The Transformation of Bernie Sanders

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

If the social milieu of Sanders’s formative years was distinctive, his political education was even more so. At the University of Chicago, he joined the Young People’s Socialist League, read Marx and Lincoln and Dewey in the library basement, and fought for civil rights as a member of the Congress of Racial Equality. For the young Bernie, real politics was what happened outside the corridors of power: After being arrested at a Chicago sit-in, he told the writer Russell Banks, “I saw right then and there the difference between real life and the official version of life. And I knew I believed in one and didn’t believe any more in the other.”

(snip)

Such deep roots in third-party struggle make Sanders a black swan not only among today’s Democratic elite but across American political history. To find an influential national figure with such an extensive background outside the two-party system, you have to return to Debs and the Socialists in the early 20th century or, perhaps, Salmon Chase and the antislavery radicals who helped found the Republican Party before the Civil War. Like the political abolitionists of that era, Sanders has spent his life working to find a party to advance his cause, rather than finding a cause that can advance his party. Nor has that cause wavered very much in half a century. Interviewed by United Press International at the start of his first Liberty Union Party campaign in 1972, he produced a paragraph that could be pasted into a tweet today: “If we wanted to, we could have decent housing and free medical care and jobs for everyone…. It won’t happen because the wealth and money lies in the hands of a few people who are not concerned with the welfare of others.”

(snip)

Above all, Sanders must contend with a mood inside the Democratic Party—powerful among its leaders and voters alike—that the only issue of consequence in 2020 is defeating Trump. Bernie’s struggle, from Chicago to Burlington to Capitol Hill, has always been much larger than defeating a single opponent. As he said in his March 2 speech in Brooklyn announcing his 2020 run, his goal is not simply to win an election but to build a movement that can “transform this country.”

From Weaver to Ocasio-Cortez, nearly every progressive figure today is urging the Democrats to reclaim the bold mantle of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Yet Sanders rounds out the introduction to Where We Go From Here with a quotation from another president who led an even bolder movement and whose election spurred an even greater transformation. The hoariest words in American history—Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg vow to defend “government of the people, by the people, and for the people”—are also, Sanders reminds us, some of the most radical. To overthrow an entrenched oligarchy and claim a “new birth of freedom” based on democratic equality for all: That would be a political revolution worth fighting for.

https://www.thenation.com/article/bernie-sanders-jeff-weaver-2016-campaign-books-review/

This is a good read.

[WeekiWater]

1. Can you elaborate on the importance you see in your first bolded portion?

“I saw right then and there the difference between real life and the official version of life. And I knew I believed in one and didn’t believe any more in the other.”

[Fresh_Start]

2. I'm also interested in locating the official version of life

so that I too can compare the official version of life to real life....

[Uncle Joe]

3. Tell me about the 1963 boycott.

(snip)

RD: Gordon actually filmed the boycott in ’63 when he was 21 years old and a student at the University of Chicago. It was a massive boycott, but over the years no one has paid attention to it. It’s not something that’s in the history books. People didn’t know that 200,000 students had boycotted CPS schools because of segregation and inequality.

In doing our research we discovered that Martin Luther King came to Chicago in 1966 specifically because of the boycott. He was really impressed by the organizing and the parents’ role. One of the things we found was audio from WVON radio here. A girl who had participated in the boycott called in questioning whether her actions had made a difference. King patiently listened to her and reassured her that her actions were indeed extremely important.

The year before the ’63 boycott, Bernie Sanders was protesting against segregation at his own university. Tell me about that.

GQ: Six months ago I saw this picture floating around on Facebook of the sit-in at the University of Chicago, where we had caught the university in 1962 discriminating against its own black students in housing that it owned, rental housing. They couldn’t deny it. They said, “Oh, white people, you have to go slow. We’re with you.” We sat in and Bernie Sanders was there. I took the pictures. We marched to the president’s office [George W. Beadle] and sat in the outer office. We were very polite, which looks quaint when you think about 1968 when they occupied the whole building and trashed it.

RD: One hundred and sixty-nine people had been arrested in the summer of ’63 and four people were charged, and one of them was Bernard Sanders, 21. I put the clip up on Kartemquin’s blog and within a day it was all over social media, getting all these media requests. Our web site went down. Too much traffic. It was in the New York Post, CNN, the New York Times, WGN-TV, the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune went to its archives and found stills. We were shooting film; the Tribune was shooting stills.

https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/Felsenthal-Files/March-2016/Bernie-Sanders-Arrest-Kartemquin-1963/

[WeekiWater]

4. That is not a reply for what is an all encompassing statement that I was asking you about.

I do believe Sanders lives by that all encompassing thought. It's how he can justify many of his recent and flawed thoughts about immigration.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Why do you believe Martin Luther King had a disapproval rating of 50% in 1963?

The press was controlled and dominated by white people and the wealthy, desegregation was most unpopular.

The wealthy certainly were not for it, even JFK had to be prodded by MLK.

What do you believe "white privilege to mean?

[WeekiWater]

7. "What do you believe "white privilege to mean? "

Never having to answer for your actions.

[Uncle Joe]

8. Apparently that's one aspect of it.

[DownriverDem]

9. A lot

of white folks did not believe in desegregation (many still don't). They blamed Martin Luther King for stirring up trouble.

[Uncle Joe]

10. Yes and those white people held the corridors of power in numbers and messaging.

I believe this is what Bernie was referring to in the bolded sentence of the OP to answer the question of the previous poster.

[betsuni]

5. LOL Sanders black swan.

[Skidmore]

11. To me, The Nation

has become the print version of RT.

[Uncle Joe]

12. That's ironic as The Nation is most definitely anti-oligarch and

Russia is an oligarchic nation.

[Skidmore]

13. Reading past

buzzwords would be helpful. It's not the publication it used to be.

[Uncle Joe]

14. The Nation has always been anti-oligarchic.

[NYMinute]

15. ...