I tried to catch her name but couldn't. Dark hair swirled up into a little ponytail. She makes very telling points, for instance, that the thing that the Establishment most underestimates about Bernie activists is "our patience"! I think by "our" she was speaking of the young Bernie supporters like herself. What an extraordinary thing to say! And what a hopeful thing, from the point of view of this 71 year old Democrat. This is no flash movement. It is here to stay. And its purposes go way beyond this election year!
Actually, I'm blown away by the young peoples' fervent participation, and extraordinarily hard work--canvassing, phoning, organizing, putting these amazing rallies together--in the Bernie Sanders campaign. I have not seen anything like it in 50 years! And I think it reaches back even further, to the 1930s and the New Dealers--the deepest wave of fundamental change that ever surged up among our people to sweep away the old order, in that case, "organized money," as FDR called it, whose "hatred" he "welcomed."
One further thought: The hopes and dreams of the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement of the 1960s were largely crushed by Reaganism, and Democratic Party complicity with Reaganism. The initial crushing occurred with the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The "military-industrial complex" only got bigger and more dangerous. And, while some African Americans got rich and got accepted, most were left behind. And Reagan then empowered the wealthy to become the uber-wealthy and they, in turn, took over the Democratic Party via the Clinton's. Soon the protections against bank failure put in place by the New Deal were gone, masses of poor people were imprisoned, using the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs," and the military machine geared up for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people with "shock and awe" bombing, with one clusterfuck after another in the Middle East, with far worse consequences than the slaughter in Vietnam.
MY generation failed to solve the fundamental problems of our society and our country. Many of us understood what the problems were and are, but were overwhelmed by the forces against us.
THIS generation--now, at the other end of that long crushing and failure--seems more organized and more determined to rip the masks off our failed leadership and get at the heart of things: economic injustice on a massive scale, and the wars of the rich to control the resources of the world.
I am so heartened by them! I see so many new leaders arising, young people who can't be fooled and won't be stopped. Credit the internet. Credit the corruption and cluelessness of our leadership. Credit the ominous catastrophe of global warming. Credit the historic inevitability of rebellion in these circumstances--although, with global warming, these circumstances are unprecedented. Whatever you credit it to is probably inadequate to describe what is happening among the young. Their hearts and souls are on fire...and yet, and yet, they speak of patience! These extraordinarily wise youngsters!
= new reply since forum marked as read
