SANDERS IN LA … A PERSONAL ACCOUNT--Monday’s Bernie Sanders event at the LA Sports Arena was a packed house of 27,000 diverse and inspired supporters. Even before Sanders spoke, those representing concerned constituencies pointed out in their introduction of “Bernie,” (his preferred means of address, as comedienne Sarah Silverman later pointed out), that he was “the only candidate talking about real issues” rather than vacuous platitudes.
Bernie proposed real and substantive programs and solutions to address problems related to race, labor, the environment, gender wage equality, immigrant rights, healthcare, and much more that have and continue to negatively affect this country. All these issues have only been exacerbated since the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, which assures only billionaires like the Kochs and Waltons will have their interests valued by a government that they can now legally buy.
Bernie asked his audience, “What system of campaign financing is most akin to democracy? One where the Koch brothers can legally give $15 million to Republican candidate Ted Cruz or where a Senator Bernie Sanders raises $15 million from 200,000 citizens?”
While Sanders said he would keep an open mind on all other issues if elected president, one issue he made perfectly clear that is not negotiable for him: “Any candidate for the Supreme Court I might consider nominating would have to agree to seek the overturning of Citizens United.” The upper 1 percent can no longer use the manipulation of government in a “rigged economy” to control 90 percent of the country’s total wealth.
Bernie’s "New America," as he fleshed out in detail throughout his speech, clearly harkened back to and also updates President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s. The diverse constituencies that had come out to hear his speech in force was evidence of that.
In his speech, Bernie also anticipated the purposefully cultivated apathy nurtured by the corporate-dominated mainstream media that is completely controlled by five corporations or the foundations they use to compromise even NPR objective reporting.
Taking a page from whistle blower Ed Snowden, many of the young tech-savvy Bernie supporters are already using social media and the Internet to reach, educate, and give a voice to Bernie's “New America.” The traditional corporate-dominated media has no means of silencing them.
With a young and tech-savvy base of supporters that no longer watches network news, Bernie Sanders might just be the first presidential candidate to marginalize the mainstream media in political campaigning -- by using social media and the Internet to reach the 99 Percent.
NEED TO KNOW:
https://twitter.com/sensanders
https://www.facebook.com/senatorsanders?fref=ts
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 66
Pub: Aug 14, 2015
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