What's exciting about Bernie's campaign is that it has electrified voters with a platform of domestic uplift and rebuilding. Domestic uplift requires billions of tax dollars. Bernie talks about taxing Wall Street transactions, which is great. And adding revenue by fairer taxation aimed at the wealthy. Also great. But cutting military spending and reducing the interventionist power of "the military industrial complex" (as Republican President Dwight Eisenhower labeled it) are essential to being able to afford Bernie's domestic agenda. It would also be good for world peace if U.S. foreign policy stressed material aid and diplomacy and human rights rather than military adventurism.
JB: Does RootsAction.org have plans for Bernie beyond the petition and are you targeting other candidates as well? If not, why not?
JC: RootsAction.org has about 600,000 online activists and is growing (anyone can join up on the homepage at www.RootsAction.org). Keep in mind that it's a departure for us to focus much attention on elections and candidates. We generally focus our campaigns on issues. We're one of the only online activism groups that is independent in championing peace and justice, the environment and civil liberties no matter whether a Republican or Democrat inhabits the White House. That distinguishes us from some big liberal online groups that went soft or silent on issues of perpetual war or mass surveillance when Obama continued or expanded some of Bush's worst policies.
We took this departure to petition Bernie to put forward a progressive foreign policy agenda because 1) he's clearly the progressive among those running in the Democratic primaries 2) his presidential campaign has caught on with huge numbers of activists, including our base, and 3) our issues work in support of single-payer Medicare For All and expanding Social Security and taxing Wall Street often put RootsAction side-by-side with Bernie's legislative agenda as a senator. That might explain why we were, your word, "targeting" Bernie.
For all our concerns about Bernie's failure to clearly challenge our country's militaristic foreign policy, it's important to remember that, according to various insider accounts of the Obama administration's first four years, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was usually on the hawkish side of internal debates.
Our main focus will be less on candidates than on targeting those in power -- and we're well known for resisting President Obama on issues such as his war on whistleblowers and his championing of the corporatist Trans-Pacific Partnership and his Arctic drilling plan, which Al Gore labeled as "insane."
JB: I didn't really know anything about RootsAction.org before we began talking. Thanks for filling me in. I like that a Democratic label does not confer immunity from accountability. I'm sure that will appeal to many of our readers at OpEdNews. What else would you like to talk about before we wrap this up?
JC: You phrased it well. No "immunity" for Democrats. RootsAction is an independent, progressive online force that sticks firmly to principles of social justice, civil liberties, etc., no matter whether Republican or Democratic officeholders are doing the infringing. Our activists expect that kind of principled independence from us.
My final point, and I speak as an activist who has spent more than 45 years working for social change since the civil rights/anti-Vietnam War era of the late 1960s: Don't ever give up or get cynical about change. Join organizations. Join movements. Despite my criticism here of Bernie -- who I've known and respected since he first went to Congress -- people should consider working in his campaign and spreading the word about economic justice and transformation to a jobs-oriented, renewable-energy economy. Bernie is calling for a nonviolent "political revolution." That's what our country needs. And the process will continue long after the Sanders for President Campaign is over, no matter how that campaign ends up.
Were miracles to happen and Bernie Sanders were to become president, we would need strong, independent social movements outside the White House to keep him honest and pressure him toward peace and justice policies in the face of massive corporate pressures he would be subjected to.
JB: Thanks so much for talking with me, Jeff. It was great to learn about RootsAction.org and what you are up to!
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