We are the Authority
Sanders, Bernie
We Are the Majority By Representative Bernie Sanders Illustration by Riccardo Vecchio How do we build a political movement in this country that represents all of the people and not a handful of...
...We can move toward harmony with the environment, not a war against the environment...
...It is Wal-Mart, which pays people subsistence wages and minimal benefits...
...I have a good job," think twice...
...The President of the United States represents, and works very hard for, the very wealthiest people in this country...
...So it doesn't surprise us that when he gives out tax breaks, they mostly go to the rich and the heads of large corporations...
...In the last three years alone, we have lost over two-and-a-half-million manufacturing jobs that were paying people decent middle class wages...
...And when you talk about patriotism, and when you talk about the American flag, what is corporate America doing by throwing American workers out on the street, moving to China, moving to countries where people can't even form a union or stand up for their rights...
...But now there are women running companies, women in politics, women making more money than you...
...We must move to sustainable and nonpolluting forms of energy as well as energy conservation...
...Now how many of you know that today the American worker is working longer hours by far than the people in any other industrialized country...
...Because of the greed of corporate America, real wages in the private sector are 8 percent less than they were thirty years ago...
...The United States must work with the United Nations and the international community to stabilize Iraq so that the Iraqi people can control their future...
...And on and on it goes...
...That's Bush's vision...
...And those of us who practice religion in one way, or believe in the separation of church and state, are supposed to be anti-religious, and trying to destroy Christianity in America—and we get divided up on that...
...Environmental degradation is threatening the wellbeing of our planet...
...Then tell me who is "fringe...
...They tell white workers their jobs are being lost not because corporate America is downsizing and moving to China, but because black workers are taking their jobs—because of affirmative action...
...You used to be the breadwinner...
...Then tell me who is "fringe...
...What he won't tell you is that 40 percent of those tax breaks went to the richest 1 percent, the people who need it the least, and that millions and millions of Americans who really need those tax breaks are getting nothing or only a few dollars...
...We must bring U.S...
...We are not down to a thirty-hour week...
...The national disgrace of the United States having the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world must be eliminated...
...So how do the rightwingers get elected if they have nothing to say about the most important issues facing the American people...
...We know, that come election time, they will have huge sums of money that we will never come near to having...
...And my friends, it is not only manufacturing jobs that are going abroad...
...And that's where corporate America is moving...
...So they divide us, and the result is that tens of millions of working people vote against their own interests...
...That is what they are trying to do, and we are not going to allow them to get away with it...
...Think about how many decent-paying jobs we can create as we move this economy off of fossil fuel...
...That's the collapse of the middle class, and we have got to turn that around...
...The homosexuals are taking over the schools...
...Let me just list a few...
...And those of us who were born in America are supposed to hate immigrants...
...But it's not just Wal-Mart...
...Today, 40 percent of American workers are working fifty hours a week or more...
...And we remember all of those people throughout history, some of them whose names we don't know, people who struggled for workers' rights, for public education, against racism, sexism, homophobia...
...We're going to work with the international community, with the United Nations, to create a world where we eliminate war and eliminate poverty...
...We've got to protect the overtime pay that workers have earned...
...It has gone to the people on top, who have seen a huge increase in the percentage of wealth and income they receive...
...It is not acceptable that the wealthiest 1 percent of the population owns more wealth than the bottom 95 percent...
...And we are not going to be going to war whenever the President of the United States says it's a good idea...
...Let me say a word about those people...
...Corporate America essentially is saying the hell with the American worker, the hell with the United States of America...
...But now they are giving us the largest deficit in American history...
...And when we do that, there is no doubt in my mind that not only will we win the next election, but we will create an America that Bob La Follette would be very proud of...
...They don't have to get on the airlines like you do...
...We can't afford to protect Medicare and Medicaid...
...Our veterans should not be placed on waiting lists for the health care they were promised...
...they have enough money to buy their way to get their kids into any college in America...
...More money is flying into Congress in campaign contributions than you can believe...
...White against black...
...Straights against gays...
...You've got to duck so you don't get hit by the money...
...That's easy...
...By standing up to the pharmaceutical industry, we can lower the cost of prescription drugs by 30 to 50 percent, and develop a strong prescription drug benefit under Medicare...
...The vision that La Follette and others have given us is something that we appreciate very much because it makes us all better human beings...
...Go out on Main Street, stand at the corner, and ask people a simple question...
...If some of you say, "Well, I went to college, man, I know how to work that computer...
...The middle class is not expanding, and poverty has not been eliminated...
...Representative Bernie Sanders is an Independent and a democratic socialist from Vermont...
...You can't win an election with the support of 2 percent...
...If there's a computer or a telephone job, it could be done any place in the world at a fraction of the wages that are paid in America...
...We will do anything we want in order to make more and more profits...
...Politics is a 365-day-a-year struggle...
...We want to spend time with our families...
...Our health care system is disintegrating, and we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs...
...A hundred years ago, workers all over this country held huge demonstrations, and they had big banners that said, "Give us a forty-hour week...
...That is their cynical plan: to destroy the basic rights that millions of people have fought for and received, and to bring us back to the nineteenth century, where the American people had no rights, where the elderly were the poorest people in our society, where children slept out on the streets without nutrition programs, where workers were unable to form unions, where there were no health care programs for the elderly...
...We can't afford to protect the Veterans Administration...
...It's not just coming out on a given day to express concerns about the environment, or racism, or whatever the single issue may be...
...The scandal of our time is that with all the explosion of technology and productivity the average American is not working fewer hours and making more money...
...We remember your fellow Midwesterner Eugene Debs...
...We have to have the courage to knock on doors even if some people may disagree with us...
...Today, the largest employer in America is not General Motors...
...What is even more cynical about these tax breaks is that here you have a conservative President and a conservative party, which for years have been ranting and raving about how terrible deficits are...
...Some of them died in their struggle...
...We've got to get on the telephone and start making calls...
...And if you're not for a war in Iraq waged on the dubious and illegal doctrine of "preemptive war," you're somehow unpatriotic...
...It has been a struggle to create a country that belongs to all of us and not just the people on top, and that is our struggle of today...
...We've got to change labor law so that workers can join unions when they want to...
...We've got to raise the minimum wage to a living wage...
...That's not America...
...Higher education and child care should be available to all Americans—regardless of income...
...And it's important that we talk about that because you're not going to read about it in most newspapers or see it on television...
...And they're turning straight people against gay people...
...We're not beasts of burden...
...Men against women...
...Very few people in the media reflect our point of view...
...We're all going to go out and get it for ourselves, to hell with the environment, to hell with future generations, to hell with anybody else...
...Now when we talk about what's happening in the middle class today, hear this...
...In this great country, we can create an economy that provides for a decent standard of living for every man, woman, and child...
...But we also know something else: that we are the vast majority of the people...
...What he will also not tell you is what's really behind those tax breaks...
...What they are now doing is living in guarded compounds...
...If you turn on talk radio, what you will hear, in an almost compulsive way, is a hatred of women...
...It is not acceptable that the 13,000 wealthiest families in this country earn more income than the bottom twenty million families...
...I'll tell you why they are doing that...
...We want to get more education...
...And, just coincidentally, he is on his way to raising $200 million from these very same people for his primary campaign—and he doesn't even have an opponent...
...It is very clear that these people have put their own greed ahead of the middle class and working families of this country...
...And where has all of that accumulated wealth gone...
...But if we focus on the basic economic issues—and we explain to people that when they cast their votes solely on issues like abortion, or gay rights, or any other single issue, the rich and the powerful are laughing all the way to the bank—we will be successful in bringing people together and winning elections...
...That's how they live—separate and segregated from what's going on in this country...
...troops home as soon as feasible...
...We must expand and protect Social Security, not privatize it...
...If the President of the United States were here today—and believe me, I wish he were here today, I wish he would come out and talk to ordinary Americans—he would tell you his greatest accomplishment is the tax breaks that he has given America...
...I want you to disabuse yourselves of that notion...
...Tell them you're doing an informal poll, and ask them if they want 40 percent of the tax breaks, hundreds of billions of dollars, to go to the top 1 percent, or whether those breaks should be spread around more fairly and be used for education or lowering the deficit...
...We have to be in touch with our local radio and television stations and the local newspaper...
...It's grotesque, but that's politics...
...They are doing that so that they'll come back before the American people and say, "We cannot afford to maintain Social Security...
...The middle class is collapsing, the people on top are making out like bandits, and the poorest people are struggling just to keep their heads above water...
...To be effective politically, we cannot talk only to people who agree with us...
...The hard part is going out and talking to people in the working and middle classes who don't yet agree with us...
...Without spending a nickel more than we now spend, we can guarantee health care to all Americans through a single-payer national health care system...
...After all, Bush, well, was almost elected, and there is rightwing control of the House of Representatives, led by a gentleman named Tom DeLay...
...But to do this, we have to understand that politics is not just an anti-war demonstration...
...Instead of giving huge tax breaks to the rich and large corporations, we should provide for the middle class and working families of this country...
...We'll go forward without them...
...The Republican leadership does all of this in an incredibly cynical, poll-driven way, because they know when you lay out their program about the most important economic issues facing America, it ends up that they are representing the interests of 2 percent of the population...
...We are the middle class and working families, and there are a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them...
...We can have social justice and end discrimination based on race, gender, and sexual orientation...
...And they're telling working class guys, you used to have some power...
...They fly in their Lear jets...
...Let's talk about patriotism...
...This is adapted from a speech he gave at "Fighting Bob Fest" in Baraboo, Wisconsin, on September 6. The festival is named after Senator Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette, one of the leaders of the progressive movement and the founder of this magazine...
...It is the transformation of the American economy that Congress is not talking about, that the President certainly is not talking about, and that the media is not talking about...
...And that vision is not the vision of George Bush, which basically says it's every person for himself or herself, that we don't have to worry about the children, we don't have to worry about the poor, we don't have to worry about the old, we don't have to worry about working people...
...They don't have to worry about how their kids are going to go to college or high school because they have the money to send their kids to the best private schools in America...
...You represent mainstream America...
...privatize it...
...So they must be representing the majority of the people, and we're just a smart minority of the people...
...There is rightwing control of the United States Senate...
...Ask them if we should continue to let polluters destroy our environment, or move to safe, sustainable energy...
...We're remembering one of your other great members of Congress, Victor Berger...
...Let's talk about investing in America and expanding the middle class...
...imperial power...
...And our job is to tell them that if they don't come back to America, then the hell with them...
...We are part of an American community and a world community...
...privatize it...
...We Are the Majority By Representative Bernie Sanders Illustration by Riccardo Vecchio How do we build a political movement in this country that represents all of the people and not a handful of millionaires...
...It is now being sued by workers in twenty-eight states because the company is not even paying the overtime it should be paying...
...Our views are not reflective of a vast majority of the people...
...We've got to renegotiate our disastrous trade policies that have cost us millions of decent paying jobs...
...Gay marriage is destroying the country...
...They don't get on crowded mass transit to get to work...
...What they had in common was a vision they fought for, and we're very grateful that they passed that vision on to us...
...We must work for world peace, and not U.S...
...Ask them if we should maintain our disintegrating health care nonsystem or establish a universal health care system that guarantees health care for all...
...We want some vacation time...
...Our struggle, the struggle of millions of people for 150 years, has been for basic human dignity...
...That we can understand...
...That is what the Republican Party is all about...
...And the answer is that they work day and night to divide the American people against each other so that they end up voting against their own best interests...
...That is the central question of modern American politics...
...We're not animals...
...Then tell me who is "fringe...
...We are the majority...
...It is not acceptable that the greed of corporate America has resulted in the CEOs of large corporations earning over 500 times what their average worker makes...
...And we have to understand that on some issues there will be differences of opinion...
...That's not America, and we're going to change that...
...On the contrary, it has increased...
...They're after your jobs, as well...
...Our national priorities are backwards...
...We want the people in China, in India, all over the world, to do well, but we want a globalization that does not lead to a race to the bottom but uplifts all of the people of the world...
...Sometimes progressives say, well, you know, we're right, but we're really kind of fringe...
...Now what are some of the issues...
...Today, the concentration of wealth and income in this country is not only greater than at any time since the 1920s, but it is far greater than in any other major country on Earth...
...privatize it...
...We've got to put people to work building affordable housing, schools, mass transportation, and a sustainable energy system...
...Today, we are honoring Bob La Follette...
...Many of them suffered...
...The middle class is collapsing, and we need a fundamental alternative to trickle down economics and unfettered free trade...
...Why are they driving up a huge national debt that our kids and grandchildren are going to have to pay off...
Vol. 68 • February 2004 • No. 2
