Sanders is extremely unlikely to win, but I support him as a Black guy. In a nutshell,, for me, it's about the future. It's about the intersection of race and class that are baked together. So much so that income inequality kills more Blacks than Whites.
I don't think Sanders is perfect. My list of issues with him are long, but many are the same problems that I have with all politicians. I'm not what you call a true believer in any pol. I can never go there in my mind, even with Sanders. However, I am a pragmatist. Not the kind where I live in fear of the Republicans. I'm the kind where, if we don't change , we will continue to live in fear of bat shit policies. To paraphrase two of my favorite lines from the song "Eyes on the Prize", "the only thing we did wrong was stayed in the Wilderness too long", and "the only thing we did right was when we learned how to fight." When Sanders talks about judgment, he is talking about how to fight, not if we should find. Do we triangulate to get what we can, and thus stay in the Wilderness longer than we may need to stay, or do we negotiate from strength? How do we gain strength? What judgment will get us there ? There are no easy answers here. There is a lot of nuance. But you have to ask and answer these questions in order to move foreword rather than tread water. Clinton 's appeal is that she feels safe. She is the pol that I know. She won't be the GOP. But, I will be reliving in the 90s. Sanders' appeal is that he offers more, but we must take the risk of changing. Is feeling safe enough when the narrative is controlled by the Far Right? I don't think it is. At times, I felt safe poor although I wasn't. I would settle into safe routines that I knew. When there wasn't a crisis. But then one would happen, and then I would remember. Do we need another financial melt down to happen in order for us to remember ? For me, when Sanders said to Chris Mathews (again paraphrasing ) that he saw negotiating with Mitch McConnell as futile and that we must win back Congress and use the power of the American voter, I thought "wow, he gets how you fight when the odds are against you." The battle when you are poor and black and trying to rise up out of poverty is similar: Don't fight on the other guy's term because they can always use class and race against you. You have to change the nature of the game to beat the house. As I grew up in the South in abject poverty and as I fought my way out of it, it was the belief that I must fight for something better along with the help of others that moved mountains. Secretary Clinton is an incrementalist. She assumes we have time to change direction as the car slowly drives over the cliff. I don't think we have that luxury. When I was growing up, if I had bought into that luxury, that some day the promised land would come, I would still be working as a laborer in the fields or helping white people that called me nigger. To me, this is a form of privilege. That we will get there eventually. Some day, our promised land will come, or worse, fear, fear that it may never happen, so why bother with hope. Let's settle. That lack of hope isn't pragmatism to me and it isn't new. The civil rights struggle was always a battle between the conservative " be happy with what you got" and the promise of liberation. My life experience has taught me that progress is not something that "must" happen. It's not something that will eventually happen because that's the we hope history will happen. It's something you fight for. You fight understanding you may lose. There will be those who say Clinton is a fighter. I concede she will fight the GOP. But I think that misunderstands the enemy. The GOP is only the most virulent expression of the enemy. The true enemy is maintaining the inertia of the status quo. That is playing by the rules that Reagan built, such as the inch by inch increase in income inequality. In accepting criminal justice injustice. If you are heading over a cliff, replacing speeding up with slowing down does not change the direction of the car. When I hear Sanders talking about Medicare for All, tuition free public college, child care and a living wage, I feel he is pushing for a change in direction, not just speed. I believe he is talking about black issues, but from a place of leaving the Wilderness and starting to fight, rather than the despair of "this is the way things are" and "our only option is living in fear by treading water with the Right. " I get the fear of "who is this guy making promises we have heard before" over the hope of better tomorrow when I can barely hold on today. Having been poor in the Reaganite South, that fear eats up every thought. Pragmatism is about survival. I'm hungry. I don't know how I am going to get my next meal. The inability to know how you are going to make it work. The need to cover up your fears with anything you can just to get to the next day. I also know that moment when you decide, the world is not going to destroy you. That giving into that fear kills you, That, despite everything, you are going to fight for something better. Even as you think it feels like pie j the sky. It feels like fantasy. No one struggling ever knows it's going to work out. But it's also the necessary first step because the alternative is that nothing will change, and you die. It's the pragmatism of what choice do you have if don't want to keep living in fear of what the bat shit Republicans might do to you. Sanders is not offering anything easy. If it were easy, it would already be done. That is what make it seem like fantasy - because it's not easy. But the alternative, of just treading water, is worse because the economic outlook will only become more difficult with the rise of AI and robotics and other economic disruption . I could go into much more detail, but, ultimately, Sanders is at least offering a change of direction, despite how hard it is, in ways that Secretary Clinton is not.↧