Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
I went walking, door to door today, Sunday, April 24th, as a canvasser for Bernie Sanders.
Walking through the neighborhoods of Cumberland, Maryland I went, my second consecutive Sunday. Last week I was on the Southside there in that old de-industrialized city, where railroad workers rioted in 1877, the year of America’s greatest labor violence. The neglected historian Page Smith wrote that “The Maryland National Guard, the ‘Dandy Fifth,’ was called out to deal with the strikers at Cumberland… but as the militiamen assembled, they were surrounded by jeering crowds of ‘all ages, and both sexes.’” It was the same city through which Coxey’s Army passed in the spring of 1894, on their way to Washington, DC to ask for public jobs building and repairing roads, as nearly a million were out of work after the panic of 1893. Hard times indeed, in that glorious 19th century that Karl Rove wants to take us back too.
The Southside was where nurses and doctors from the hospital live, so I was told. Before I started out with my work partner, we saw a large limb fall from a Sycamore tree, the same trees that lined my boyhood street in Ewing Township, NJ. This on a windless day without a cloud in the sky; the limb hit the windshield of a car parked under it; we walked over to see how bad the damage was, since no one else seemed to notice. The limb had punched a fist-sized hole and there were also crack lines across all the glass – a total loss. I rang the doorbell and knocked at the house, but no one responded, and no neighbors came out. Oblivious, no notice in this society without solidarity. And who knows: the event might have been nature’s way of filling in for the missing angry citizens.
Today I walked on the Northeast side of town, off Valley Road, in the hills which run close down to the railroad tracks, and eventually to Wills Creek and the famous gap, the narrows, and on to Route 40 West, back towards Frostburg, where I live. It was a more modest neighborhood than the Southside one from last Sunday, a polite way of saying it was poorer, but it still had the same shared air about it: many homes, sidewalks and retaining walls needed repairs; many homes were empty with various official postings on the front doors, none bearing good news, and only about 10% of the residents were at home, when the properties were accessible. I climbed many shaky stairs and broken steps.
The people who were home were kind to me, though, on this warm late April day, again with a flawless blue sky and a strong sun. I was offered cold water twice, and accepted, and a banana and a porch to rest on, and two extended conversations amidst at least ten shorter ones. I had a cordial one with a Trump supporter who was not on our list, out on the street at the curb. I met only one really angry man who glared at me to tell me his Democratic wife and daughter, on my list, were not home, but that his house had no use for Bernie Sanders. He said this with intensity, with hot coals in his eyes, in a way that if it was said in a bar, man to man, would most likely lead to trouble: an argument, at least. But not under these circumstances and formalities. I thanked him and said that he had made himself very clear and moved on.
I relay these details for a reason. I hadn’t rehearsed what I was going to say. I had been a canvasser, paid, full time for the Democratic Party back in Montgomery County, MD, in 2006, and was rewarded for working hard by being promoted to co-manage a GOTV office in Takoma Park during the week before the election, in state Senator Jamie Raskin’s headquarters, before he had displaced, in his first election victory, a woman stalwart of the Democratic establishment. So I felt I could come up with the right words, from the head and heart, to make my two minute speech to those who told me that they were 3’s on a scale of 1 to 5: “undecided.”
I’ll share it with you now, because it’s the basic reason I’m supporting Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton for President, and Representative Donna Edwards over Rep. Chris Van Hollen for the Senate seat being vacated by Barbara Mikulski.
I told the citizens of Cumberland that I thought the lives, the life stories of both Bernie and Donna matched their own, and those of the cities we lived in. Hard lives, struggling lives. That’s mine now too: I said I’d finish the month with $50.00 in my checking account. I said that the Democratic Party of the New Deal and FDR that did so much for working people and bottom 60% in the 1930’s, had become something very different over the last 30 years, ever since Jimmy Carter. It had become America’s second business party and it was a party dominated by successful professional people, not working class and middle class people. I said that it was an illusion being presented by both Hillary Clinton and Chris Van Hollen that they had the practical political skills, tempered proposals and expectations that could achieve workable results in Congress with the Republicans. I said that was an illusion disproved by both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton’s two terms. The only time they gained anything was by moving to the right politically and economically, becoming more like Republicans, not like New Deal Democrats, and that election results for Congress and state houses across the country proved the calamity of their strategy by the election of overwhelming numbers of Republicans, not compromising Democrats. We should expect nothing from the Republican Right, they will only compromise when Dems become more, not less, like them, and that both Sanders and Edwards showed that little edge of anger that meant they knew where we had to go: we need big changes, a political revolution, a democratic one, and that the old Democratic establishment could no longer deliver that, could no longer motivate the citizens.
When I got home, I saw Bernie Sanders on the Real News Network, sitting next to Danny Glover, and finally calling for a federal jobs program, New Deal like, targeted especially to the desperate minority young in our urban ghettoes. Yet that is still not the right proposal, as I have been urging upon him for many months now: it will backfire, like the 1960’s proposals for urban jobs, if seen targeted to minorities, no matter how desperate their situation. The proposal must be universal, the very first right of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, the right to a job, to match the right to healthcare, for everyone that needs one and is willing to work: young, old, discarded, those who have served their prison terms but have now a stigma for life under the New Jim Crow. Bernie must move there, and Donna too. It’s the best hope for our nation and I don’t think Sec. Clinton and Rep. Van Hollen can follow that path. It was a big step for Bernie too, but a logical one, and it was about time.
As for Senator Jamie Raskin, I no longer live in Montgomery County, I’m in the 6th, not the 8th congressional district, but this Email is going state and nationwide, and I know of no more capable public official, of a great mind, and very generous heart, than Senator Raskin. At times I have worried that he too, shaped by his affluent district, has been pulled too far in the direction of the meritocratic, professionalized, Ivy League led Democratic Party. I can find all those traits in Jamie’s resume. But I see something much deeper and better in him; quite simply, he’s the most gifted political figure with the greatest potential, that I’ve seen in my lifetime, as a registered Democrat since my first vote in 1972.
And yes, one more thing I mentioned to the citizens of Cumberland, Maryland. I said win or lose, Bernie Sanders is trying to build a movement, and the dissenting Democrats of Allegany County need a regular monthly forum where they can hear talks, debates, new ideas, and bring their visions for a better party and a better society to sympathetic ears. Whether this effort remains inside the party or seeks a new template is an open question. But right now, they’re ignored and taken for granted, not even given the courtesy of a mailing notice for major events, like Senator Cardin’s fund raiser this past fall. I learned about it from my mailman, who happened to attend.
I’ve said enough.
For a better politics, and a better society,
Best,
billofrights
Frostburg, MD