An Open Letter To Senator Bernie Sanders-Count Me In To Defend Our Republic Against The Fear-Mongers, White Nationalists And Greed-Heads

An Open Letter To Senator Bernie Sanders-Count Me In To Defend Our Republic Against The Fear-Mongers, White Nationalists And Greed-Heads 

By Frank Jackman

[This open letter started out as a response to a recent request after donating money from the Sanders 2020 campaign.]

Robert F. Kennedy once noted that one Richard Milhous Nixon, onetime President of the United States (POSTUS in twitter-speak) and common criminal, represented the dark side of the America spirit, the greedy, corrupt merciless side. And Bobby Kennedy (excuse me, I shed a tear each time I say or write his name) should have known since he had spent a great part of his political life fighting the guy up close and personal. That Kennedy reference by me though did not just come by happenstance. Bobby’s aborted campaign in 1968 was the last time that I felt the Republic, our Republic, was in danger from the fear-mongers, white nationalists and greed-heads. I worked like seven dervishes that spring all over the East Coast trying to get him the Democratic Party nomination for President. Now in 2019, certainly earlier, we are again in the age of the great fear with the task of defeating one Donald J. Trump if we are to clear some of the debris. I, desperately. want my Republic back.           

Just in case the reader might think that it has been fifty years since I have awoken from some political slumber that is far from the case. Ever since my military service in 1969 which finally got me on the right side of the angels I have spent my life on issues campaigns, issues like war and peace, immigration, Central America, union organizing, South Africa and the like. And believe that was time well spent. In the Age of Trump though that is no longer enough, there are not enough thumbs to plug holes in the dike. If the defense of the Republic is to mean anything then we cannot have four more years of Trump, Trump unleashed with nothing to stop him with the worry of re-election out of the way. That last year brought up the critical question to my mind of who among the various Democratic Party contenders today represented the spirit of that long- ago youthful drive that got me like a whirling dervish running all over the place for Bobby in 1968. And who can defeat one Donald J. Trump.      

Earlier this year, January actually, a group of older military veterans, union organizers, civil rights activists and social justice devotees met in Boston to figure out how collectively we could work for one candidate with that goal in mind. Who in the then growing array of candidates could beat Trump and had some kind of vision about what Bobby, stealing from Tennyson, called “seeking a newer world” and what I called, stealing from F. Scott Fitzgerald, returning to the sense of wonder and possibility of the “fresh, green breast of land’ before them of the early settlers of what became America. We collectively made a calculated judgment that Senator Bernie Sanders best represented that two-pronged criteria. Some of us, including me since my Army days, have called ourselves socialists, others have been drawn to various programs Bernie has fought for all his political life like veterans rights, LGBTQ issues, immigration (especially appropriate for a son of an immigrant father), Medicaid for All, college debt forgiveness, college for all and the like, and few from the 2016 campaign.

We formed a committee Bernie Vision 2020 Boston which now is part of an umbrella Ma4Bernie organization who are already working like crazy in Ma and NH to get him over the finish line this year. So, yes, count me, us in on the fight to defend our Republic against the fear-mongers, white nationalists and greed-heads. Wouldn’t it be better to wake up one day knowing somebody like Robert Kennedy was Attorney-General and not someone like William Barr. Then we can all breathe a little easier.