Dear [PERSON READING THIS],
Tough times.
The American people understand that our economic and political systems are rigged. They know that the very rich get much richer while almost everyone else becomes poorer. They know that we are moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of society.
The Democrats ran a campaign protecting the status quo and tinkering around the edges. Trump and the Republicans campaigned on change and on smashing the existing order.
Not surprisingly, the Republicans won. Unfortunately, the “change” that Republicans will bring about will make a bad situation worse, and a society of gross inequality even more unequal, more unjust and more bigoted.
Will the Democratic leadership learn the lessons of their defeat and create a party that stands with the working class and is prepared to take on the enormously powerful special interests that dominate our economy, our media and our political life? Highly unlikely.
They are much too wedded to the billionaires and corporate interests that fund their campaigns.
Given that reality, where do we go from here? That is the very serious question that needs a lot of discussion in the coming weeks and months.
How do we expand our efforts to build a multi-racial, multi-generational working class movement?
How do we create a 50 state movement, not politics based on the electoral college and “battleground” states?
How do we deal with Citizens United and the ability of billionaires to buy elections?
How do we recruit more working class candidates for office at all levels of government?
Should we be supporting Independent candidates who are prepared to take on both parties?
How do we better support union organizing?
How do we put together listening sessions around the country that intentionally seek input from people who did not vote for Democrats in the last election?
How do we best use social media to build our movement and combat the lies and disinformation coming from the billionaire class and right wing media?
How do we build sustainable and long-term issue-based organizing structures that live beyond individual campaigns?
These are some of the political questions that, together, we need to address. And it is absolutely critical that you make your voice heard during this process.
Not me. Us. That is the only way forward.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
What do we think? Considering all of the selling out he did from 2016 onward, only for none of it to be successful, I think there’s actually a possibility that he recognizes that his “legacy” is in danger. I’m actually so interested in hearing what the Hexbear community has to say about this that I’m legitimately excited to post it lmao
The democratic party is 100% captured by bourgeois interests. The political battlefield is sort of drawn with these two parties that are both completely bourgeois but there are new issues arising all the time with events. Which ever one of these parties identifies a new issue will propose a solution from a fundamentally bourgeois worldview and they may not be particularly interested in carrying these proposals out if they are not fundamentally bourgeois concerns. The first actor of the two parties may propose basically the same solution, and the second one may tinker with it, but they operate on the same framework. As long as issues are defined by these parties and their various propaganda networks, bourgeois concerns will always be considered a higher priority than issues that affect normal proletarian human beings and solutions will be the ones that benefit bourgeois interests. And the propaganda channels have turned the average american into an open nazi with respect to the border and Gaza.
For example, if there is a liquidity crisis in the banking sector, it will be dealt with immediately. But why is a liquidity crisis in the banking sector a more urgent problem than the 34 million Americans dealing with food insecurity? Liquidity crises can cause serious economic dysfunction but we already have serious economic dysfunction when 34 million people are food insecure in the presence of such abundance.
A socialist movement needs to do a better job discovering the real issues that real people face and propose and agitate solutions to these problems that strengthen proletarian class power before the bourgeois media and parties can poison the well with their stupid bullshit. As long as we allow our political discourse to be carried out in the existing framework of bourgeois parties and bourgeois propaganda networks we cannot possibly win. But if we are surfacing these problems quickly, it will undermine the legitimacy of a media that doesn't cover anything and political parties that do not deal with them.
nice hyperbole tankie but saying the democratic party is “100% captured by bourgeois interests” is plainly untrue. what about the other .03% of their party platform that kind of almost in theory supports women’s rights?