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This is Kshama Kawant and Socialist Alternatives' message accompanying their petition urging Sanders to run as an independent if Hillary is the Democratic Party nominee: http://movement4bernie.org/. I understand that another, similar petition is circulating.
I support this action, and I for one have phone banked and contributed to the Bernie campaign, for reasons I've already stated on this list, but I emphasize that I have been doing so mainly because Bernie is the one who, uniquely, has incurred appropriate enmity from capital because he's 'aroused the sleeping dogs of class struggle' (as economist Paul Samuelson once fearfully put it), carefully steering among issues to garner maximum support for a broad left agenda; he has made it possible for millions, including many who have never before entered the political process, to realize that they have numbers, potential strength and political clout; that the demands made in the Sanders campaign are reasonable and necessary; that the failure, and extreme unlikelihood that the major parties and their candidates can or will act on them is directly related to what Bernie terms the billions from Wall Street being shoveled to our 'representatives' in government, including Hillary but not Bernie; that it's not us who created this mess and should therefore support the lesser evil (which of them is which?): it's those who voted for her in the primaries, instead of the major party candidate with the only message responsive to massive need and the most support among independents and youth in the polls, who bear that responsibility; and even though some polls show that right now 30% or so will either join a 3rd party movement or will sit the election out and the rest will vote for Hillary, nevertheless they can all if they choose be the nucleus of a third party in US politics. My experience has been that, once the process becomes evident to us, we rarely go back to the old crap. If any opt for Hillary or Trump, there's not much else besides what select Bernie supporters, Kshama and her party, the Greens and a few others are doing that can be done to turn it around.
Otherwise, it's very dead and dull around here on the left, and the agenda and likely missteps of the powerful are exceedingly dangerous. I have read what Diana Johnstone and Doug Henwood have written about Hillary; she is as treacherous as I had known her to be and then some. But our political options are limited: the Democratic Party of course was fashioned in its origins of, by and for capital and propertied interests, with the rest of us being shoehorned in much later, on capital's terms. Bernie, though certainly leaving much to be desired, appears to have tacked and jibed in politics as an independent of sorts for 45 years, mainly with the desired direction guiding him. It is exceedingly hostile ground. It is nevertheless the process through which fateful decisions affecting all of humanity are made and which therefore cannot be shunned.
I agree with most of what Politico, Michael Yates, Paul Street and others whose critical opinions have been posted here say about what the reality of a campaign within the Democratic Party entails - except to the extent that they might ignore or dispute any of the above (and to the extent that Paul Street suggests that Bernie's campaign was a contrivance inuring to the benefit of the party).
We can hope that Bernie supporters including Socialist Alternative (and the Green Party) are using the Bernie mailing list to get their most persuasive arguments to those who have supported him; also that the Green Party can get on the ballot in every state, although I understand now that, two months before the nominating convention and five and a half months before the election, they're on the ballot in only 21 states. I will help and I expect those on this list stateside will.
This is an opportunity for which we may have to wait a long time for a recurrence, in the bowels of capital - which we can be sure will stop at nothing to prevent repetition of this sort of powerful opening, to which so many are responding.
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