BRATTLEBORO — At the People's Summit recently held in Chicago, I saw several thousand people come together to celebrate the “political revolution” launched by Bernie Sanders and to confront the question of what next in the face of Hillary Clinton's presumptive nomination.
Many came hoping Bernie will join with Jill Stein and the Green Party to continue his campaign. Most organizers understood that proposition unlikely. Bernie has made his bed in the Democratic Party, and that is where he is going to stay.
However, it's clear he will not do so quietly.
I met 3,000-plus participants who were diverse in age and ethnicity. Among them, I felt the pain of the American working and middle class.
People seethed about racialized unemployment, underemployment, and wage discrimination. Environmental devastation against people in the water of Flint, Mich., and the households living near fracking wells echoed in their demands for new accountability, infrastructure, and climate justice.
Awareness of corrupt campaign finance having ravaged democracy vibrated throughout.
People are angry, fed up, and fighting.
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I learned a few things from the people I met.
First, millennials trust The New York Times and its media ilk (MSNBC, CNN, and the like) the way I (a Bernie supporter since 1981) trust Fox News, which is to say not at all.
This is excellent news. Blog and Internet news sources like The Young Turks Network, Inquisitr, and Observer bring to the fore millennial journalism based on seeing corruption in politics, racism in the justice system, and science in global warming.
The easy condescension of the network television nightly news, Paul Krugman, and Chris Matthews no longer holds weight with the younger half of this country.
Second, the working poor and middle class are fed up, and they know what neoliberalism and corporate-funded government do to them. They're hip to the manipulation, and they're not accepting it.
Third, Bernie Sanders' campaign unified a diverse set of local and national protest, reform, and union organizations under the banner of political revolution, and the amalgamation is not dissolving with the July convention or the November election.
Fourth, Hillary Clinton is in trouble. If elected, she will enjoy no “honeymoon.” Repeatedly, participants compared her to Richard Nixon in 1968. Just as with Nixon, Clinton is a fading politician yearning to create a legacy that somehow dodges serial lying, Wall Street pandering, and neo-liberal boosterism.
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On July 25, thousands will converge on the streets of Philadelphia, and at least 2,000 in the hall of the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
There, they will demand single-payer health care, deracialized criminal justice, infrastructure repair, a $15 minimum wage, voting accountability, green energy, and a national end to fracking.
Some will sit in, some will shout, some will rally inside the convention. But none are going away when it's over.
Organizations like Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, are Fight for $15 are now joined with 350.org, Progressive Democrats of America, and The People for Bernie under a single banner - political revolution.
If it's Hillary Clinton or if it's Donald Trump, the new president will face a populist movement energized by Bernie Sanders' success - a movement comprised of people raring to move forward.
It will not be boring, and there will be no politics as usual for a long time.