NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, November 30th, 2016

LIVE from Seattle’s U District: Bernie Sanders joins supporters to discuss Our Revolution

Good evening from the Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­trict, and wel­come to NPI’s live cov­er­age of the Seat­tle stop of Bernie Sanders’ Our Rev­o­lu­tion book tour. Sen­a­tor Sanders is join­ing a packed house of sup­port­ers at Uni­ver­si­ty Tem­ple Unit­ed Methodist Church to pro­mote his recent­ly-released book and talk about the direc­tion of the pro­gres­sive move­ment as Amer­i­ca enters the Trump error.

Sen­a­tor Sanders is due to be intro­duced in a few min­utes. We have a full house here, with this event hav­ing sold out sev­er­al weeks ago. Tick­et­buy­ers received a copy of Bernie’s book as part of the price of admission.

The Sen­a­tor is sched­uled to speak for around twen­ty to thir­ty min­utes and will then take ques­tions from the audi­ence. I’ll be updat­ing this post fre­quent­ly with high­lights from the remarks and Q&A. Enjoy!

UPDATE, 7:18 PM: Bernie arrived a few min­utes ago to a stand­ing ova­tion. He launched right into his remarks upon tak­ing the stage, intro­duc­ing him­self as the hus­band of Jane Sanders. He touched on the recent­ly-con­clud­ed pres­i­den­tial con­test imme­di­ate­ly, ask­ing the audi­ence to remem­ber that Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Hillary Clin­ton is win­ning the pop­u­lar vote nationwide.

He then began a con­cise ren­di­tion of his stump speech, high­light­ing the need for bold pro­gres­sive solu­tions to address the cli­mate cri­sis, mon­ey in pol­i­tics, sys­temic racism, and income inequal­i­ty. Many of the ideas that pro­gres­sives sup­port are ideas that the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans also enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly sup­port, Sanders noted.

UPDATE, 7:25 PM: Turn­ing his atten­tion to Don­ald Trump, Sanders lit into the neo­fas­cist tycoon for false­ly pro­claim­ing that he would have won the pop­u­lar vote were it not for fraud­u­lent votes. “We’re get­ting used to hav­ing gov­ern­ment by tweet,” Sanders said. “A hun­dred and forty char­ac­ters or less.”

The real pur­pose of Trump’s tweet was to encour­age Repub­li­cans all over the coun­try to pur­sue vot­er sup­pres­sion schemes that will dis­en­fran­chise Demo­c­ra­t­ic and pro­gres­sive vot­ers, Sanders added.

UPDATE, 7:30 PM: We can­not com­pro­mise with big­otry, Sanders told sup­port­ers, declar­ing that it’s up to all of us to fight to expand free­dom, even with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty out of pow­er at the fed­er­al level.

“What we say to Mr. Trump [is]: We have trav­eled too far in the fight against dis­crim­i­na­tion. We are not going back­wards,” Sanders said, as the audi­ence jumped to its feet to give him anoth­er stand­ing ovation.

UPDATE, 7:35 PM: Sanders says he thinks Don­ald Trump won by “speak­ing to the pain and anx­i­ety peo­ple today are feel­ing” and by skil­ful­ly exploit­ing Amer­i­ca’s big media (which is dis­cussed in the last chap­ter of his book Our Revolution).

UPDATE, 7:41 PM: The despair in many pock­ets in Amer­i­ca over declin­ing qual­i­ty of life has got­ten so bad that it’s dri­ven peo­ple to abuse opi­ates and alco­hol and com­mit sui­cide, Sanders says, not­ing that the big media does­n’t do a very good job of cov­er­ing these issues… but Don­ald Trump saw them and took advan­tage by prey­ing on peo­ple’s fears and anxieties.

UPDATE, 7:44 PM: “For bet­ter or worse, I’ve been made a part of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship in the Sen­ate,” Sanders said, explain­ing that he will be respon­si­ble for out­reach on behalf of the cau­cus and will need his sup­port­ers’ help.

POSTSCRIPT: See also Paul Con­stan­t’s write­up at the Seat­tle Review of Books.

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One Comment

  1. Mr. Sanders is a states­man; we are for­tu­nate to be liv­ing in a time with such a one as he.
    We need more lead­ers, clear, focused, aware of the decep­tion and con­fu­sion this coun­try now faces.

    # by Tamarlee Alleva :: November 30th, 2016 at 7:51 PM
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