Jane Sanders DID NOT SAY To Not Write-In Bernie Sanders

JANE SANDERS NEVER SAID NOT TO WRITE IN BERNIE SANDERS.

WE WERE FED MISINFORMATION FROM SOMEONE WHO HAD INFILTRATED OUR RANKS AND GAINED OUR TRUST.

THE STORY OF HOW THAT HAPPENED CAN BE FOUND HERE.

THE VERMONT BERNIE SANDERS WRITE-IN IS STILL ON AND WE ENCOURAGE ALL PEOPLE WHO ARE UNHAPPY WITH THEIR BALLOT CHOICES TO WRITE-IN BERNIE SANDERS NAME AS A MEANS OF PROTESTING THIS RIGGED ELECTION.

Here is the original story, with the false quote removed.

It’s a chilly overcast day here in Indiana and I just received some news that was kind of devastating.

And just to be clear, it was politically devastating, not REAL LIFE devastating.

Everyone in our home is happy and healthy, as we all grope along slowly, trying to deal with the craziness that life throws at us from day-to-day.

My family is giving me a lot of space.

Occasionally Carrie comes up to me and squeezes my shoulder and then drifts away.

They know how I am.

They know how personally I take all of this.

I drove to the coffee shop with my laptop and sat down to break the news, tears resting just behind my eyes.

My lap-top is covered in “Ask me about Bernie Sanders” stickers.

As I opened it up, a little black boy came up to me, maybe 10 years old and said..

“I’m mad about Bernie!!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I’m mad that he’s not in the election anymore. I love Bernie Sanders. I’m mad about it!!”

As I fought back tears, I was able to choke out an ironic smile, swallow hard and find the words..

“I’m mad too.” I said.

I was hesitant to tell you about the little kid, because it sounds made up, but that really happened to me, just now, sitting here in Indiana and I know it’s politically incorrect to point out that the kid was black, but that’s relevant to me for a million tiny reasons.

Because wasn’t that one of the lies they told about Bernie?

They said that black people didn’t like him.

They said it was just a bunch of young white kids and that our movement wasn’t real.

So when a little black boy in Indiana comes up to me and says that he is “Mad about Bernie.” it means something to me.

It’s why I scrapped the entire opening to this article and just wrote down what happened instead.

Because “I’m mad about Bernie.” too.

I’m really incredibly angry about it.

And it sucks to see our voices taken from us.

And it sucks to see our movement divided and watered down.

And it sucks to be told a million times a day that I should vote for Hillary Clinton because that’s what Bernie asked me to do or that I should “grow a spine” and vote for Jill Stein because she has a “similar platform”, never mind that one candidate cheated millions of people who I care about out of a fair election and the other is running a campaign that is simply not very organized and not nearly as effective as it could have been.

But all of that will shake out on November 8 and I still have not even begun to explain why my heart is spinning at 33 1/3 rpm today…

Today we were headed to Vermont to canvass for Bernie Sanders.

A few weeks ago I wrote a quirky little article about how Bernie Sanders could win Vermont and theoretically throw the election into the House of Representatives, force a second round of voting and then have the new House vote him in to become the President of the United States.

I didn’t discover the idea, Dawn Papple did.

My article just called people to action and the idea spread more rapidly than I ever thought possible.

I did a lot of research before I wrote the article and if you understand the intricacies of how the House would have most-likely voted, you would have seen that Sanders had a way better chance of winning this way, than I initially stated.

I’m incredibly honored that so many people read the article.

My goal is to be an activist writer.

I want to develop a large enough group that we can direct our legions correcting the injustices we see in our country.

I want the establishment to fear our collective voice.

I want to carry on Sanders’ movement through collective activism and apparently it’s working, because in between the thousands of people telling us we could never do it, other people started to actually volunteer.

We worked hard behind the scenes in hidden Internet groups, screening out potential saboteurs and checking people’s past volunteering to see if they were legitimate.

We were actually concerned about the Clinton campaign finding out about our movement and trying to block it. In fact there were a few people who contacted us asking questions, pretending to be volunteers, that actually worked for the Democratic Party.

It was pretty exciting, being in a secret underground movement, but also it produced a lot of anxiety.

On top of dealing with fears of Clinton sabotaging our efforts, we were getting tons of anger from Jill Stein supporters, which was really frustrating seems how we ARE(!!) Jill Stein supporters and our movement’s official position was to encourage people to vote Stein in every state but Vermont, a state with only a few hundred thousand voters, specifically targeted as to NOT interfere with our goal to get Jill to 5% nationally, so the Green Party would get federal funding in the next election cycle!!!

We were getting attacked from all sides, which of course meant that we were actually onto something, but it was also very stressful.

But we ventured forth, thanks to our incredible team of volunteers.

We actually developed a cool little system where we would coordinate traveling canvassers with Vermont residents for shelter, someone wrote a phone-banking program that was just as good as the one we used on Bernie’s site and imported every phone-number in Vermont into it…

And PEOPLE WERE ACTUALLY PHONE-BANKING!!!

We had an amazing canvassing coordinator on the ground in Burlington and others en route from around the country to help knock on doors.

We even had The Washington Post flying into Burlington to write a story about our initiative.

We had well-written, simple to understand, literature to pass out to people and most importantly we had an incredibly high success rate of voter conversion.

40% of the people we spoke to in Vermont preferred writing-in Bernie Sanders over voting for any other candidate!!

Our movement was peaking at just the right time.

Our goal was to get the population converted in the last week before the election, so that the Clinton campaign wouldn’t have time to react.

Everything was perfect!!

Except for one thing..

Bernie didn’t want it.

He told us so.

And although I am rebelling against Bernie in my refusal to vote for Hillary Clinton, I really don’t feel comfortable showing up in his back yard and pissing him off.

If Bernie Sanders yelled at me, I’m pretty sure I would burst into tears.

To be honest, Bernie didn’t tell us.

It was Jane who told us that Bernie doesn’t want this.

Our canvassing trainer has been close friends with Bernie and Jane for her entire life.

So even though she was out canvassing with her team and getting positive responses, in her heart, a feeling of dread was growing.

“What if Bernie didn’t appreciate what we were doing? What if her lifetime friend became upset with her over our ‘gift’?”

Last week, she shared these fears with me and said that she wanted to talk to Bernie about this before we went any further.

I told her that Bernie would be forced to stand against our movement, due to his position with the DNC and I asked her if she would be willing to speak with Jane Sanders instead.

She agreed and headed over to visit Jane on Sunday afternoon, as I sat here in Indianapolis, with my traveling canvassing crew (my poor kids and my incredibly patient girlfriend) waiting to hear if we were hitting the road or not.

Here is what she said…

(THIS SECTION HAS BEEN REMOVED. PREVIOUSLY THIS WAS A SUMMATION OF A MESSAGE THAT OUR CANVASSING COORDINATOR, NICOLE GUERIN IN VERMONT HAD SENT ME THAT BASICALLY SAID THAT JANE SANDERS WAS ASKING US TO STOP OUR WRITE-IN CAMPAIGN FOR BERNIE SANDERS.

JANE SANDERS HAS SINCE TWEETED AND DENIED THAT THIS CONVERSATION EVER HAPPENED!!

I APOLOGIZE TO JANE FOR OUR SOURCE BEING INCORRECT.

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT IS GOING ON AT THIS TIME.

AS EVENT COME TO LIGHT OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS AND WE FIND OUT MORE, ALL WILL BE REVEALED.

AT THIS TIME IT SEEMS THAT OUR ORGANIZATION WAS INFILTRATED BY THE MEMBER OF A RIVAL CANDIDATE IN AN ATTEMPT TO SABOTAGE OUR WRITE-IN CAMPAIGN.

WE WILL KNOW MORE IN THE COMING DAYS.)

So that’s that.

We offered a gift that is not wanted.

We are trying to force something that is not there.

We are misguided in our efforts.

I’ve had so much anxiety about traveling to Vermont.

All these canvassing trips we made in the past year scared the hell out of me and I thought we were done with it.

I was hoping to move into the acceptance phase of my grief and here I was heading out to canvass for Bernie one last time, reopening the wound.

But he doesn’t want it.

At a certain point I have to accept that I am just a crazy person when the very person I’m fighting for tells me that my methods are not a good idea.

Activism without proper guidance is destructive.

The road to hell being paved with good intentions and all..

So we unloaded the car.

We aren’t going to Vermont.

Everyone is relieved and sad.

Because this is more than just the end of our crazy little movement.

This is the end of the denial phase of my grief.

Bernie Sanders isn’t going to be President and “I’m mad about it.”

But I’m also incredibly sad about it and I know that you are too.

Or maybe you are of the mindset that Jill Stein will save us.

I’m envious of you if you believe that.

I once believed it too.

But those feelings will have to be addressed in another article.

For now, I will just say that I really think you should vote for Jill Stein if you believe in her platform.

And if you really want to write Bernie in, then it’s your vote.

But he would prefer that you didn’t.

And whomever you vote for, I beg you to stop fighting with others who see things differently from you.

I know you are “mad about Bernie.”

We all are.

Let’s all take our collective rage out on the down-ballot Republicans and vote them out of office on November 8, so Bernie Sanders can be head of the House Budget Committee.

There is still a way that we can win.

But it won’t be from writing him in.

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