Senator Bernie Sanders Inspires Voters at Rally in Sacramento
By Ras H. Siddiqui
Downtown Sacramento, California or more specifically its Cesar Chavez Plaza Park became a focal point of both local and national attention on Thursday, August 22, 2019 due to a rally held here by the presidential hopeful and current Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. It remains difficult to estimate how many people attended this event but a figure of around 3,000 people would not be off the mark, if not more.
A “Socialist” label is often applied to the Senator, but it was no fringe element that attended this very colorful and high energy event. The vast majority of the participants here were probably Democrats (including Left Wingers) but it would be difficult to completely ignore some Republicans who might have been present here to judge future competition. And there was a visible presence of American-Muslims too amongst the diversity in attendance.
At the time of this writing two (later) significant news reports have added to interest in Senator Sander’s quest for becoming the top Democratic nominee next year to go up against the Republicans. A recent poll has him and Elizabeth Warren (both at around 20%) just slightly ahead of Joe Biden who is often thought to be the Democratic candidate who will face our incumbent President Donald Trump in 2020. And the second news item that has many in the American Muslim community talking these days is Senator Sander’s appearance and speech at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention held over the Labor Day weekend in Houston, Texas where this Brooklyn, New York born Jew stole the show. The Senator who has always shown his concern for the rights of the Palestinian people under occupation added another people to his concerns here, the Kashmiris. He was critical of the Indian government for its recent actions in Kashmir, including a lockdown and communication blackout imposed in the region. Senator Sanders said that he was deeply concerned about the situation there as the Indian government has revoked Kashmiri autonomy, cracked down on dissent and instituted a communications blackout and that the crackdown is also denying the Kashmiri people access to medical care. “India’s action is unacceptable,” he said.
In Sacramento on August 22nd, Senator Sanders kept almost all of his speech focused on America’s domestic agenda (and understandably so). His goal is to win the Democratic Party primary here in California in 2020 and to become the nominee for the Democratic Party next year to face Donald Trump. Sanders spoke of how his campaign is different from all others because “we do not just want to win the election, we want to transform America.” “We want a political revolution,” he said. “It is not me but us,” he added. To do that Senator Sanders mentioned a list of corporate and other industrial power centers that need to be taken on, pretty much “the whole damn 1%”. But he also added that no President can do this alone in these unprecedented times. “We need millions of people from Vermont to California standing up”
Sanders said that in America today we have just three people that own more wealth than the bottom half of American society which is unacceptable as is the fact that the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 92%. “We are going to create an economy that works for all of us, not just a few, he said. Together we are going to end this disparity.
Bernie said that we are going to create a healthcare system which guarantees healthcare for all of our people, not make a $100 billion in profit for the healthcare industry. We are going to end the absurdity of 87 million people in this great country being uninsured or under-insured, he added. We are going to end the embarrassment of being the only major (Western) country not to offer healthcare to all of its people as a human right. In America if you get sick you should have the right to go to the hospital or the doctor’s office, said Sanders. If you end up in a hospital in America, you should not be amongst the 500,000 people who go bankrupt. He elaborated on the Medicare for all system that he had in mind and said that such a system existed in Canada and other countries under which if you get sick, you go to a doctor but you do not take out your wallet or your credit cards.
Public (including college) education, raising teacher salaries to at least $60,000 a year was also in focus here along with cancellation of student debt. There were many other topics (including climate change) that Senator Sanders touched upon at this rally. It would be difficult to encapsulate all of them into this report, but he did highlight immigration reform. “Immigrants built this country,” said Sanders. And the immigrants today are doing some of the dirtiest, hardest, low-paying jobs in America. We are going to pass comprehensive immigration reform with a path towards citizenship, he added.
In conclusion, one more point that Senator Sanders made should attract further interest. He said that in the wealthiest country in the world almost 500,000 people (many of them Veterans) should not be sleeping on the streets. And half of our people should not be living paycheck to paycheck (plus let us add retired people to that list because old age is another path to poverty in America). And this is not the way that things should be.
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