Summary
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew 34,000 people to a rally in Denver and 11,000 in Greeley as part of their “Fighting Oligarchy Tour.”
They advocated progressive policies and condemned billionaire influence in politics, with Sanders urging resistance to “Trumpism” and oligarchy.
Attendees expressed frustration over economic inequality and corporate influence.
Critics, including Republican Reps. Gabe Evans and Lauren Boebert, dismissed their message as extreme and anti-energy.
Sanders and AOC pledged continued efforts to advance progressive change nationwide.
“You say you want a revolution. . .”
I’ve said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again:
This is nice and all, but talk is (now very) cheap. I’ll believe the USA stands the slightest chance of surviving this coup if it is met with actions.
And there’s only one action you can take: Form a new party!!! Don’t call it Labor or Labour. Don’t call it Green. Don’t call it progressive. Don’t call it socialist or liberal. Just give it a name that people understand and don’t have preexisting bias against. The “Party For The People”, “Ninety-Nine Percent”, or whatever.
Take on BOTH the democrats and GOP, and constantly and endlessly keep dominating the conversation that they are bought by special interest and you are representing the people.
Become popular overnight. Keep hammering home it is not about skin colour, race or country of origin, but about the billionaires that aren’t happy with paying no tax and having billions. Make it about the 99%.
And it won’t be easy, you need 2 Justices on the Supreme Court to Magically drop dead in your first term, and you need have supermajority in both houses for at least 4 years so you can overturn Roe v Wade and most importantly Citizens United. Don’t just overturn but make amendments to the constitution so this can never be up to 7 muppets with life long appointments.
It is the only way you’ll get your country back without excessive violence. The two status quo parties are hollowed out from the inside. And both are infiltrated by foreign interests.
Nationwide, over 99% of the legislative offices (state and federal) are held be either a Democratic or Republican. Only the two major parties have nationwide ballot access. Only three minor parties have ballot access in more than 10. A third party won’t be viable nationally until we have ranked choice voting everywhere. They won’t even be viable at the state level without it in that state. Not all states have direct ballot initiatives. That will only happen through ballot initiatives or the major party in control of the state adopting it. Only 26 states have ballot initiatives.
Put that effort into ballot initiatives in the states that have them, and into the Democratic primaries nationwide, until we have ranked choice. Then we can have more than two parties.
In that case the USA is well and truly fucked.
If you’re right, and it sounds like you are, all bernie & aoc can do is primary, until the cabal pulls a 2016, and the vicious loop repeats.
My new advice is violence. Pls defuse your nukes first.
Clinton won the 2016 primary on the strength of her popular vote lead, without needing any superdelegates to ratfuck the vote at the convention. Same with Biden in 2020 (and the DNC changed the rules starting in 2018 such that the vote at the convention doesn’t even include superdelegates unless it’s contested and needs a second vote).
The problem is simply one of turnout. Progressive voters just haven’t turned up enough to sustain what Bernie started in 2016. If Bernie and AOC can keep it up, and get more of the Squad and people like Waltz stumping around the country for state and local races, and get progressives to both run and vote in the primaries, we can do it.
Media/social media are owned and controlled by the oligarchs in the US. Getting a message through that firewall in today’s America is exceedingly challenging, albeit not impossible. They all pander to their special interests rather than report news. The more fringe ones like The Intercept tend to be a bit too fringe, which damages credibility on a wide scale.
It would have to be a new movement with a new media broadcast platform, hosted somewhere secure and hardened. Probably not in the US, with routing contingency to get around the US government attempting to block them. Not new tech, just something that isn’t owned by oligarchs or have a tainted reputation.
Would have to be organic/word of mouth at first. Really hard to get traction that way these days. Again, not impossible. Just challenging.
Media/social media are owned and controlled by the oligarchs in the US.
I know this is a really hard concept. But go out and talk to people in real life. Join a union. Go to the meetings. Talk to people at work. That’s how you spread word.
Your assumption is incorrect in that this is already happening. You need to think bigger.
It’s do or die. People don’t realize that. I think a lot of people are passively submissive to just letting things die. Everyone is burnt out.
I’d love to see this happen and I hope we can see it through to completion.
Something anyone can do this week to take a step in the correct direction is to go and get a library card. It’ll help one the greatest foundations of democracy, community, and public knowledge in our country, and it’ll help connect you with a source of knowledge and a community with whom you can jointly build a coalition.
Not a bad idea, I can’t make it through a full book but maybe a library card is the perfect length for me.
It could also get you access to Kanopy (films and documentaries), Hoopla (audiobooks), and Libby (ebooks and audiobooks).
I choose to see this as a positive.
I hope it’s not just him trying to get his voters to vote for Neoliberals again.
Good luck dear US friends. I honestly hope this movement becomes big and survives the first wave of media‘s shit show to undermine the reputation. And I hope you survive the next wave when your troops stand against your own population. It can work out as revolutions in Eastern Europe has shown in past years.
This is one of those comments where I didn’t realize how badly I needed to read it until I did. This kind of support from the countries our dictator is actively alienating is extremely beneficial for morale. Thanks!
I am sorry, but that is embarrassing, 30k people is average sized rally in my 10M people country.
And how large (geographically) is your country?
Then by your reckoning, they’re doing pretty well. Colorado has a population of 6 million.
It needs to be in the streets but it’s hard to be the first to do it. And where I love I’m not even sure who, what, or where to protest.
Colorado has a 5.9 million person population spread across 104,185 square miles (269,837km^2) of mountains and plains.
TIL Colorado is approximately Finland
Gotta start somewhere 🤷♂️
Hopefully this is only the start of a growing series of protests and rallies.
Americans really need to get out by the millions and save their country before there’s nothing left to save.
I guess so… let’s see if it will actually grow.
I mean, this has been the biggest so far for this tour. The crowd sizes have been growing.
Oh, it’ll definitely grow, idk where this pessimism is coming from. People are fed up and you got the most popular spokespersons on the left leading the movement and they just surpassed their expectations five-fold.
Oh, it’ll definitely grow, idk where this pessimism is coming from.
Some people want progressives to fail. Even if that means fascism.
I think a lot of people lost faith already. I’m glad it’s Bernie though.
Yeah you can have your rallies and rah rah rah. But, is this going to inspire hope come mid-terms? Can’t tell.
You’re right, we should definitely not try anything. 🤷♂️
Well, the current efforts are few and lacking.
I think the vast majority of people who participate in American politics online discussion simply do not grasp or understand how to react. Or even what happened to cause this decline. And those that do have very few leaders or organizations or networks to draw support.
This leaves most people who want to help floundering and feeling helpless.
That look the deer had before it’s hit by that truck? This is where the average participant is. And I’m not sure that this is the best it can get or not.
Too much is missing. And all the best will in the world, and all the prettiest speeches, rants, essays , comments and posts cannot will it into existence. It has to grow on its own. And that takes time we may not have
What do you suggest as the first one to three steps to get started on not being the paralyzed deer? You’ve identified the problem, do you have wisdom to share on actionable tasks one can do to get started? You’re not wrong about identifying ignorance…unfortunately, ignorance is self-reinforcing without effective training and education.
Unlearning? Remove the taught perspective of life and society. Reconnect with your own self, know your body. Remove pointless culture and consumerism from your life. Then things become more clear if you do not have things polluting your body and mind. Slowly you will reattach to honest humanity and notice the things marketed to you, products, lifestyles, etc, are not necessity and actually detach you from self and authentic humanity.
That’s all great steps 6 to 10 advice, but for anyone who never learned how to unlearn, it’ll fall on deaf ears. It’s vague and intimidatingly unactionable. I meant some easy, low-cost, entry-level step toward what you’re describing, which is nearer to the zenith of what we should be trying to achieve. It’s like telling someone who might be interested in becoming enlightened, to, you know, just become enlightened.
My favorite first step toward being a more active component in my community was to go to the local library (bringing with me a piece of mail addressed to me at my address in the same jurisdiction as the library itself as well as a form of identification) and signing up for a library card. I would then see what upcoming programs are being held and then go to some of them to meet other people. Or I’d browse the book selection and specifically try to find books written about social activism or classic dystopian novels. Maybe even see if there are any acclaimed ‘how to protest’ books. My personal recommendation is The Dictator’s Handbook and I just picked up The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes- and Why, which seems good so far.
The problem I’m having is I’m pretty unlearned in the art of effective activism, and that ignorance is intimidating and paralyzing. I don’t want to screw it up and potentially get hurt or taken advantage of and without a trusted guide, it’s unlikely I’ll give it a try. That’s the kind of specific, actionable, realistic advice I meant to solicit, not lofty goals of razing and rebuilding an entire socioeconomic worldview. I mean, that would help, but even it is a poor guide for taking real actions in the physical world.
Your not wrong. It is like a craft. You can’t learn how to do it, it comes to a person at their own speed. If you try to force it, it result in what organized religion got, false followers and a soulless image to follow that is essentially fake.
Your steps sound good for you. There’s no set steps because everyone’s so unique with different learning styles.
Your anxieties are understandable. We are in a time where people are being forced to hold a role if they want to live a real life. When I say role i mean make history. It’s.like we are living in a time where the history book is being written in real time. We got taught about certain characters of the past, but this is right now. Anyone right now can take their place in the history of America. It’s almost like a business boom, like the internet boom. I think we are witnessing harsh reality. The anxiety felt is raw reality and we were taught such a privileged life we don’t know how to deal with it.
Unfortunately I am clueless.
My own experience comes from doing grassroots in Texas, years ago. I saw how tentative and fragile that was.
Then , I tried to educate people about the value of paper ballots in Texas. And it gave me insight about how hard things can be to change ( understatement there).
I was incredibly inspired by the Ukrainian revolution ten years ago. And use that to see why things break here. Eventually I put it down to the collapse of local politics and Ukrainians have healthier social ties on average.
But a builder of local neighborhoods I am not, nor am I a good educator or leader, and am somewhat of a coward unless I am a follower. So I got nothing
Unfortunately, I’m clueless, too. I feel especially frustrated by my cluelessness, because I’ve received extensive “leadership” training and I feel like I should be good at sharing ideas and building consensus. But I’m an awkward introvert who, at best, prefers to be a sidekick to a better leader who understands and relates to other people more easily than I do.
Something I’d like to try in my community is see if I can reserve the rec room at my local library to do a double feature (maybe two features spaced out by a week) in which I show the films Conspiracy (2001) and Schindler’s List, with a discussion/shared analysis by the viewers following each viewing.
And then maybe I’d try starting a book club where the first book is This Perfect Day by Ira Levin followed by other titles focused on social ideals, flaws, actions, and abuses.
You know, when I have time, that is…
The Avatar episode about No War in Ba Sing Se would fit in as well. Oh, and the opening episodes of the classic Battlestar Galactica - the Cylons attack when the opposition is gathered for a peace conference. We might relate if WW3 starts.
Battlestar 1978 - Saga of a Star World trailer
We probably should make a list of stuff for everybody to select and show for their respective libraries.
*Avatar: The Last Airbender, episode 14, “City of Walls and Secrets”.
*Babylon 5: seasons 4 and 5 focus on the civil war with Earth. In one of the episodes, Sheriden asks incoming warships about what they are supposed to do when issued illegal orders. We could use a supercut of B5 that is solely concerned with the civil war, since the series is filled with many unrelated plot threads.
On that note, Mac’s Lore did an episode that summarizes the civil war.
*V: An alien invasion, in which the aliens literally wear human skin to make themselves appear normal. Aside from eating mice and things, they institute fascism. The series is all about forming a resistance against them. There is also a reboot of V, but I don’t recall which series got to their conclusion.
I think your ideas are great at the library , as well as a book club. It will help a lot, probably more than you know, and will have effects for years in small ways that are hard to measure.
Plans, even just talked about, like this give me hope.
Don’t put words in their mouth. Your reaction is off putting and killing your own cause. That’s why people don’t want to join you guys.
You’re wrong. People do want to join, that’s why the rally was so large.
If his comment is the reason why YOU don’t want to join the cause, your argument is in bad faith.
Your posts don’t say anything, they are emotional and reactionary. Not strategic to the cause you claim to fight for. That’s not said to be an insult.
Rallying support and showing people who are hurting that they are not alone isn’t emotional or reactionary. If that’s not your idea of helping, then do your own thing and don’t tear down people who are trying. Shitting on anyone trying to help is worse than doing nothing.
I always forget that when the crowds are this large it does kind of help people understand folks are on their side, even if they are not engaged in politics and just read the headlines like us folks on lemmy who argue about things before we read the article and then apologize later…
People need to see that the left isn’t their enemy, which is what corporate media has been pushing for almost a century. The more people see that taking care of each other is the point of government, the sooner we build a world that helps everyone.
I think you misunderstood this conversation I’m talking about your response to ops post not the subject matter.
Well, I’m not talking about the subject matter or the ops post, either. This is random that both of us would be doing this at the same time on the same day in the exact same post.
Hello fellow troll
Yes. I respond to news articles and the comments in the posts to engage with the content. I don’t post a lot, I mainly comment. I do use learned knowledge, intuition, lived experience, gut feelings, emotion to get the general feeling of how an event or idea affects me personally as well as those I care about, but that’s involves compassion and empathy. I have many flaws though, yes even bias.
Good observation, but that’s already obvious.
Fun fact: your posts don’t say anything either.
“They want to know if the people of America are going to stand up to Trumpism, oligarchy,” Sanders said to a cheering crowd.
fuck y’all
been nowhere for decades and country been needing a revolution but just now decide to do something acting like MLK
where was this “energy” a decade ago or two or at any time? Trump is just the latest spokesperson and not the only time we faced shit like this
if another rally is held most likely be in a blue state and odds are these two are just opportunistically cashing out like last time
You have a point if you’re talking about Dems as a whole, but both Sanders and AOC have been pushing to stand up since the beginning. They are definitely not on the list of people sitting by the sidelines and letting it happen.
I don’t want to be too much of an infighter, but look at Bernie’s immigration stance over the years. He isn’t sobbing too much about the undocumented getting deported because he claims they take from documented Americans. It makes it hard to believe him knowing how he has looked directly into the eyes of innocent humans and still chooses to treat them as drains of documented american society.
These people want three things:
- for the democratic party to continue existing
- for different democrats to be elected and for us to be the ones in Washington to change it from the inside as democrats
- for your votes and donation dollars to go to the Democratic Party because they need to win those elections
Their plan: in two or more years, replace many old liberal, Republican-lite dems with young progressives. This will allow them to push more progressive policies. The problem is they had 8 years, nearly a decade, to do that or else we get fascism and failed and now want to believe in their two year plan to start the change of fascism to a progressive democracy.
I hope fascism is willing to wait for democracy to do its thing as much as these two are betting on it with their strategy, but there are democrats out there taking on AIPAC money and stomping out progressives because they aren’t getting the donations going to the Democratic Party fundraisers because they don’t take corporate donations. There has to be more from the party “of the people” than this.
I don’t want to be too much of an infighter, but
I don’t believe you.
Believe whatever you want, I don’t care. I’m for open borders and he is not. I would have voted for him like I voted for Kamala, but libs be libs and many anre not for open borders like I am. I want Ellis island back like my ancestors were afforded to come here, but Bernie and many libs are not for an Ellis island. It is what it is, and it is my main gripe with the guy.
He’s not for deporting the dreamers, but get their parents outta here says he lol. If you’re poor and want to come to America? “America’s closed!” says he. He chooses his words so carefully. He is for deporting innocent illegals humans. He doesn’t think they’re innocent and deserve deportation by armed forces. He’s wrong, flat out, I welcome the poor from around the world to come here. I love my immigrant family and I love my immigrant neighbors and I love the immigrants coming here for economic prosperity, and I want that to be as easy as Ellis island again.
He isn’t sobbing too much about the undocumented getting deported
Source demonstrating that he doesn’t care?
he claims they take from documented Americans
Ah, now I see what confused you!
Bernie speaks out against billionaires and their corporations driving down wages by exploiting undocumented immigrants.
He doesn’t blame immigrants for being exploited and he has certainly never been in favor of the draconian, abusive, and counterproductive immigration laws of the GOP.
Unlike the leadership of both parties, he places the blame firmly where it belongs: on the rich people and companies profiting off of abusing everyone else.
The foundation Bernie stands on is the the same foundation of Donald Trump. People want someone standing on the earths dirt as their foundation so to speak, not Americas faulty foundation.
Yes Bernie is the better of the choices. But Americans should be making America better by their own hands, their own lives. Rebuild the foundation with our own hands even if that means sacrificing our lives for the future of American humanity. Continuing this American bullshit is like going to McDonald’s instead of growing a garden and eating your own healthy food. Its like… You have the option to not eat at all and starve (trump), eat McDonald’s (Bernie), or learn to grow your own garden and build a better foundation to build upon. We are currently starving. Some people are willing the say fuck it and choose McDonald’s to save them selves. Others are willing to take a risk of life and death to learn to grow their own garden.
We don’t want to be forced to eat something we don’t like. We don’t want to be forced the gmo option they offer us. We want to control our foundation.
Freedom is free, but freedom is war. Peace and unity is possible but at the cost of genocide because it’s not possible to unify humanity. Either path someone’s experiencing hell. The understanding of this is where spirituality comes from. Authentic spirituality… But spirituality is also manipulated and used… …any way you look at it life will always be raw with a mix of good and evil and this is something people will literally kill to ignore.
I hope you start following AOC’s social media from now on if you still think she lacks the energy or whatever. She and Ms. Crockett have been killing it for a long while now.
They don’t represent raw genuine humanity they represent the adulterated GMO manipulated version of a human being.
I see Bernie as a positive compared to America now, I’ve voted for him or written him in multiple times. But he is the system. A lot of people don’t want the system we’ve known. The system that taught these people is faulty so everything it creates is faulted. We want to get past that fault that creates what is in America today. That fault is deeper then Bernie. Bernie’s foundation is built on the same foundation that the fault is located.
In a strategic way… One wouldn’t want to support Bernie because now at this point in time they know it would just be another bandaid fix covering up and hiding that fault in the foundation of American society. People don’t want bandaid fixes anymore. We are closer to a point that the ultimate sacrifice, going to war, a civil war, makes more sense if the goal is to fix the faulted base that America’s lifestyle and culture is built on.
Imagine if Elon used AI to run the policing and teaching in America. That’s the new method. It’s just the digital way to continue what America already does today. The old manual method was starting charities, creating businesses, lobbying and social manipulation. It’s all the same shit. Both are fucked.
People want humanity that America’s foundation does not live for and was not built for. So authentic people aren’t flocking to talking heads of the tradition political system and media.
I seem to remember lots of pro-Bernie energy in 2016. Voting for Bernie would have been much more satisfying than voting for Clinton, at least for me and many of the people I personally know.
The same day they spoke at a rally in Greeley which is a red city and the crowd was 10,000 out of a city population of 100,000
They have support in both red and blue counties and cities.
