Feel The Bern
5:46 PM
I have had the privilege of reading up on and watching Bernie Sanders during the most recent months of the presidential election. Before I had even heard of Sanders, I was a bit disappointed with the democratic candidates; Clinton and O’Malley just weren’t doing it for me, and I wanted someone more apt to the issues I was interested in. Immediately after reading up on Sanders, I began to realize that his views almost mirrored mine. Sanders, however, isn’t one of the most talked-about candidates in the upcoming presidential election.
Bernie Sanders could be one of the most underestimated candidates in the 2016 election, with most of his supporters residing on the internet. Sanders, born Bernard Sanders on September 8th, 1941, is the child of two Jewish immigrants, his father a Holocaust survivor. Sanders attended the University of Chicago and served as a student organizer for The Congress of Racial Equality during the time of his studies. His first notable accomplishment was leading the first-ever civil rights sit in the history of Chicago, to protest the segregated housing policy. Before graduating in 1964 with a degree in political science, as most politicians do, Sanders participated in The March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his accomplished ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. He served as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, for four consecutive terms and afterwards became a member of the U.S House of Representatives, where he served for 16 years. Most recently, Sanders has become a Vermont Senator.
His early life is extremely important in regards to who he is as a politician. After all, he attended racial equality rallies in a time when racial equality as a social concept was nearly unthought of, thus, really proving how liberal he is and always has been.
The former independent announced his candidacy on April 30th, 2015, and officially began his campaign on May 26th. Unlike a majority of the candidates, Sanders relishes in the fact that he runs on small independent donations, rather than a super PAC.
“We must pursue policies to transform this country into a nation that affirms the value of it’s POC.” Racial justice could be one of the most pertinent topics surrounding the Sanders Campaign. Sandra Bland, Mike Brown, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin. This is just a small slew of the names that can be found in an obituary of sorts underneath the racial justice link on Sanders' website. So far, Bernie Sanders is the only candidate to not only openly mention #BlackLivesMatter but support it as well, presumably because of the views he’s carried since early adulthood, at the very least. Sanders hopes to change a lot in regards to racial justice, or what is more commonly referred to as police brutality, and I think it is paramount that we let him do so. In a country founded on systematic racism, Sanders hopes to implement new policies that change the way our officials, and us, the people, think and act. He hopes to demilitarize police forces, making them look less ready for an all-out war. Ideally, he would also like to make body cameras mandatory and implement new training systems, allowing police to deescalate a situation without using deadly force. He wishes to not only crack down on federal officials, but hate groups as well.
“...We are a nation of immigrants.” One extremely taboo subject, or not-so-taboo depending on how you look at it, is immigration. Let’s face it: it’s been all over the news for the past ten or so years. Big players, such as Donald Trump, hope to basically build a wall between us and our Mexican border. Bernie Sanders seems to want almost exactly the opposite, hoping to employ humanitarian parole officers to ensure the return of wrongfully-deported immigrants. He also wants to create a reformed visa system, in turn making becoming a U.S citizen not only easier, but more accessible.
Ask yourself this question: “Am I a feminist?” This is often a hard question for people to answer, but it really is simple. If you believe in equality between genders, then you indeed are a feminist, whether you think that's shameful or not. Sanders wants to expand on the idea of gender equality, or cases of oppression, including, among other things, the visible wage gap between men and women. On average, women earn 78 cents to the man's dollar. Sanders refers to this as a national disgrace and also brings up the even bigger wage gap for African American and Hispanic women, totaling up to 64 and 54 cents, respectively. Sanders plans on fighting for women’s reproductive rights, protecting planned parenthood. Sanders has the goal of effectively preserving and equating the rights of women and WOC.
Other miscellaneous, but still equally as important, goals that Sanders plans on fighting for are free tuition and raising the minimum wage. The ideal minimum wage, in Sanders' opinion, would be $15 per hour, and is something he would like to accomplish before 2020. He also hopes to make all public colleges and universities free of annual tuition. Since France’s statements about climate change, it has been on the minds of many politicians. Sanders would like to put a tax on carbon, which would benefit the economy as well as the Earth, and also ban offshore oil drilling and successfully execute a science-based solution for carbon polluting emissions. Lastly, banning fracking is doubtlessly one of his largest and best goals, considering fracking puts the public at extreme risk.
With all this said, I think it’s clear why Bernard Sanders sticks out from the rest. He’s a revolutionary thinker and, for the first time, would bring liberal ideas into the White House. Feel the Bern.
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