Norway's Bernie Bros are Trying to Inspire a Political Revolution
WINNIE WONG AND CLAIRE SANDBERG
Jul 26 2017, 1:00pm
Excerpts:
A delegation of Norwegian activists attended the People's Summit in Chicago in June, and a few days later, three of us American activists—Winnie, Claire, and our friend and collaborator Moumita Ahmed (founder of Millennials for the Revolution)—accepted their invitation to travel Oslo to see Nordic social democracy first-hand. We learned about the effort by the left-wing Roedt party to bring together young urban voters with working class rural voters to protect and expand the welfare state—at a time when nationalist appeals of the far-right are gaining traction here, as they are throughout the west. We were also there to speak at Popvenstre, the Roedt party's outdoor festival of music, politics, and culture, and to run some trainings for party leaders ahead of their general elections this fall.
After the training, we headed to a cafe nearby to hear about the current state of play in Norwegian politics. In its current incarnation, the Roedt Party formed in 2007, and has been growing quickly in the past few years. Since 2013, formal membership has roughly doubled. The party's new young leader, Bjørnar Moxnes, has attracted scores of millennials to join its ranks, sparking "Bjørnie" comparisons. Roedt politicians currently hold ten county council seats nationwide and have 80 municipal representatives, and they're hoping that the upcoming election on September 11 is their chance to break through a key threshold that will allow them to gain eight seats in the legislature.
Although the Norwegian welfare state is still light years ahead of the fraying social safety net in America, Norway has not entirely been insulated from the consequences of 30 years of neoliberal capitalism around the world. The proportion of children growing up in poverty is on the rise, and women earn 15 percent less than their male counterparts. Housing costs are increasing steeply and many young Norwegians find themselves having to work two jobs to pay rent.
To address this deepening inequality, and the growing inclination of the Norwegian government to run the welfare state like a private enterprise, the Roedt party launched its "Inequality Norway" campaign with a series of redistributive policy demands. With the slogan "Community Works," Inequality Norway underscores the belief that a society based on cooperation and equality is fairer than a society based on capitalist competition.
https://impact.vice.com/en_us/article/9kw8dp/norways-bernie-bros-are-trying-to-inspire-a-political-revolution