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He’s an “avowed democratic socialist.” That fear mongering has lost much of its resonance. What does democratic socialism mean in America? It’s how we teach our children, put out fires, pay for our libraries and for building our roads, bridges, highways and street lighting. It’s how we inspect our food to make it safe, to provide oversight for clean air and water, develop life saving medications and vaccines and of course, provide Social Security and Medicare. Every governor, mayor and school board member who uses public funds to pay for basic services could be called a socialist.
We also support the Sanders moment also because of the rare opportunity his campaign represents to not just speak truth to power, but to join movements together to change our country. Photo credit: National Nurses United
As nurses, an organization of predominantly women, I have been asked, don’t you want to break the glass ceiling with Hillary Clinton?
Yes. We’d love it if Hillary had Bernie’s politics, his unequivocal opposition to a dreadful Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that would expand big pharma’s monopoly control over high priced drugs and hand corporations increased ability to overturn public protections. And if she opposed the toxic polluting, climate disaster known as the Keystone XL pipeline.
And we’d especially love to see her standing up for single payer, Medicare for all at a time when millions remain uninsured, skipping needed care or facing bankruptcy due to inflated medical bills.
But, at a time of the greatest income disparity in nearly a century, Citizens United corruption of our political system, an all out assault on workers lives and a threat to our planet and our future, our first challenge today must be to break the Wall Street, corporate stranglehold over our economy, our politics, our nation.
“You’ll never have to wonder which side I am on,” he says. While other candidates are intrinsically tied to Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce, Bernie not only calls for repeal of Citizens United and public financing of campaigns he is the only candidate not taking money from big corporations and PACs.
Bernie wants to take money from Wall Street too—by taxing them to fund a civil society with the health care, the jobs, the housing and the environmental protections people need.
Bernie Sanders knows that his campaign is not about him. It’s about all of us. And it will take all of us to change the course of history. It’s time to start now.
RoseAnn DeMoro is executive director of the 185,000-member National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional association of nurses, and a national vice president of the AFL-CIO. Follow Rose Ann DeMoro on Twitter.
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