Victoria Brownworth Profile picture
Sep 15, 2018 20 tweets 7 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Universal scorn for this jejune piece which reminds me of things I said as a junior high student being raised in an activist Socialist household.

Sometimes one should read and educate one's self rather than just talk to hear one's own voice. Sanders should try that.
It is unsurprising to me that black and female activists are eyerolling this piece which is another version of Sanders' "big banks! oligarchs!" stump speech from 2016. The only new item here is a brief insertion of Trump--who many feel Sanders enabled into office.
Sanders' history--modern and not--is sketchy as it is vague.

Americans love to claim this country as the oldest democracy as Sanders does, but we aren't and it's the small wrong points like this that are also irksome.

Sanders just ignores inconvenient history.
For years Sanders admired the oppressive authoritarian regime in Cuba which hurt women & black Cubans & quarantined gays.

Sanders skips over WWII & ignores other history, like that which formed the EU. Is he a Brexiter, like Trump? Everything is vague, except for what's wrong.
Sanders demands the very technological changes he argued against in 2016 to get votes. You can't tell coal miners you'll bring back dead coal to refute the woman saying technology killed coal and she has a new plan and now say--vaguely--technology rocks when it's THE job killer.
The FACT is that this piece could have been written in 1855,1910, 1940,1970. Since the Industrial Revolution there has been a different variant of workers versus technological advances and there has been NO POINT in recorded history were the rich didn't oppress the poor. Not new.
And just as there has always been this rich v. poor dichotomy, there have also been waves of workers'/people's rights movements.

Sanders is welcome to reinvent the wheel all he wants, but the pretense that this is some new "movement"when he simply hasn't read history is irksome.
Sanders, yet again, managed to ignore the billions of women and POC in the world. This is a piece about white men and for white men. There is no discussion of the world's most repressive government--China--nor African countries with cohesive democratic governments.
There is nothing here even about the fact that in the US the majority of working poor are women--something Sanders seems not even to know, since he never mentions women in his old school rants about the working class.

Is it too much to expect Sanders to read? I think not.
Sanders is of my parents' generation. But unlike my truly Socialist parents who raised us to be Socialists and human rights workers with community ideals and efforts, Sanders speaks in broad vagaries that have no foundation to create actual change.

WHAT IS THE ACTUAL PLAN?
There isn't one. The past few weeks while American activists have been laser-focused on preventing #BrettKavanaugh from ascending to a lifetime sinecure on #SCOTUS, Sanders has been in a private war with Jeff Bezos--one Trump was in a few months back.

Amazon is NOT our problem.
Amazon isn't even the worst offending factory/corporation in America. Walmart, Apple, Tyson--these all far-exceed Amazon for worker complaints. And as I explained before, Sanders' lack of context ignores the very real damage he will do to #disabled and chronically ill workers.
Broad brushes tend to sweep the vulnerable aside. I have never once heard Sanders discuss #disabled workers. Or even women workers. Where are his plans regarding the capricious discrimination against LGBT workers? And why does he never--unlike Sen. Gillibrand--mention childcare?
This essay is reminiscent of Sanders' 1970s essays--and about as useful.

In all honesty, who among us DOESN'T want a redistribution of wealth so that everyone has enough? I'm the lifelong Socialist my parents raised me to be--obscene wealth enrages me. But is it THE problem?
Sanders mentions the Mercers but not left-leaning philanthropic billionaires. That's part of the inconvenient truth here. There are more--at least in America, the UK and France--left-leaning billionaires doing good works than far-right Mercers and Kochs.

What about them?
I ache for balance. For fair pay and safe work and a chance for all of us to have a comfortable life without the detrimental stresses imposed by poverty.

I want women & POC to have the same opportunities white men have always had.

I would like there to be no billionaires.
But I live in a real world where history exists. And unlike Sanders--who is a millionaire with real, actual power to create change that he has never used--I am living in poverty trying to make an activist difference for others in my poor neighborhood.

Sanders COULD help us.
At 77, Sanders is the jr senator from America's 2nd least populous & whitest state. Nothing about Vermont--or this essay--looks like what's needed for majority female, one-third POC, one-fifth living in poverty America.
We need so much more than these jejune words. So much more.
I would add this addendum: real small s socialism is good for everyone.

If you don't think so, divest of all the socialist programs you use every day, from the Internet to the roads to public transit to police and fire depts. to your kids' public schools.

Thank you.
.@BernieSanders You should read this investigative piece I did. You never talk about America's real working class and working poor: women of all races.

damemagazine.com/2018/04/12/wom…

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More from @VABVOX

Oct 9, 2018
I don't think men really understand how different it is to be a woman out in the world and how quickly things can turn dangerous.
When I was living in New Orleans, I was walking home from work one night. It was fall--dark early & foggy.
A man came out of the fog toward me.
1/
He said hi, I said hi.
As he started to pass me, he asked me if I had the time.
I looked at my watch, looked up, he had a gun pointed at me.
He hit me so fast I wasn't able to steel myself.
I fell to the ground.
He said, "I could rape you right now, but I don't have time."
2/
He wanted my money.
I had the grocery money for the entire house (I lived with 3 other people) in my purse.
He took it and disappeared into the fog.
The whole thing was maybe ten minutes, start to finish.
I was shaking so hard I could hardly get up.
My head was bleeding.
3/
Read 20 tweets
Oct 4, 2018
The majority of the working class in America is women and POC.
And white men as a group haven't voted majority Democrat since 1964--they stopped after LBJ signed the the #VRA.
Flip the narrative and start listening to the ACTUAL working class--the rest of us.
Stop centering white men for everything.
Stop claiming only white men can save us from the damage white men did to us.
Women are the working class--my investigation here:

damemagazine.com/2018/04/12/wom…
.@matthewstoller is very worried about white men, but it's really women of all races who are facing the worst effects of economic and social stresses.
My investigation here:
damemagazine.com/2018/05/10/why…
Read 5 tweets
Oct 2, 2018
The relentlessness of passing over superb women with strong credentials & election histories in favor of whatever man is a headline at a moment is exhausting.

Two months ago it was Avenatti. Now it's O'Rourke.

Bypassing the majority of Americans--women--is a national disgrace.
O'Rourke is fine. He is not, Harris, Gillibrand or Klobuchar.

▪Gillibrand is Congress' leader on women's rights & sexual assault victims.
▪Harris set NN2018 on fire with her speeches reclaiming identity politics.
▪ Klobuchar highlighted #Kavanaugh's unfitness for SCOTUS.
Americans MUST stop looking past women to find some man, any man to supplant them.

It took THIRTY YEARS of incredibly hard work for @HillaryClinton to get to run for POTUS. The rules for women are so different. No one sees a woman give a single speech and says "president!"
Read 16 tweets
Oct 1, 2018
I lived in NOLA right after college.
I drank most every day, as did everyone I knew.
We were all in the domestic Peace Corps, all in our early 20s, all hardworking activists with stressful work.
We drank too much at Mardi Gras, New Year's.
It's absurd to claim #Kavanaugh didn't.
Those of us who've had alcoholics in our lives--like Klobuchar--tend to be careful about alcohol because we've been damaged by the drunks in our lives. I'm a control freak, so never liked being drunk, but lots of my friends did. What IS true, is most 20somethings drink to excess.
This new tack from the #GOP to dismiss #Kavanaugh's alcoholic drinking--& I am not saying he was/is an alcoholic, but he certainly drank like one--is just wrong. It undermines their own credibility and ignores reality: statistically the vast majority of teens/20s get drunk OFTEN.
Read 6 tweets
Sep 29, 2018
Let's talk about sex, #Kavanaugh & Venn diagram overlap of male entitlement.

I've written a lot about sex in various contexts. In the late 80s/early 90s I also gave safe sex workshops back when folks my age were dying 24/7 from #AIDS. My 1st book was on juvenile prostitution.
1/
Most of us know consensual and non-consensual sex differ. The entirety of #Kavanaugh's defense and his defenders' outrage is predicated on the presumption that no teenaged boy knows what consent is.

THEY. KNOW.

Some, like their adult counterparts, don't care.

This is key.
2/
Since #MeToo we've seen egregious serial rapists like #BillCosby and #HarveyWeinstein exposed & attempts made to prosecute them.

But there are "lesser" sexual assaults we've given a lighter hand to: Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin, Louis CK--too many to list.
3/
Read 28 tweets
Sep 27, 2018
I gotta tell you, folks, I have been so sick for the past 2wks, I have really been scared.

Sept 22 House GOP passed their new cuts to Social Security Medicaid and Medicare out of committee. $1.2T in cuts.

That's the safety net.

I've always hoped I could fall there. No more.
I had to call my bestie today to have her come up and stay with me while The Wife is teaching.

Even with the oxygen, hard to breathe.

I had to cancel interviews for tomorrow, a radio appearance for Friday.

Chronic illness like #cancer is incapacitating at times.
We need to do better for sick and #disabled Americans.

It is so hard to work and be sick.

Never getting better sick.
Read 4 tweets

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