If you are a Bernie supporter I think one of the most important things you can do today is to share this strory from The Guardian with as many people as possible. Doing the Bernie News Roundup I have run across many, many Bernie articles and this is by far the best as it goes in depth into Bernie's history as Mayor and his longtime fight for the working class. It also highlights the reasons he entered the race and how the world is finally catching up to his positions. It is just too good to wait to post tomorrow.
I will post a few paragraphs, a few briefer snippets, and a quote or two. Please read and pass on:
Inside the mind of Bernie Sanders: unbowed, unchanged, and unafraid of a good fight
“Like an unconscious and uncontrollable force, our planet appears to be drifting toward self-destruction,” the newly installed socialist leader of somewhere called Burlington wrote. He urged them “in the strongest possible way” to disarm militarily and begin immediate negotiations with other world leaders.
Bernie Sanders, the ardently leftwing mayor of Vermont’s largest city, dispatched similar missives to Downing Street, the Élysée palace and the White House, before releasing a statement declaring: “Burlingtonians cannot calmly sit back and watch our planet be destroyed – with hundreds of millions of people incinerated.”
The correspondence, unearthed by the Guardian, confirms what has long been said of America’s longest-serving independent member of Congress who, at the age of 73, recently launched a bid for the Democratic nomination for president. Bernie Sanders is unafraid of punching above his weight.
The Guardian has spoken to close to a dozen of Sanders’ closest friends, family, confidantes and operatives. They paint a picture of a politician who has spent a lifetime obsessed with the same issues that still drive him today, and is now wrestling with the demands of a 2016 presidential race.
...“I am a United States senator, I did win my last election with 71% of the vote,” he said last week. “So it’s not just like someone just walked in off the street and suddenly they’re Hillary Clinton’s main challenger. We’ve been doing this for a few years.”
“I am glad that he’s doing it,” Chomsky said, arguing that Sanders’ presidential campaign would promote ideas that are rarely part of mainstream political discourse. “But the chances of him winning at the primary, or even at the national level, are virtually nil in our system, which is not a democracy but a plutocracy.”
Sanders told the Guardian he was “not as pessimistic as Noam is”. “He’s right, we live in an increasingly oligarchic form of society, where billionaires are able to buy elections and candidates, and it is very difficult, not just for Bernie Sanders but for any candidate who represents working families,” the senator said. “But I think the situation is not totally hopeless, and I think we do have a shot to win this thing.”
In a letter addressed to the people of Nicaragua, penned in conjunction with that trip, Sanders denounced the activities of the Reagan administration, which he said was under the influence of large corporations. Burlington’s mayor assured the Nicaraguan people that Americans “are fair minded people” who had more to offer “than the bombs and economic sabotage”.
“A number of cities have nice waterfronts, good streets, honest police departments, and even minor league baseball,” Sanders wrote in his memoir. “But how many cities of 10,000 have foreign policy? Well, we did.”