Thread by @VABVOX

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.

https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1040496346279628800

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…