Senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: AP)
23 November 16
As Bernie Sanders tours the country rallying the masses, he reminds people that action without strategy won't get them far.
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the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential victory, Bernie Sanders has
said it is not only important to mobilize, but to have a strategy and to
act on it.
“Our job is not just to raise our voices,” the
once-presidential candidate said in an interview with PBS Newshour on
Monday. “That’s fine. But it is to bring millions of people together
around a progressive agenda.”
While the Vermont Senator has honored the results of
the elections, he has been touring the country and rallying the masses
against Trump’s damaging and inflammatory rhetoric in jam-packed events.
Despite Trump’s apparent appeal to the working class,
Sanders has pointed out, he is nothing more than an extension of the
very same political and economic establishments against which he
constantly railed.
“This is a guy who's a billionaire who doesn't pay
anything in federal income taxes, who outsources his jobs,” Sanders said
in another interview with GQ on Tuesday. A guy “who has been sued time
and time again by workers for not keeping up his end in contracts.”
Sanders, who is currently touring to also promote his
book “Our Revolution,” in which he reflects on his campaign, has also
called for more transparency and action from his supporters. At one
event on Monday, he suggested self-nominated democrats and progressives
alike must begin doing more to “stand up with the working class of this
country,” rather than just shouting progressive slogans.
“This is where there is going to be division within
the Democratic Party. It is not good enough for someone to say, ‘I’m a
woman! Vote for me!’” he said while giving a speech at Boston’s Berklee
University on Monday. “What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand
up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies,
to the fossil fuel industry.”
He has also vowed that there can be “no compromise”
with Trump when it comes to issues of climate change, racism, sexism and
homophobia, all the issues Trump has repeatedly attacked. He
nevertheless conceded to working together on working-class issues, if
the president-elect committed to it.
“I think it would be counterproductive on issues that
working-class Americans supported and depend upon if we did not go
forward,” he told GQ.
He added that, to that effect, he and his team will be
introducing various pieces of legislation covering everything from
raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, to equity for women workers, to
infrastructure and trade.
“So it's not a question of us working with Trump,” he said. “It's a question of Trump working with us.”
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