Carl:
Feeding a hungry dog by holding the food in your hand is a dangerous
procedure.
Richard
On 8/3/2016 9:20 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Why is it that people joined together in opposition to a corrupt
system, and then get all bent out of shape when that System turns on
them and shuts them down? Isn't that exactly why they rose up in the
first place? Did some of them really think that the Democratic Party
was not a partner with the Republican Party in fronting for the Ruling
Class, the Establishment, the American Empire?
And then, for some of these frustrated delegates to turn around and
join with Bernie Sanders in supporting Hillary Clinton. You have to
wonder just what was going around in their heads, besides fog and
confusion.
There have been many thoughtful speeches by very bright people,
outlining why we should elect Hillary Clinton, and then set about
"reforming" the nation. Their reasoning is going to be attractive to
many Progressives and Liberals. Thom Hartman is such a person. And
it appears that Bernie Sanders is also in this camp.
It seems that the old saying, sometimes credited to Albert Einstein,
that “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over
again, but expecting different results”.
How many times over the years since the Colonies Landed Gentry drafted
their Declaration of Independence and set in concrete their
enlightened constitution, has the Working Class attempted to "reform"
this government? How many times have workers taken a giant step
forward, only to be driven two steps back? I am not attempting to
dismiss the great improvements that have shaped this government,
enabling it to expand its original subjects, the White Land Owners
over 21, to include the freed slaves, women, 18 year old's, and
citizens who did not hold title to Land.
But after 240 years of attempting to reform this government, are we
working class folk really in a better position? And I am speaking of
our status in the eye of our Ruling Class. We can debate all day
whether certain improvements offset our incarceration of more
prisoners than any other nation, or whether women are closer to equal
partnership, or whether the police are protecting us and keeping us
safe, or whether they are becoming an in-house military force. In all
of this, are we better off than our great grandparents? If you agree
with me to the extent that we see ourselves and our future controlled
by International Corporations, then we are truly worse off. And “The
definition of insanity still applies.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/2/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
While Publicly Seeking Unity, the DNC is Censoring a Convention and
Silencing Dissent
Published on
Saturday, July 30, 2016
by
Common Dreams
While Publicly Seeking Unity, the DNC is Censoring a Convention and
Silencing Dissent
Sanders delegates, volunteers, and supporters have felt marginalized.
by
Tony Brasunas
Not seen on TV: The convention empty after Sanders delegates walked out.
The Democratic National Committee professes publicly that it longs for peace
and unity between supporters of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. The
DNC’s actions as organizers of the convention, however, have repeatedly had
the opposite effect.
To begin, no one who wanted Bernie Sanders as the nominee was ever allowed
near the microphone on stage. It is an open convention, regardless of the
way it’s been covered in the corporate media; Hillary Clinton did not get
the required 2,383 delegates required to win outright from pledged
delegates. The superdelegates are casting the deciding votes this week.
Bernie Sanders, although issuing an endorsement of Clinton earlier this
month, hasn’t conceded the race nor released his delegates and so he could
become the nominee.
Nevertheless, the entire first day of the convention — ostensibly the
“Bernie Day” — featured no speakers who favored a Sanders nomination.
Several one-time Sanders supporters who now favor Clinton were allowed to
speak.
“Instead of having both candidates’ surrogates make their case, even if the
outcome seemed obvious, Monday only featured speakers who advocated voting
for Hillary,” said Justin Baird, from the convention floor, a Sanders
delegate and whip from Washington state. “It was painfully obvious that if
that was Bernie Day, it was really just another Hillary Day, and it riled
nearly half the delegates.”
Simply allowing a few Sanders supporters — Nina Turner, for instance, or
Tulsi Gabbard, or even Jane Sanders — to speak Monday would have immediately
increased feelings of unity. Instead, the convention got off on the wrong
foot, fomenting feelings of suppression right away, even before Bernie gave
his heart-rending “three minute ovation” speech later that night.
Barring the ‘Super Volunteers’
Even worse than preventing pro-Bernie speakers to address the convention,
the DNC has barred all 824 Bernie Sanders volunteers from the convention.
Yes, all of them, having traveled across the country on their own dime,
expecting to be inside the convention, have been barred from the convention
floor.
And if that weren’t bad enough, they’ve filled the volunteers’ seats with
Hillary supporters — or possibly actors — to give the impression of unity on
television. There is something deeply disturbing — and deeply
illusory — about how this whole convention feels to many Sanders
supporters.
According to convention rules, the two campaigns send to the convention
prescribed allotments of official delegates and official volunteers. The
Sanders campaign, based on how many votes it won in the primaries and
caucuses around the country (ignoring election fraud for now), sent to the
convention 1860 pledged delegates and 824 state volunteers.
“The volunteers were identified by the campaign and by the delegates after
lots of hard work,” said Catherine Berry, an official volunteer for Bernie
Sanders from Seattle. “I would have run for delegate, actually, but I
couldn’t, since I had to be out of town that day. I’ve worked so hard, and I
was honored to be sent to the convention as a ‘super volunteer.’”
Berry arrived in Philadelphia eager to represent both Bernie Sanders and her
progressive community in Seattle.
“I was excited to see what the convention would be like. I was also
interested in hearing the speeches from the party leaders,” she said. “If
someone’s going to convince me to vote for Hillary Clinton, I want it to be
someone I voted for. I didn’t vote for most of these people, but I voted for
Obama, so I was interested to hear what he would say.”
She didn’t get that chance. The DNC revoked credentials for her and the
other 823 volunteers on Tuesday morning, the day the official vote and
nomination took place. All Sanders volunteers were barred from the
convention, while Clinton volunteers were allowed in and seated.
“We’re all just so angry about this,” she added. “The campaign brought us
into a room on Tuesday morning and said we wouldn’t be getting credentials.
No explanation. It was like we were being sent home. We didn’t expect to be
treated like this… many of us were crying.”
Not seen on TV: Election Fraud banner unfurled above Vice President Joe
Biden
Official volunteers generally support the delegates during the week by
keeping their phones charged, running paperwork, and fetching food and
beverages during long days on the convention floor. Sanders volunteers were
never given the floor credentials to actually do the job they were sent to
do, and to make everything even more difficult, they were housed far away at
Rutgers University in New Jersey.
“I was someone who came to the convention with an open mind. I was open to
having honest conversations. But I saw the Clinton volunteers get VIP tours
of the convention hall, and I saw us all get harassed and yelled at. And
then to be sent home like this? I’m not going home happy, but I am going
home. I just moved my flight to the red eye tonight. It’s just been awful.”
Berry will hardly be an ambassadors of party unity upon returning home.
Filling the Seats for Hillary
Tuesday night would have been a great night for the volunteers to be on the
floor doing the job they were sent to do. That’s the night the votes were
called out, and the night the Bernie Sanders delegates walked out of the
convention in a “No Confidence” protest. Although Bernie controversially won
the initial roll call vote in the morning, Hillary Clinton won the vote
count in the evening and was nominated. The Sanders delegates promptly
marched out of the convention hall, with a spokesperson for them stating
their reasons. “We are the future of the Democratic Party, and we have no
confidence in this selection process, no confidence in the primary election,
and after the leaked emails, no confidence in the current DNC leadership.”
Estimates range widely as to how many of the delegates walked out. Evidently
somewhere between 350, on the low end, and 1,000, on the high end, of the
total 1,860 Bernie Sanders delegates felt the “No Confidence” protest was
necessary and walked out.
So we can do the math. On Tuesday morning, the Sanders official volunteers
were barred from the convention floor. That evening, the delegates walked
out. So, perhaps fewer than 1,000 of the 2,684 Bernie representatives to the
convention were on the convention floor Tuesday evening. Photos show the
convention was quite empty.
But we never saw this emptiness on television.
This is because the Clinton volunteers were seated, and, according to many
reports, additional people supporting Hillary were quickly dispatched into
the convention as the Bernie delegates walked out.
“When we walked out,” said Baird, “we heard from people who stayed inside
that the place was almost half empty. Then we heard that our seats were
quickly being filled. When we returned, quite a while later, some of us
found strangers sitting there, in our seats.”
It’s not yet clear who these “seat-fillers” are. Some have reported talking
to them and learning that they’re just people off the street paid $50 per
day to wave signs. According to other reports, they’re nearby college
students or local Pennsylvania Democrats who support Hillary.
Angela Valdes, a member of the Bernie Sanders Oregon delegation and an
official representative to the Credentials Committee, witnessed
un-credentialed Clinton supporters getting floor credentials, after she
herself was barred.
“A woman came up to me in the hallway outside the convention and informed me
that she wasn’t an official volunteer, but that she was from the local DNCC
and could supply water to our delegates,” Valdes said. “This woman made it
clear she supported Hillary but could help us communicate with our
delegates. She’s not even an official volunteer, and she has credentials to
get down to the convention floor while I have to stay out in the halls.”
Valdes also witnessed seats being filled when the delegates walked out.
“When I was in the hall watching our delegates come out, surrounded by
police, a group of nicely dressed college-aged people walked by, holding
floor credentials in their hands. One said out loud, ‘I can’t believe we got
these credentials!’”
Eden McFadden, a California delegate for Sanders explains more about the
seat-filling
Skip to main content
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While Publicly Seeking Unity, the DNC is Censoring a Convention and
Silencing Dissent
Published on
Saturday, July 30, 2016
by
Common Dreams
While Publicly Seeking Unity, the DNC is Censoring a Convention and
Silencing Dissent
Sanders delegates, volunteers, and supporters have felt marginalized.
by
Tony Brasunas
• 44 Comments
•
• Not seen on TV: The convention empty after Sanders delegates walked out.
• The Democratic National Committee professes publicly that it longs for
peace and unity between supporters of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
The DNC’s actions as organizers of the convention, however, have repeatedly
had the opposite effect.
• To begin, no one who wanted Bernie Sanders as the nominee was ever
allowed
near the microphone on stage. It is an open convention, regardless of the
way it’s been covered in the corporate media; Hillary Clinton did not get
the required 2,383 delegates required to win outright from pledged
delegates. The superdelegates are casting the deciding votes this week.
Bernie Sanders, although issuing an endorsement of Clinton earlier this
month, hasn’t conceded the race nor released his delegates and so he could
become the nominee.
• Nevertheless, the entire first day of the convention — ostensibly the
“Bernie Day” — featured no speakers who favored a Sanders nomination.
Several one-time Sanders supporters who now favor Clinton were allowed to
speak.
• “Instead of having both candidates’ surrogates make their case, even if
the outcome seemed obvious, Monday only featured speakers who advocated
voting for Hillary,” said Justin Baird, from the convention floor, a Sanders
delegate and whip from Washington state. “It was painfully obvious that if
that was Bernie Day, it was really just another Hillary Day, and it riled
nearly half the delegates.”
Simply allowing a few Sanders supporters — Nina Turner, for instance, or
Tulsi Gabbard, or even Jane Sanders — to speak Monday would have immediately
increased feelings of unity. Instead, the convention got off on the wrong
foot, fomenting feelings of suppression right away, even before Bernie gave
his heart-rending “three minute ovation” speech later that night.
Barring the ‘Super Volunteers’
Even worse than preventing pro-Bernie speakers to address the convention,
the DNC has barred all 824 Bernie Sanders volunteers from the convention.
Yes, all of them, having traveled across the country on their own dime,
expecting to be inside the convention, have been barred from the convention
floor.
And if that weren’t bad enough, they’ve filled the volunteers’ seats with
Hillary supporters — or possibly actors — to give the impression of unity on
television. There is something deeply disturbing — and deeply
illusory — about how this whole convention feels to many Sanders
supporters.
According to convention rules, the two campaigns send to the convention
prescribed allotments of official delegates and official volunteers. The
Sanders campaign, based on how many votes it won in the primaries and
caucuses around the country (ignoring election fraud for now), sent to the
convention 1860 pledged delegates and 824 state volunteers.
“The volunteers were identified by the campaign and by the delegates after
lots of hard work,” said Catherine Berry, an official volunteer for Bernie
Sanders from Seattle. “I would have run for delegate, actually, but I
couldn’t, since I had to be out of town that day. I’ve worked so hard, and I
was honored to be sent to the convention as a ‘super volunteer.’”
Berry arrived in Philadelphia eager to represent both Bernie Sanders and her
progressive community in Seattle.
“I was excited to see what the convention would be like. I was also
interested in hearing the speeches from the party leaders,” she said. “If
someone’s going to convince me to vote for Hillary Clinton, I want it to be
someone I voted for. I didn’t vote for most of these people, but I voted for
Obama, so I was interested to hear what he would say.”
She didn’t get that chance. The DNC revoked credentials for her and the
other 823 volunteers on Tuesday morning, the day the official vote and
nomination took place. All Sanders volunteers were barred from the
convention, while Clinton volunteers were allowed in and seated.
“We’re all just so angry about this,” she added. “The campaign brought us
into a room on Tuesday morning and said we wouldn’t be getting credentials.
No explanation. It was like we were being sent home. We didn’t expect to be
treated like this… many of us were crying.”
Not seen on TV: Election Fraud banner unfurled above Vice President Joe
Biden
Official volunteers generally support the delegates during the week by
keeping their phones charged, running paperwork, and fetching food and
beverages during long days on the convention floor. Sanders volunteers were
never given the floor credentials to actually do the job they were sent to
do, and to make everything even more difficult, they were housed far away at
Rutgers University in New Jersey.
“I was someone who came to the convention with an open mind. I was open to
having honest conversations. But I saw the Clinton volunteers get VIP tours
of the convention hall, and I saw us all get harassed and yelled at. And
then to be sent home like this? I’m not going home happy, but I am going
home. I just moved my flight to the red eye tonight. It’s just been awful.”
Berry will hardly be an ambassadors of party unity upon returning home.
Filling the Seats for Hillary
Tuesday night would have been a great night for the volunteers to be on the
floor doing the job they were sent to do. That’s the night the votes were
called out, and the night the Bernie Sanders delegates walked out of the
convention in a “No Confidence” protest. Although Bernie controversially won
the initial roll call vote in the morning, Hillary Clinton won the vote
count in the evening and was nominated. The Sanders delegates promptly
marched out of the convention hall, with a spokesperson for them stating
their reasons. “We are the future of the Democratic Party, and we have no
confidence in this selection process, no confidence in the primary election,
and after the leaked emails, no confidence in the current DNC leadership.”
Estimates range widely as to how many of the delegates walked out. Evidently
somewhere between 350, on the low end, and 1,000, on the high end, of the
total 1,860 Bernie Sanders delegates felt the “No Confidence” protest was
necessary and walked out.
So we can do the math. On Tuesday morning, the Sanders official volunteers
were barred from the convention floor. That evening, the delegates walked
out. So, perhaps fewer than 1,000 of the 2,684 Bernie representatives to the
convention were on the convention floor Tuesday evening. Photos show the
convention was quite empty.
But we never saw this emptiness on television.
This is because the Clinton volunteers were seated, and, according to many
reports, additional people supporting Hillary were quickly dispatched into
the convention as the Bernie delegates walked out.
“When we walked out,” said Baird, “we heard from people who stayed inside
that the place was almost half empty. Then we heard that our seats were
quickly being filled. When we returned, quite a while later, some of us
found strangers sitting there, in our seats.”
It’s not yet clear who these “seat-fillers” are. Some have reported talking
to them and learning that they’re just people off the street paid $50 per
day to wave signs. According to other reports, they’re nearby college
students or local Pennsylvania Democrats who support Hillary.
Angela Valdes, a member of the Bernie Sanders Oregon delegation and an
official representative to the Credentials Committee, witnessed
un-credentialed Clinton supporters getting floor credentials, after she
herself was barred.
“A woman came up to me in the hallway outside the convention and informed me
that she wasn’t an official volunteer, but that she was from the local DNCC
and could supply water to our delegates,” Valdes said. “This woman made it
clear she supported Hillary but could help us communicate with our
delegates. She’s not even an official volunteer, and she has credentials to
get down to the convention floor while I have to stay out in the halls.”
Valdes also witnessed seats being filled when the delegates walked out.
“When I was in the hall watching our delegates come out, surrounded by
police, a group of nicely dressed college-aged people walked by, holding
floor credentials in their hands. One said out loud, ‘I can’t believe we got
these credentials!’”
