Bernie Brigades

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.” –Mario Savio

So I’m driving home from my acupuncture treatment and I come to the stoplight at the south end of Fort Bragg and here are a dozen people on the west side of the highway with signs saying Honk For Bernie, Volunteer for Bernie, Learn About Bernie, and I’m honking my little old horn, and the people are smiling and waving, and the excellent effects of my acupuncture treatment are amplified by a release of endorphins as I imagine Bernie Sanders becoming President of the Unites States and millions of people, old and young, black and brown and white, who have been disenfranchised for their entire lives finally having someone leading the country who wants to help them.

These people holding signs and many of their compadres have been coming out to this spot on the highway for months now, and you can see by their smiles and their confidence that they are not cowed by the lying corporate media saying Bernie doesn’t have a chance. Bernie recently won the Wisconsin primary by a huge margin, though you might not have heard much about that in the mainstream press. But the Bernie Brigades know. They know and they are empowered.

The odds are still not good Bernie will prevail over the entrenched rich and greedy corporate villains supporting his opponent for the nomination, a person of no apparent morals, zero compassion, and a mean streak as wide and long as the Mississippi, but don’t tell that to the thousands of Bernie Brigades all over America. The Bernie Brigades are bursting with true believers, and Bernie keeps winning to confirm their faith in him.

The corporate media still barely mentions Bernie, even when he trounces Hillary in primary after primary, and those same media louts continue to say Bernie only wins primaries in states with mostly white people, which is hogwash. Minority support for Hillary is collapsing because the message is finally getting through to everyone: Bernie Will Be Good For Everyone, Hillary Bad For Everyone except her obscenely wealthy friends.

You think I’m being overly optimistic? Consider where I’m coming from. I haven’t seen a grassroots movement like the Bernie Brigades since the early 1970s. That’s almost fifty years ago. I was young and idealistic and had lots of hair on top of my head in those days. As a young teen, I participated in protests to speed the integration of our local schools, and by golly the schools were integrated. As a young man, I joined the ferocious protests against the Vietnam War, and by golly that war ended.

Yes, the damn warmongers started up more insane wars, but millions of us remember a time when organizing and boycotting and getting out on the street and protesting and making good noise made a difference. Activism worked.

That is what the Bernie Brigades remind me of: the civil rights and anti-war movements of the Sixties and Seventies. And the millions of young people involved in the Bernie Brigades and organizing on college campuses and canvasing neighborhoods for Bernie remind me of that exciting era, too.

We stopped buying grapes and lettuce at Safeway, millions of us did, and the United Farm Workers were victorious because of that successful boycott. Yes, Hillary’s despicable husband undermined much of that progress by pushing through NAFTA and other trade agreements that undermined American labor and rendered our economy moribund for the bottom sixty per cent of the population, but millions of us still remember when our economy was not moribund, still remember a time when our actions had an impact on our so-called elected representatives, and so we hold signs for Bernie, give him money, call our friends and urge them to support the good guy against the rotten sellout.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media couldn’t resist giving the movie star Susan Sarandon a little time in the limelight recently, though she is a staunch supporter of Bernie and artfully calls Hillary a liar and a Monsanto lackey and a hedge funder’s wet dream. I imagine Hillary raging around her castle shouting, “Who let that bitch get on national television? It’s one thing for me to go up against a dumpy white-haired guy with a Brooklyn accent. But Sarandon is regal and charismatic and…argh!”

Yes, for the next few weeks anyway, we Bernie believers can wallow in the possibility that despite everything against him, Bernie will prevail. My more cynical friends like to ask me, “What will you do if Bernie loses?”

“I will go on with my life. Somehow.”

“And you won’t vote for Hillary against the evil Republicans?”

“I will not.”

“Even if Bernie asks you to?”

“I am not voting for Bernie to tell me what to do. I’m voting for Bernie because he might actually beat the monsters and start spending money to help everyone instead of just a few of Hillary’s fat cat friends. Why would I turn around and vote for the monsters if Bernie loses?”

The media dopes asked Susan Sarandon the same thing. “If Bernie loses, will you vote for Hillary in the general election?”

And she said, “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

This flummoxed the “liberal” pundits who are so far right of what used to be called liberal, the term is now essentially meaningless.

What You Can Do To Help?

Give Bernie money. Even ten bucks will help. Call your friends, especially in states with upcoming primaries, and convince them to vote for Bernie. Organize a Bernie Brigade and let your neighbors know Bernie is determined to institute Medicare For All and spend money on America instead of on foreign wars. Hold signs for Bernie at a busy intersection. However you can, spread the word that Bernie will help usher in a new age of equality and fairness and positive change—before it’s too late.

(Todd Walton’s website is UnderTheTableBooks.com.)