But he isn't saying enough about these military attacks. If he wants my
support in renewing the Democratic Party, I want to hear about a totally new
foreign policy.
Miriam
Senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: Getty)
No One Can Sit on the Sidelines. Not Now.
By Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News
14 April 17
With Trump's election, we live in a pivotal moment in American history. This
country will either move in the direction of an authoritarian government
where the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer, or we will
successfully fight back and build a strong grassroots movement to create a
government which represents all of us, not just Donald Trump and others in
the billionaire class.
That's the struggle we now face. No one can sit on the sidelines. Not now.
The only way we win is when we stand together and fight back. I need your
help to do that.
The bad news is that Trump's agenda - huge tax breaks for billionaires,
enormous increases in military spending, massive cuts in health care and
programs that protect the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor,
horrific attacks on environmental protection and scapegoating the immigrant
community - constitutes the most reactionary set of policies in the modern
history of our country.
The good news is that the resistance to this extremist Trump/Republican
agenda is growing rapidly. We saw that as millions participated in the
Women's March in January. We saw that as hundreds of thousands attended
rallies and town meetings in February and March to successfully defeat the
Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and throw 24 million
Americans off of their health insurance. We are seeing that now as people
across the country are mobilizing for Green Day events to take on the fossil
fuel industry, combat climate change and transform our energy system to
energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
When we launched our presidential campaign two years ago, I told you that
victory would require the active participation of millions of Americans in
every community across the country. That it would require nothing short of a
political revolution to combat the demoralization so many feel about the
political process. That's what I believed then. That's what I believe now.
And that's what I am attempting to do.
During the last several months I have visited a number of states where
Donald Trump won. My message: working people must not support a president
and a party beholden to powerful special interests and the top 1 percent. We
cannot support a party which wants to divide us up by race, gender,
religion, national origin or sexual orientation.
I was in Wisconsin where progressives are determined to overcome the Trump
victory in that state and elect candidates who, in 2018, will stand with
working people and not the 1 percent. I was in Kansas where, in one of the
most conservative states in the country, over 5,000 people attended a
progressive rally in Topeka. I was in Mississippi, a state today heavily
dominated by the Republican Party, where brave workers in the auto industry
are fighting for a union. I was in West Virginia, where Trump won a
landslide victory, but where many people are beginning to rethink the wisdom
of that decision.
And next week I am going back on the road, visiting areas of the country
often ignored by Democrats. I will be in Maine, Kentucky, Florida, Nevada,
Nebraska, Utah and Arizona. I will be talking about the grotesque level of
income and wealth inequality that we face and the need for the rich to start
paying their fair share of taxes. I will discuss the Medicare-for-all,
single-payer legislation that I will soon be introducing. I will urge people
to join the Fight for $15 minimum wage struggle to make sure all Americans
enjoy a living wage. I will ask people across the country to help us create
millions of jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. I will explain
the need to aggressively move forward for comprehensive immigration reform
and why we must immediately fix our broken criminal justice system.
But I can't do it alone.
Please attend the rallies in your area. Please work with me to revitalize
American democracy and advance the political revolution.
Like I said from the beginning, our political revolution was never about one
candidate. It was about creating a mass movement for real change in this
country. That's the struggle we began. That's the struggle we'll continue.
No turning back now.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
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