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Tony Christini's avatar

Also writing from West Virginia. Bernie made the call today to his massive email list, asking everyone, literally everyone, to run for an office. And offering connections to guidance as to how. It has long since been time for everyone to step up their game, wherever and whenever possible.

I've been dramatizing the needed revolution nonstop, most recently on Earth Day, via what could be with AOC and the closely related in power:

https://fictiongutted.substack.com/p/most-revolutionary-earth-day-excerpt

Bernie today:

Today, I am writing to ask you to go outside your comfort zone.

I am writing to ask you to run for office.

Yes, you.

We need people in every state, county and town in this country to raise their hand and say they are prepared to run for city council, school board, mayor, state legislature, Congress and more. We need to elect progressives at every level in this country who are prepared to side with the working class in America and fight for an economy and government that works for all of us, not just the few.

All you have to do is tell us that you are interested, and we will connect you with an organization that will provide you the tools, the training and the information you need to get the process started and to be successful.

That's the first step. I am asking you to take it now.

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𝓙𝓪𝓼𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓮 𝓦𝓸𝓵𝓯𝓮's avatar

Nope. Bernie is a Zionist and the Democrats started and funded the genocide.

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Cj Brennan's avatar

Exactly who passes your purity test, Jasmine?

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Alan Hodge's avatar

It's not a who but a what that requires an integrity check, brother. What passes:

- No corporate donors: not one, not a penny.

- No damned stupid wars: none fought, none funded.

- No fellating the parasite class pigs with stupid identity politics. The vampires are our enemies, not our neighbors.

- No more competing with Breitbart in the Label & Dismiss Chumpionships; we're supposed to be the grown-ups.

- No damned moronic wars!

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Amos's avatar
6dEdited

Which is the reason none of the democrats can have my vote.

Jill green? Heard of her? It is remarkable how the Democratic cultists insist that no other parties exist even when they’re right there on the ballot paper.

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Rain Robinson's avatar

AOC is not a Zionist, nor supports funding genocide.

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C O's avatar

Get over yourself and your issues.

Democracy is more important.

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C O's avatar

Get over yourself.

This is more important than you.

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Lulu Manus's avatar

We need more of this. Power to the people.

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Conor Gallogly's avatar

The pro-democracy anti-Trump coalition definitely needs to support thousands of candidates.

But really we need to give up our most of our deal-breakers to expand.

Against money in politics? Check

For taxing the rich & corporations and against corporate subsidies? Check

For the Constitution? Check

Otherwise we should allow a diversity of opinions.

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Alan Hodge's avatar

Reason, lovely Reason, has entered the discussion.

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Conor Gallogly's avatar

Thanks

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DancingInAshes's avatar

You start with the rally the working-class stuff, which is good.

Most of your hate for Trump policies are more of the bougie upper-middle-class white woman variety though. The “Kamala is amazing!” crowd of morons.

Mass illegal immigration isn’t popular with the working class. Refusing to allow ICE to deport illegal alien criminals isn’t popular with the working class.

There’s a lot of right-wing working-class anger at the billionaire class, and you are going to ruin any chance of finding a common ground for economic policy if you stuff your message with entitled proggie causes and pretend Trump is a bigger devil than all the corporate Democrats who have strung progressives along for decades, always wanting your vote and only delivering cheap SJW “victories” that are utterly inconsequential for people who actually work for a living.

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Cj Brennan's avatar

This comment assumes Democrats are picking which issues to highlight when in fact they’re answering stupid MAGA attacks “they’re eating the cats they’re eating the dogs” (sound familiar?). MAGA doesn’t want to actually try and fix immigration. It’s something they can demagogue and get Americans at each others’ throats which is the ultimate goal. They also don’t care about trans rights or LGBTQ rights or anything else. They are consolidating power for their own benefit. It’s all they believe in.

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Alan Hodge's avatar

The corporate donor and owner class, which owns and operates both parties as if they were hand-puppets, is well-served by unlimited immigration. It ensures a permanent large underclass of undocumented workers who dare not complain about wage theft or working conditions. Neither party gives a single dry mouse turd about fixing immigration; it's one of their favorite permanent problems. They and their pet press drag it out when they need to stoke division, fear, and partisanship.

If deportation is how to fix the immigration problem, why don't we fix the drug problem by just sending all the drugs back? Deportation is the stupidest possible approach, but it comes with all sorts of opportunities to subvert due process and habeas corpus, so of course it is the one approach the corporate owned and operated press is allowed to discuss.

Gee, why not take the simple step of arresting and prosecuting employers who illegally employ undocumented workers at the expense of the American worker? A few showy cases, confiscatory fines and some jail time: Guess what? no more jobs without a green card. No jobs, they go home. Congratulations, you just fixed a half-trillion-dollar per year problem for twenty million or so. Enforce the stinking law? Who woulda guessed? Well, every lucid person who gave it ten minutes thought. We aren't allowed to think it because holding the owner class accountable for breaking the law is unthinkable.

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Emily Herrick's avatar

Love Perfect Union news coverage (watch the video). We need to focus on the People. Move 47 out of the center of our narrative. Move it to the people.

“how are you doing making your basic needs met?”

We need to raise up real stories of real people and put them at the center:

Minimum wage has been raised in years.

We can’t unionize

We are not getting compensated for our work, we’re working on skeleton crews.

Our money is being taken by oligarch corporations.

We can’t afford healthcare, rent, food.

AND they are attacking social programs like Medicaid Social Security, SNAP.

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Timmy!'s avatar

Bernie Sanders and AOC’s message distilled down to its essentials is vote for Democrats in the midterms. That’s all. Reminder that the AIPAC spent $8.6 million to defeat Cory Bush and over $20 million to defeat Jamal Bowman. AOC by contrast had more campaign cash at over $7 million than any other squad member. Electing more Democrats is a dead end that will change nothing. What needs to happen is to shut the country down in a series of general strikes, and go from there. That requires solidarity not just rallies maligning Trump and calling for the election of more Democrats, whether down-ballot or up.

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Amos's avatar

No, the democrats brought us here, they will only make things worse. In any case I will not vote for anyone who does not condemn the genocide and commit to ending it.

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Rain Robinson's avatar

Excellent post, so glad it popped up for me to read. The clip of Bernie and AOC at the Denver rally was very inspiring. I agree, 1000s of progressive people are needed to run for offices, local up to federal. We can beat back the billionaire schemes to install private fiefdoms for them to plunder and trash our lives, our work, and our planet.

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Atlas Did's avatar

Bernie & AOC have no issue with the 🇮🇱led, 🇺🇸financed Genocide. That’s a deal breaker. It is not enough to regurgitate the same campaign slogans again. The World HAS changed and the Democrats have not.

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Cj Brennan's avatar

Bernie HAS made a specific appeal at his rallies for people to step up and run for something. He outlines AOC’s path to congress as an example.

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𝓙𝓪𝓼𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓮 𝓦𝓸𝓵𝓯𝓮's avatar

Can't find your reply to me. Don't know why so I'm replying here. Absolutely nobody. The Democrats are complicit in the genocide that makes them fascists too. Genocide is a red fucking line. So shove your purity test up your ass.

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Jack Valker's avatar

John. My brother in Christ. You know there’s no way AOC is gonna win in 2028 right? Like at all. I’m no trumper. But no. This is not some historic movement.

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Taryn Hallweaver's avatar

This rocks and is so right on

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Seth Sandronsky's avatar

Follow the money. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009. The DP controlled the House and Senate when Biden took office in January 2021. Recall that Biden said: "Nothing fundamental will change," to his wealthy donors before winning the White House over Trump. True words. The corporate DP co-created the conditions of declining living and working conditions for the working class with misnamed free trade pacts like the NAFTA, and banking and telecom deregulation.

Trump feels that material pain, rhetorically, unlike the corporate DP, a center-right party. will change as independent movement politics grows. Ideas matter, and they grow from the material living conditions of the population.

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SophisticatedBob's avatar

Even the left doesn't like Bernie enough to vote him into the presidency, or run him for VP on the frontrunner, and now he's “passing the torch” to AOC, whom the left also doesn't like. Just dumb. America is an uneducated, angry, racist populace, and we routinely try to “fix” our ignorant culture by telling the unwashed masses they need to respect people who have decided to identify as a dining room table. And then we stand around confused why they didn't vote for our wonderful candidates.

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David Johnson's avatar

Great article 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏

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Merce Willard's avatar

Please add overturning Citizens United to your list. We need to rid Congress of the graft and corruption that convinces the wrong people to run for, and remain in, public office.

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