On Wednesday, July 29, 2015, the Bernie Sanders campaign organized house party meetings across the U.S. One estimate placed the number of meetings at 3,300, with over 100,000 people attending. Without question, this was an important event in the nationwide political scene. No candidate, Republican or Democrat, has the ability to turn out those numbers.
In many ways, leftists should be happy: many thousands of people are politically engaged with a progressive campaign; the concept of socialism is being discussed in broad circles; and plenty of people in the U.S. are hungry for something different. As I’ve written in the past, it would be wise for leftists to get involved with the Sanders campaign, for many reasons.
But before I begin with reflections and bullet-point statements about my experience at a local house party for Sanders, I want to make something very clear: I’m engaging with this campaign with eyes wide open. In other words, I have no illusions about Sanders. I don’t find him to be charismatic, let alone inspiring. I loathe his stance on Israel and unwillingness to criticize the U.S. Empire. I understand the “sheep dog” argument. And I wish he would have started a third-party infrastructure, although I doubt the Left would have been pleased with the ideological scope of such a party, so I don’t know if that would have been a fruitful project long-term.
Nonetheless, people are not robots, they are individuals, and they have individual thoughts and emotions concerning political events, figures and ideologies. My experience at the local LaPorte, Indiana, house party for Bernie was nuanced, frustrating and interesting. Here, I hope to provide some useful reflections.
First of all, it’s important to point out that I live in Northwest Indiana, a de-industrialized, typical Rust Belt region. The town I live in, Michigan City, is located about 50 miles to the east of Chicago. Michigan City is around 32 percent African American, 10 percent Hispanic and 58 percent white. Unfortunately, there were no meetings in Michigan City, so I attended a meeting in LaPorte, which is 11 percent African American, 6 percent Hispanic and 83 percent white. The couple who held the event was white, older and retired. I didn’t catch the husband’s former occupation, but his wife used to be a school teacher. They live in a nice subdivision, I would say upper middle class. They hope to enjoy retirement, but are terribly concerned about the state of affairs in the world.
There were about 30 people who attended the event. Almost everyone at the house party in LaPorte was white and older. I was one of the younger people there, and I’m 31. There were 2 women who were younger: 19, and 24. The vast majority of people were in their 50s and 60s.
Everyone was polite, but it took a while for people to engage with each other. That’s typical in my experience. Once everyone got talking, things went smoothly. Quickly, it became apparent that there were a wide range of ideologies and political experiences among the group in attendance. One guy talked about how Bernie Sanders was the next FDR. Another woman noted that capitalism and democracy are not the same thing and, in fact, opposed to each other. Someone else jumped in and started talking about how their fellow employees support Trump for president and how it’s frustrating to live in a Red State. The conversations were interesting and wide-ranging. People in the other room were talking about the criminal justice system, Black Lives Matter (BLM) and how to connect with the African American community. For some folks, it was the first time they were in the same room with like-minded people. It was interesting that the hosts’ neighbors didn’t attend, nor did their family members. I think that’s something to keep in mind, as I’ve found that many progressives and leftists live separate lives: one for politics and one for everything else.
That being said, it was clear people were interested in sharing personal stories of how they became involved with the campaign. One woman, a young marketing and advertising agent, talked about how her family lost everything in the crash of 2008, and how her mother subsequently had a stroke. As she started to cry, my initial thought was that so many people are living very difficult lives, and they’re often unable to share their emotions with their peers for fear of rejection and so forth. The more our society becomes alienated, the more people will turn to political or religious movements for communal stimulation and genuine friendship. Very few people in attendance had any sort of serious organizing experience. Some of them had registered voters or knocked on doors for previous campaigns, but the idea of movement building wasn’t mentioned during the entire evening. For many people, politics is understood through the scope of electoral systems and functions. Again, this is one reason why it’s important for radical activists who are organizing at the grass-roots level to attend these meetings: Bernie’s supporters would greatly benefit from hearing about other forms of political activism.
The fact that there wasn’t an event in the cities and areas in our region that are predominantly African American was brought up a few times in conversation. Generally, people are worried that black and brown voters won’t show up to vote or engage with Bernie’s campaign. They genuinely want to connect with these communities, not to lecture them on politics or act like typical white people, but to try and better understand how to work together. We live 20 miles from one of the most notoriously black cities in the nation, Gary, Indiana. There will be no progress in this region without a broad coalition of progressive white, black, and brown people working together for social justice. Today, that doesn’t exist, unfortunately. When asked, about half of the group said they would not vote for Hillary Clinton. The other half said they probably would if it came down to Clinton vs. any GOP candidate. Here, it’s important to critique the “sheep dog” argument. My area is traditionally conservative/blue dog Democrat, and these people are sick and tired of Clinton. I can only imagine that people in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Miami, and elsewhere feel similarly. What happens if half of Bernie’s supporters refuse to vote for Clinton? Sure, some of these people will take Bernie’s advice, if he loses (another point I’ll return to), and vote for Clinton. But these people are not robots, they are pissed off and on their last leg when it comes to politics in the U.S. Numerous people spoke ill of the Clintons, and for good reason.
Which brings me to another point: for many people, Bernie is their last hope. They see everyone else as being bought-out or having sold-out. The vitriol spoken about Clinton was refreshing, but somewhat surprising, especially from the females in attendance who wholeheartedly rejected the identitarian narrative of, “The First Female President.” What happens when, or if, Clinton smashes Bernie? Where will these people go? Who will they turn to? Here, again, the Left can play a critical role.
The term Democratic Socialist came up throughout the night. Interestingly, the older people tried to make weird excuses about the term. One woman said, “Hey, it’s not like we’re talking about anarchism here.” Some of the younger people were thoroughly convinced that capitalism must go. Overall, people agreed that socialism is not bad and that people should have their basic needs met, either by the state or by community organizations. For the time being, they want the state to fund these programs and for the people to have a say in how they function, etc.
I only spoke once and that was to harp on the point that people must stay connected, regardless of what happens during the election. During the 2008 election, tons of people were involved with the Obama campaign. Some of these people went on to work in different capacities while others went home. The most important thing is to remain in contact with like-minded people who can hopefully work together in the future to build alternative parties, practices, and institutions. I understand that many leftists would have liked to have seen Sanders start an alternative party, but now that that’s not an option, it’s up to us as activists, thinkers, artists, writers, and so forth to encourage Sanders’ supporters to consider alternatives, especially if, or when, he loses the bid to Clinton. Most people agreed. They want to remain engaged after election season.
Unfortunately, the one thing that was never brought up was U.S empire/imperialism. Believe me, for someone who’s been primarily working with antiwar organizations for the last decade, it breaks my heart to see a lack of conversation about such critical issues. And the worst part about it all is that Bernie, if elected, could actually have a profound impact on the U.S. empire, whereas he won’t be able to do much economically without a progressive U.S. Supreme Court, Senate, and House of Representatives. Without a serious antiwar/anti-imperialist movement, these issues will not be mentioned during the campaign. It reminds me, yet again, why it’s so important for the Left to seriously reflect on how we’re going to rebuild, or build, a modern antiwar movement.
Future events are already planned. There will be more house parties, debate-watching parties, canvassing, etc. People are interested. My neighbors, whom I’ve been living next to for the last three years, just recently started talking to me about politics in a serious manner. Who do they support? Bernie, of course. They’re both single parents and in their mid-30s. It’s no surprise. They’ve never been involved before, nor do they even know what political activism really entails, but they want me to bring them to the next event, so I will. My parents, who always vote, attend events and contribute to good organizations, but very rarely spend their time organizing, asked what they could do for the election. I don’t process these things in a cynical way. Working in the electoral sphere is limited, sure, but this is why leftists should be involved. How else are people going to learn about alternative/radical perspectives?
All in all, it was a worthwhile experience. The point I would make, again, for leftists, is that we don’t have the power to turn out 100,000 people at house parties across the U.S. I know that for a fact. It would take years for the Left to organize over 3,300 house parties on the same day. I don’t say this to beat-up on the Left, I say this because it’s important to recognize the limited number of people we’re talking about when we talk about the Left. Right now, Sanders is polling at around 17 percent among Democrats. The rest of those polled supported either Clinton or Biden (who’s not even running). The majority of people are not engaged with progressive thought/activism, let alone radical thought/activism.
Now, that doesn’t mean people couldn’t be encouraged or convinced to do so, it simply means that liberals and Democrats will need to engage with folks who are already thinking in radical ways or asking big questions. I don’t know where the 40 percent of Americans who don’t vote are coming from, but I can imagine it’s a mix of apathy, cynicism, and straight-up ignorance. On some level, I’m sure many of these people understand that the system is completely flawed, but they, like many voters, don’t know what to do.
It’s our job as leftists to talk about radical politics in a way that people can understand. It’s our job to talk about issues from perspectives that might not be mainstream, but relevant and critical nonetheless. But it’s not our job to constantly preach to the choir. We need to expand our reach and I can’t see any better opportunity in the short term than the Sanders campaign.
Meanwhile, yes, people should continue to work with BLM and other social movements, but the task is to connect these movements, not further fragment an already fractured progressive-Left political movement and infrastructure. I hope some of you will agree with me when I say that leftists should be going to these meetings and events. The only way Sanders’ supporters are going to be exposed to more radical thought is if they engage with people who are thinking in radical ways.
Z
