Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

The Fighting Soul: On the Road With Bernie Sanders Part 1

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Two Weeks ago, I read an op-ed by Maureen Dowd, “Still Feeling the Bern. ” It’s a favorable interview and review of Ari Rabin-Havi about his book on working for Bernie Sanders as a staffer, later as “Earl’s” deputy campaign manager and close political adviser. The memoir is entitled The Fighting Soul: On the Road with Bernie Sanders.

Dowd supplies some good leads about the book, but I will include for brevity only this summation:

When Sanders met with Barack Obama at his Georgetown office in 2018 to tell him he was thinking about running for president again, Obama offered this advice: “Bernie, you are an Old Testament prophet — a moral voice for our party giving us guidance. Here is the thing, though. Prophets don’t get to be king. Kings have to make choices prophets don’t. Are you willing to make those choices?”

Rabin-Havt (whose brother, Raphi, worked with me at The Times for a spell) writes: “Obama continued, making the point that to win the Democratic nomination, Bernie would have to widen his appeal and convince the party to back him — which would mean being a different type of politician and a different type of candidate than he wanted to be. Bernie listened to Obama, but it was clear to me he never accepted that premise. He has a fundamental belief that he could lead an uncompromising movement that would challenge those who ran the Democratic Party while also leading that same institution, one he steadfastly refused to join.”

The author sums up with a trenchant point: Bernie may never see “the promised land,” but he did win.

“While Bernie Sanders will never be president, his two campaigns have transformed the Democratic Party and this country. Old orthodoxies about government spending and foreign policy have crumbled as a result of the unceasing efforts by an old socialist.”

I labeled this post part one for a good reason. Thanks to Dowd’s op-ed, I decided to buy a Kindle edition of the book and it arrived yesterday. I’m about 20% of the way through. It’s very relaxed in its prose, and candid at times about the frustrations in creating work arounds to make the trains run on time. Some of it has surprised me, such as learning that Bernie is a football fan. I thought he liked baseball and basketball, hereto alas, he likes football and roots for the New England Patriots. (The author is a Giants fan and finds the Pats annoying) I enjoy reading about Bernie’s proclivities and use of foul language when away from microphones. Dowd put it this way in her piece:

I relish hearing about what Rabin-Havt calls “Bernie’s natural impatience” with the frivolous — pretty much everything except the sweeping changes he wants in the country.

There are some happy moments with co-chairs of the campaign, such as Nina Turner’s great effort of personally adopting SC for one of the first primary states in campaigning for the senator. Rabin-Havt shared more of the strategy in the book, which political historians will appreciate. Much of it we knew from reports in the news and all of us who attended rallies, but Rabin-Havt reveals the thinking behind it.

Thus, this is my part 1 since I’m only a 1/5 of the way in the book. It’s a pleasure so far to read. I’ll give my own review later.

I’m posting some videos and reviews in the comments. feel free to add your own. I’ll be reviving this later in the week.

4/25-6 News Roundup & Open Thread

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Bernie Sanders and AOC Rally With Amazon Workers Ahead of Second Warehouse Vote

What started out as a lonesome, quixotic battle to unionize workers against online retail behemoth Amazon is getting a major boost from national progressive lawmakers.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallied around Amazon Labor Union members and warehouse workers on Staten Island as the union prepares for the start of a second vote on Monday at a distribution center known as LDJ5, where some 1,500 employees ready orders for delivery.

“What this struggle is about, it’s not just Amazon Staten Island. This is the struggle that is taking place all across this country. Working people are sick and tired of falling further and further behind while billionaires like [Amazon founder Jeff] Bezos becomes much richer,” Sanders told the crowd of more than 300 people gathered near the bus stop that’s become the nucleus for ALU’s drive.

The once-longshot organizers are hoping to replicate their success earlier this month when they pulled off a history-making upset at the JFK8 Amazon warehouse across the street from LDJ5, becoming the first Amazon union in the country.

After receiving minimal support from progressive stakeholders, who remained largely silent during the unionization drive, the prevailing theme for Amazon Labor Union’s leaders going forward is solidarity.

Calling the rally “Solidarity Sunday,” Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls told THE CITY that presenting a unified front is “very important” for boosting worker morale ahead of the vote.

“You have to have politician support. We have to have the community supporting us and today was a good example and a good start to that leading up to the election that takes place tomorrow. So we couldn’t have asked for anything better than to have Bernie and AOC show up today,” Smalls said, wearing a red, yellow and black bomber jacket embroidered with the words ‘Eat the Rich.’

The ALU’s demands remain the same at LDJ5: a $30 an hour minimum wage, better working conditions, including two paid 30-minute breaks and an hour-long paid lunch break, better medical leave, additional paid time off and eliminating productivity rates that require workers to pick a certain number of items per hour.

But organizing workers at LDJ5 comes with its own set of challenges, and Amazon has no plans on relenting against the union, having already filed objections to the first vote claiming that the National Labor Relations Board is giving the ALU preferential treatment.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

‘Lies and Rumors’
Amazon has been shutting down the LDJ5 facility for an hour each shift to pull workers into so-called captive audience meetings staged by management to discuss the pitfalls of unionizing, said Maddie Wesley, an LDJ5 worker since August 2021 and the treasurer of the ALU.

The mood inside the distribution center has been “very intense” in recent weeks, Wesley recalled to THE CITY, as she was about to begin her Sunday afternoon shift.

“It’s a smaller facility, so we thought that would actually make it easier. But what’s made it difficult is that rumors spread quicker in a smaller facility, and so Amazon’s method of spreading lies and rumors has been somewhat effective because everyone kind of knows each other in the building,” Wesley said.

Among those rumors is that ALU leaders bought lavish cars with the money the union raised so far — almost $323,000 through GoFundMe, up from the roughly $100,000 they received prior to the first vote at JFK8.

Wesley said she’s heard rumors that she purchased a Mercedes Benz and that Smalls bought himself a Lamborghini.

“I got a little toy one from the dollar store,” Smalls joked.

Across the street at the JFK8 warehouse, management has been “grabbing people” and asking them to meet privately with Amazon lawyers and human resources to question them about whether they were coerced to vote in favor of unionization, said Pasquale Cioffi, a process assistant at JFK8 and supporter of the ALU who has been working for the company for two years.

“They’re putting pressure on the workers,” said Cioffi, who’s known as “Uncle Pat” among workers and the union. “They’re grabbing people, they’re taking them to the office and they want to know if they were somehow threatened.”

The unionization drive was sparked by Smalls’ termination in the spring of 2020 for allegedly breaking safety guidelines after organizing a protest over what workers alleged were inadequate COVID-protection measures.

In the months since, Smalls, his best friend Derrick Palmer, and other current and former Amazon workers have staked out a bus stop on the sprawling Staten Island campus, talking to workers about the benefits of joining a union as they go to-and-from their jobs.

The ALU’s unconventional tactics — like hosting barbecues and events outside of the facilities and deploying a robust social media presence on Instagram and TikTok — have so far proved successful against the multi-billion dollar online retailer.

In the days leading up to the Monday vote, The Rolling Library, a mutual aid group, partnered with the ALU to offer free books and COVID tests to workers. Meanwhile, members of the union stationed themselves outside of LDJ5, setting up a table outside one of the warehouse’s entrances to distribute union literature, snacks and barbeque fixings.

Within the distribution center, a 975,000 square foot facility opened in the fall of 2020, Amazon has ratcheted up its union-busting effort, deploying the same anti-union literature, posters and TV images it did at the warehouse across the street, workers said.

“It’s everywhere, all over the facility ‘please vote no,’ ‘please vote no,’” said Wesley.

According to Smalls, Amazon is “doubling down, tripling down on union busting.”

“It’s easier for them to isolate workers, so it’s a challenge. It’s definitely a challenge for organizing and they’re demonizing them and we have to withstand the onslaught of that as well. But I think the momentum is with the workers,” Smalls said.

The organizing effort secured a key win earlier this week when an administrative judge ordered that Amazon would have to reinstate and pay lost wages to Gerald Bryson, a JFK8 worker who helped lead the protest over working conditions at the warehouse. Bryson was fired by the company after staging another demonstration and getting into an argument with a coworker.

AOC: ‘NYC Is a Union Town’
The vote count for LDJ5 is slated to begin on May 2. In the meantime, the ALU is asking Amazon to recognize the union and begin negotiating a contract, which the ALU leadership considers the “real fight.”

“First and foremost, Jeff Bezos, Amazon, everybody, we got to recognize the fact that they did this thing and won a union election fair and square right here in New York City,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “And now what we need to do next is make sure we support them.”

“All of us as a city need to remember that New York City is a union town. Here in New York, you gotta treat our people right. If you can go to space, you can give our people a bathroom break,” she added, referring to Bezos’ “astronaut” tourism.

Propelled into the spotlight, Smalls has been a fixture on cable shows and late night TV in the weeks since the historic win — appearing on Tucker Carlson’s FOX News show and the Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Media interest has also blossomed with dozens of cameras and reporters from major news outlets swarming to cover the ALU’s Sunday event, a far bigger crowd than at their press conference two weeks ago.

“We expected that after the win. We didn’t know it would be that rapid. This is about how we balance and stay grounded and stay true to what the ALU represents and don’t get distracted by the outside,” said Smalls.

“It’s been a whirlwind of things. I’m just trying to balance things as best as possible,” he said.

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are at a union rally in NYC

(photo attribution: Josefa Velasquez)

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4/9-10 Weekend Open Thread

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Sanders’ Hearing on Corporate Greed Goes Unnoticed by Corporate Media

It is exceedingly rare for a major congressional committee to hold hearings on “corporate greed” leading to corporate profiteering and surging prices on consumer goods. On April 5, 2022, Senate Budget Chairman, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) chartered uncensored territory on corporate avarice with a lead witness, former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Although the hearing covered bread and butter issues, the mainstream corporate media ignored it. Massive coverage of the war in Ukraine does not offend advertisers, while the corporate war on consumers directly involves corporate advertisers.

Corporate greed takes hundreds of thousands of American lives every year (think the opioid disaster, the tobacco cancer business, the toxins in the air and water), not to mention injuries and illnesses stemming from corporations that put extra profit over concerns about public health and safety.

However, at the Senate hearing, Sanders chose to focus on the economic exploitation of consumers. Here is his introductory remark:

“Across every major industry, prices continue to rise – this includes a 38 percent increase in the price of gasoline, a 44 percent increase in the price of heating oil, a 41 percent increase in the price of a used car, a 24 percent in the price of rental cars, and a 17 percent increase in the price of furniture. Further, Tyson Foods recently increased beef prices by 32 percent, the price of chicken by 20 percent and the price of pork by 13 percent. As prices increase, corporate profits hit a record high of nearly $3 trillion in 2021, up 25 percent in a single year.”

He might have added that the companies profiting from these price increases paid a record low amount in federal income taxes. Moreover, the net worth of their richest shareholders soared in the midst of the pandemic.

Sanders denounced $900 billion in stock buybacks last year alone (a sign of excessive pricing power). In 2020, he added, the CEOs of major U.S. companies on average “made nearly 350 times more than the median worker.”

Senator Sanders could have noted that Apple’s CEO Tim Cook is making $50,000 an hour or about $850 a minute this year! (No, those are not typos).

Big corporations always have misleading, but plausible excuses. They are currently blaming the war in Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the global supply chain pile-up in our ports for high prices. Well, who created the supply chain requiring U.S. consumers to buy all kinds of products from countries thousands of miles away that could have been produced here in the USA? It was Big Business CEOs who pushed corporate-managed “free trade” agreements through from Washington to Beijing. Their avaricious mantra was that their “free trade” pacts would lower prices for consumers. Really? Aside from clothing, look at the sky-high prices for your imported iPhones, your computers, cars, and drugs. The corporate boosters of the global trade pacts pocketed the excess profits from the backs of serf labor abroad.

Professor Robert Reich rebutted the corporate excuses for their higher prices by pointing out the detrimental impact on consumers of concentrated corporate power in such industries as gas and meat. With profits at a 70-year high and the companies flush with cash, why are they raising prices? His answer: “Because they can, and they can because they don’t face meaningful competition.”

Just the reverse is true. These industries dominated by a few corporations “have the power to raise prices because it makes it easy for them to informally coordinate price increases … without risking the possibility of losing customers, who have no other choice,” he testified.

“If markets were competitive,” he continued, “companies would keep their prices down to prevent competitors from grabbing away customers.” The reason they’re raising prices rather than absorbing increased costs is that they have pricing power in their locales,” as does Proctor & Gamble for diapers and toilet paper. In addition to their soaring profits, Reich showed how corporations even make money off of inflation beyond their rising costs. Tyson Foods CFO admitted this power (See the full, well-documented testimony by Professor Reich, which includes reforms.

“The Democratic leadership has to decide what they want most—votes or more corporate campaign money to further enrich their consultants who themselves are often conflicted due to their own business clients.”

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the malicious, duplicitous ranking Republican member of the Budget Committee, had as his witness, professor Michael Faulkender who worked for Trump’s Treasury Department. Faulkender blamed the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy (funded by banks and headed by a Trump nominee) and excessive demand fueled by Washington’s stimulus programs for price increases. This is the usual GOP routine of blaming the government for everything, even a government under the thumb of the corporate lobby. He neglected to mention that given soaring profits, companies in a competitive industry would absorb rising costs to keep their customers. Instead, these companies are passing on these costs, plus adding profit, fueling ever-higher inflation.

Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the government’s abdication of antitrust enforcement – shaped by corporatist lobbying – allowed countless merger after merger in industry after industry to occur. But Faulkender did not dwell on this dimension of the corporate state or the relentless corporate urge to merge so they can buy their customers instead of earn them.

The Biden White House has proposed stronger antitrust and consumer protection measures. They want to tax billionaires and unproductive stock buybacks – the latter being a long-time desire of President Biden. But there is no energy by his Party in Congress compared to the energy by the GOP to stop these measures. Besides, both parties are dialing for the same corporate campaign cash – a daily begging that dilutes the reformists’ ardor.

The media blackout on Sanders’s hearing is partly the Senator’s fault. He knows how to hold a highly energetic public hearing. You have witnesses who have worked in the trenches against corporate profiteering, victims of these profiteers, and subpoenaing corporate executives like Tim Cook of Apple if they don’t testify voluntarily. There also needs to be proponents of strong corporate crime legislation.

If Democrats can’t organize a determined hearing, that generates massive media coverage, how do they expect to make these popular issues front and center in the coming November elections? How do they expect to rebut the twistificating Republicans from succeeding in blaming the Democrats for these corporate-bred inflationary pressures on voters? The Democrats haven’t even formulated the slogans for such an offensive.

The Democratic leadership has to decide what they want most – votes or more corporate campaign money to further enrich their consultants who themselves are often conflicted due to their own business clients.

Unfortunately for the American people, the knowledgeable civic community is not catching the ears of the Democratic Party candidates. Regular reports show incumbent Democrats feeling despair and defeatism over the prospect of the lying, corrupt, corporatist, and clever GOP taking control of Congress next year.

Wake up to the winning ways of addressing ALL THE PEOPLE with economic and moral policies that connect with where people live, work and raise their families. Learn from FDR!

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2/23-24 News Roundup & Open Thread

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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/22/bernie-sanders-denounces-russia-indefensible-invasion-ukraine

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called for the U.S. and its allies to impose heavy sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and other oligarchs in the country as he condemned Moscow’s escalating military aggression toward Ukraine.

“Vladimir Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine is an indefensible violation of international law, regardless of whatever false pretext he offers,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. “There has always been a diplomatic solution to this situation. Tragically, Putin appears intent on rejecting it.”

In addition to backing sanctions, Sanders said preparations must be made to accommodate refugees displaced by the conflict and called for investments in a global clean energy transition to fight the climate crisis and disempower “authoritarian petrostates” worldwide.

Sanders’ remarks came after U.S. President Joe Biden—in concert with officials in the United Kingdom and the European Union—moved to impose new economic sanctions on Russia following the Kremlin’s deployment of troops into two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine, which Putin on Monday formally recognized as independent.

To prevent Putin’s effort to expand his country’s presence in the Donbas region from descending into a broader military conflict, peace advocates in the U.S. and abroad continue to urge the Biden administration to double-down on diplomatic efforts, as Common Dreams reported earlier Tuesday.

“The United States,” said Sanders, “must now work with our allies and the international community to impose serious sanctions on Putin and his oligarchs, including denying them access to the billions of dollars that they have stashed in European and American banks.”

“The U.S. and our partners must also prepare for a worse scenario by helping Ukraine’s neighbors care for refugees fleeing this conflict,” Sanders continued, alluding to the possibility that Russian lawmakers’ approval of the use of military force outside the country could lead to a full-fledged war.

In the wake of recent developments in Ukraine, oil prices surged to nearly $100 per barrel on Tuesday, the highest in more than seven years, and European gas futures spiked by as much as 13.8%.

While the U.S. fossil fuel industry is expected to benefit from Germany halting approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline due to Russia’s recent actions, people in Europe—already struggling with skyrocketing energy bills—are bracing for even higher costs in the case that Moscow restricts gas exports.

“In the longer term,” said Sanders, “we must invest in a global green energy transition away from fossil fuels, not only to combat climate change, but to deny authoritarian petrostates the revenues they require to survive.”

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