been as warm?) The best thing of all, the Bernie supporters we talked to were really feelin' the Bern. So, don't lose heart! Keep phone banking, canvassing and talking about Bernie to your friends, family and neighbors. Bernie is on a roll and soon we'll be seeing him in the White House. #AmericaTogether is going to vote #Bernie2016!
***
This Woman is Bernie Strong!
My name is Elizabeth Habib. I'm in my late twenties, married, a Type 1
Diabetic, and a band director split between one middle school and two
elementary schools in Fresno, California. Education, gender equality (any
equality in general), the economy, and health care are the biggest
reasons why I love Bernie Sanders and 100% support his policy ideas. I'm
tired of women like Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem daring to
question the reasons behind my political convictions. Just because
Hillary Clinton is a woman does not mean I need to support her. I don't
agree with Clinton; I do agree with Sanders. I feel the Bern.
Well said, Elizabeth! If you're a woman who feels the Bern, send us your testimonial and photo today. Email them to thebernieblog2016@gmail.com Thank you and #FeeltheBern
And now a song that demonstrates what Bernie Sanders has been talking about...
