General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This message was self-deleted by its author [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There were no significant number of Sanders people who preferred Bernie to his more conservative primary opponent because they wanted white men to have privilege. The vast majority of us condemn any who did.
Sanders people oppose social oppression to the core of our beings.
And we are all with you in fighting all forms of oppression.
Sanders supporters oppose white supremacism, and sexism, and homo-and-trans phobia.
We aren't your enemies.
We are trying to work with you and find common ground.
It appears you still can't trust us on this.
It appears you still aren't interested in dialog or education(most Sanders people are in their early 20s-if nothing else, you might want to consider giving THEM at least some benefit of the doubt that if they've said things you disagree with it was out of lack of education rather than malicious intent)
What do you gain by prioritizing lashing out at us when it's the right that's the enemy?
What do you gain by continuing to turn this into an argument that the party has to choose between social justice AND economic justice rather than working intersectionally for both?
It looks as though you still want to bar essentially ALL Sanders people from any meaningful role in the party. Is that what you want? And if you succeeded in that, where would we ever get the votes to win another election? We can't win simply on demographic change...the Right will use vote suppression to make that impossible.
Why does there still seem to be this insistence that Sanders supporters renounce not only any identification with him but essentialy any common identity. How can they ever be activists for the people, against greed, against inequality and for peace ever again if they
atomize and become nothing but disconnected individuals? How could they ever stand for anything again if they simply atomized as a movement? Why force them to choose to never be politically effective again?
As to the idiots who voted Trump(a pathetically tiny sliver of people out of all who supported Bernie):
You're talking to someone who spent the fall working to get Sanders people to vote for Hillary(mostly with success, but with some bloody-minded idiots making the choice you mentioned there). Most Sanders supporters(the Bobs were a tiny fraction)can say the same.
It's simply not true that the Sanders movement was "white men who want theirs". We had our flaws, but we always fought for everyone. We were never about holding people of color, women, LGBTQ people or immigrants, and the fact that a handful of people on the Internet(which is always the place you'll see the worst specimens of human consciousness)said horrible things while claiming to support Bernie doesn't change that.
But I'll leave you with this question again...since neither Bernie nor Hillary will ever run again, why do you still insist on seeing this as Bernie V. Hillary?
(on edit)...ok, that was a link to Bernie's speech from November. Look, I'm not trying to sell you on him as a candidate. Bernie's never going to run for the presidency again. And I agree with you that he should have said more on race. But Sanders supporters are not responsible for what he said as a former candidate. It serves no purpose to go off on us for this rather than giving us the chance to work with you, which is what we want to do.