Bernie 2020 – It’s Just Not the Same

Edited by Misty Esparza

After licking my wounds from the great injustice of the 2016 “Democratic” election and watching my country be dealt a possibly fatal blow, as a White Supremacist manipulated social media, the electoral college and “the poorly educated” into putting him in charge of the country, I said repeatedly, to anyone who would listen

“I really hope Bernie Sanders runs again in 2020.”

I was pretty active in the 2016 election. I literally contacted his campaign the week he announced his candidacy and was actually in a meeting later that evening. I learned what grassroots truly meant. There were only 12 of us at the first meeting and we all left with multiple jobs. My 13 year old daughter was in charge of social media.

Chloe went all over the country with me. Here we met an usher at a Bernie speaking event in Columbus, Ohio. We called this guy mini-Bernie.

It was an exciting time. I would listen to Bernie’s speeches around the clock and then find ways that I could immerse myself into large groups of people where I could pass out fliers and pamphlets (printed on my home computer, because the campaign was so new they did not have official materials yet) that educated others about the exciting policies of this great man. My excitement was so great that I actually began driving to other states to canvass for Bernie. My partner Carrie and our two kids went to Iowa, Ohio, Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Alabama, North and South Carolina and several other states, visiting 57 cities in total, spreading the gospel of Bernie Sanders. Everywhere we went we met new friends who were making great sacrifices to spread the word about this exciting campaign. We killed two cars and collected lots of speeding tickets and in the end a lot of people asked me to write a book about our experiences volunteering, and I did. It was an incredibly exciting time.

So when Bernie announced that he was running again in 2020, I expected to be ecstatic. After all, our country needs Bernie’s message and policies now more than ever, as we find ourselves under tyrannical rule of a Nazi who threatens to completely piss on The Constitution and become emperor for life.

So why do I feel so empty?

For me the answer is obvious, I simply have untreated election PTSD from the atrocities that occurred in 2016, where the “Democratic” party lied, stole and cheated to elevate both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton into position so that Clinton would be the next president, only to have the whole thing blow up in their face with an explosion so huge that our entire country continues to pay the price to this day and will continue to pay for many more decades.

As much as I desire to put this behind me and move on, something has been taken from me, from my family – and I know that there are millions of hardworking Americans who made similar and even greater sacrifices who are feeling the same way. Collectively Bernie’s supporters are feeling this. We know that we must go out and volunteer and donate our money and make this happen again, just like we did in 2016. But how can we, now that we know what we know?

We know that there is no room for democracy in the “Democratic” party.

“A house divided cannot stand.” they say, and ours is split right down the middle. While Sanders supporters see themselves as victims of the party, party loyalists point their fingers at us, blaming us for the rise of fascism in America and the fallout of the 2016 election. And while both sides blame each other, The Right remains united as always, rallying around antiquated notions, believing they can actually turn back the clock and Make America White Again.

As much as I know that I MUST achieve an even higher level of political activism this time around, I struggle. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that it’s a lot easier to get excited about a message of hope and prosperity than it is to get excited about fighting evil.

Of course there are those who have fallen victim to the “Democratic” party’s propaganda and believe that Sanders is a sellout because he refused to call out the party for it’s rampant cheating in the 2016 election. These people don’t just lack excitement about Sanders’ candidacy, they are downright furious at him, feeling betrayed by his refusal to break off from the party. Their ignorance and vitriol contaminates the movement and further splinters it into factions. This very loud and extremely vocal minority is The Left’s equivalent of the alt-right. They are the kind of people who vote for Jill Stein and then think of themselves as revolutionaries, instead of seeing themselves for what they truly are, a distraction to a once-great movement. If you look closely at a Jill Stein supporter and a Donald Trump supporter, you will see there are far more similarities than differences. Both are convinced of their superiority. They think everyone who disagrees with them is stupid. And they are incredibly misinformed about how our government works and what their candidates true motivations are. Even though I struggle to find my motivation this time around, I am, at least, grateful that I have not disappeared into complete obscurity and self-defeating rage engulfing those who have completely turned against Sanders.

So it’s not the same this time. We already know that the “Democratic” party will not give us a fair chance to play the game. We already know that we can donate every last penny we have and knock on every last door in America and they will cheat us out of the presidency. This time around, sadly, we know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the game is rigged.

But there’s something that we might have missed…

As I listen to the plethora of other “Democratic” candidates in 2020, it’s kind of funny, because they are all saying basically the same things that Bernie was saying in 2016. Bernie’s message was so incredibly powerful that all of the other candidates have adopted it. This is literally the definition of progress and as Progressives this is literally more than we could have dreamed of. THEY are actually speaking OUR views and policies and that is no small victory. That is something WE made happen by screaming our message from every rooftop in America. That is something that Bernie made happen by giving the same damned speech every day for forty years.

So yeah, it’s not the same, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be absolutely phenomenal. People with PTSD have to be ten times as brave just to do simple things that other people take for granted. So those of us with election PTSD must do the same. We must be ten times as brave as we were in 2016 and shout our message ten times as loud.

Maybe this time, facing the very real possibility of four more years of White Supremacist leadership, enough people in power will actually listen and we can get Bernie Sanders elected President of the United States.

I don’t know, but I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t try.

After all, the fate of the world is hanging in the balance.

My name is Michael E Sparks and I am a volunteer and freelance writer. If my writing has value for you, please consider donating $1 by clicking HERE. Thank you and keep being AWESOME!!

 

 

Donald Trump – President for Life

A few days ago Donald Trump made a comment about wanting to be “president for life” and a chill went through me. I had recently said to a friend that Bernie Sanders would be running as a Democrat in 2020 and that he would easily defeat Trump (just as he would have in 2016 without the shenanigans of the “Democratic” Party.) But I quickly added “But I do not think Trump will step down so easily.”

My friend queried me as to what I meant and I explained to him that I felt that Trump admired dictators and had zero respect for the peaceful transfer of power. I told him that I suspect that in 2020 Bernie Sanders will win and Trump will contest the election results and go crazy in the press accusing Socialists of having rigged the election and will use Twitter to rile up his base to civil war and potentially there could be millions of lives lost. I told my friend that I believed that Trump’s goal was to weaken the country’s already weak faith in the press so that he could declare the election results a media lie.

I explained to my friend how Wikileaks had already told Trump to contest the election if he had lost to Hillary Clinton and how their ultimate goal was to destabilize our democracy and to push our country towards and an alt-right fascist agenda. I explained to him how this same movement had succeeded in forcing Brexit and how hackers attempted to sway the French election towards alt-right fascist Marine Le Pen.

“Dude this sounds like the Twilight Zone.” my friend said.

“You’re living in the Twilight Zone.” I assured him.

We do not know if Trump was planning on following Wikileaks suggestion to contest the election, because the Democrats chose to run a pathetic candidate, allowing Trump to backdoor his way into power. But it appears that he was actually planning to contest, due to the fact that he suggested that “the Second Amendment people” could take matters into their own hands if he were to lose to Hillary Clinton.

Why would anyone be shocked if Trump pulled such shenanigans in 2020? From day one his entire presidency has been about disrespecting the very foundations of our country. This is how dictators take over. They stretch the very fabric of the country until it gives way. Trump’s constant attacks on the most vulnerable members of our society erode the foundation of what makes America great. The Trump regime has had this country in constant constitutional crisis since its first day in office and this is not by accident.

Nazi Germany did not happen overnight. It was a progression in the midst of desperate times. Hitler declared himself leader and already had a standing army of civilians ready to do his bidding. Does Trump not already have the same standing army at his disposal with the millions of heavily-armed supporters who are just waiting for the word to act on their patriotic duty? This is a very real possibility. Who will protect you from a heavily armed militia of alt-right rednecks going house to house and rounding up Socialists? The police? Not a chance. Cops love Donald Trump.

Trump’s presidency is a shock event to this country and the very institutions that hold it together. When Trump loses in 2020, I do not expect that he will have any respect for the peaceful exchange of power. I believe he will seek to rally his base to start a civil war in America and Americans will have to choose rather they have the temerity and weaponry to forcibly remove a dictator from the White House.

And you thought revolution only happened on your television.

Michael E Sparks will be one of the first people rounded up and put into Emperor Trump’s work camps. He is an Independent journalist and has zero corporate sponsors. If his work has value to you, please consider supporting it by donating $1 HERE or by buying his book HERE.

FREE Copy of My Bernie Journey Book

Hey Progressives!!

I wanted to take a moment and tell you about an exciting new book I wrote that exposes corruption inside the “Democratic” Party in a way that no other book has the guts to tackle. My Bernie Journey – An Inside Look at the 2016 “Democratic” Primary Through the Eyes of a Bernie Sanders Volunteer is the result of two years of intense hard work and hands on research.

The first thing that makes this book special is that I was actually in the trenches, traveling from state to state, knocking on doors, attending meetings and rallies and chronicling the insane corruption that I witnessed first hand.

There is an entire chapter of this amazing book just dedicated to ELECTORAL FRAUD inside the “Democratic” Party.

There is also an entire chapter where I went BACK ON THE ROAD interviewing the people who took Bernie Sanders’ message to heart and actually took steps to take over their local government.

But this book is about SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT!!

It’s also a personal story of how Bernie Sanders saved my son’s life and an epic story that talks about how we were labeled as terrorists and teargassed by helicopters in the streets of Philadelphia when we went there to protest the corruption of the DNC.

This book is fire in your hands and I personally guarantee that anyone who picks it up will be absolutely unable to put it down.

In short, I wrote the book that I kept waiting for someone else to write.

I wrote the book that blows the lid off the entire rigged “Democratic” primary, while interweaving a personal story of inspiration that will get you fired up to take your activism to the next level.

Or as my former Hillary supporting friend put it:

“I never realized the depths of the depravity engaged in by the DNC in 2016 and now that I have eyes for it, I see this corruption continuing in every move they make. Michael’s book made me cry, but it also made me angry and it inspired me to take action. I had friends who worked really hard for Bernie. Honestly, at the time, I thought they were kind of crazy. If I knew then what I know now, I would have been out there knocking on doors with them.”

And THAT IS WHY I feel this book is important.

People need to know OUR story.

They need to know exactly what happened from someone who was actually part of it.

Going forward into the 2018 midterms and on into the 2020 presidential election, WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN!!

The first step to stopping it from ever happening again is to educate EVERYONE on how it went down in the first place.

I sincerely believe that My Bernie Journey does this in a way that is so fun and exciting that you could give it to the Trump or Hillary supporter in your life and they will come away with a new perspective.

Every Sanders supporter will want to read this.

And everyone who is not a Sanders supporter WILL BE by the time they put it down.

I really feel that strongly about it.

Here is a video where I talk about what’s inside the book in greater detail.

If you are in a hurry to order the book, you can skip the video, scroll down right under the video and order your FREE electronic copy (the E-Book can be read on your computer, phone or tablet) or if you want an autographed physical copy delivered to your door you can order that as well.

Thank you for believing in my work.

This book has been the hardest and most rewarding artistic endeavor of my life.

DO I EVEN NEED TO TELL YOU THAT THIS BOOK IS THE ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS BOOK FOR ANY BERNIE SANDERS SUPPORTER OR MAYBE AN EVEN BETTER GIFT TO GIVE TO THAT FRIEND OR FAMILY MEMBER WHO LOVES HILLARY CLINTON??or maybe nothing can wake those people up – I’m not really sure)

Scroll past the video to order or watch the video if you need more details.

How to Get the Book

To get your FREE E-Book copy of My Bernie Journey simply send an email with My Bernie Journey in the title to GoBernieGoBernieGo@gmail.com

If you want an autographed physical copy sent to your door, along with the second book The Independent Thinker Chronicles (included for free) then send $27 through PayPal by clicking HERE (Be sure to put your shipping address in the notes section)

If you don’t like PayPal you can pay through Square or with a check or money order by clicking HERE.

If you don’t like any of those methods you can order through Amazon by clicking HERE (I urge you not to buy through Amazon as they represent the very corporate entities which we are standing up to!!)

I suppose you could even follow me by clicking HERE and pay through Facebook messenger (did you even know that you could send money through Facebook messenger? I didn’t either until recently.)

Also feel free to DONATE a copy of the book to a random person.

What this means is that if you already have a copy and want to get one for someone who can’t afford one right now, just write “Pay it forward” in the notes line and I’ll write Donated by (Your Name) and donate the book to a library, school or individual who has limited funds.

Consider it a nice way to give the gift of Political Revolution to a stranger.

Anyway, I hope you love the book regardless of rather you pay for it or get the free copy.

It’s your book.

I’m just the guy who wrote everything down.

How to Remove Donald Trump from Office In One Easy Step

Donald Trump has ramped up his rhetoric involving Kim Jong Un and is promising to “totally destroy” North Korea in his latest speech before the U.N.. Simultaneously the U.S. Senate passed a military spending bill for 700 billion dollars.

I am tempted to say “Here we go again” regarding the endless cycle of hawkish maneuvers by the United States, but to do so would be to dismiss that this is not like any other time in U.S. history. There has never been anyone in The White House quite like Donald Trump, a man who reads a Breitbart article at 3:00 AM and begins tweeting about his hotel room being wiretapped.

While most question the merits of Kim Jong Un having nuclear weapons, the idea of “totally destroying” North Korea is an act of genocide against a people that are already oppressed by a ruthless dictator. To punish the innocent citizens of North Korea is no better than “totally destroying” the United States, simply because we have a madman dictator in power. America and North Korea both have toddlers with nuclear weapons running their respective governments. Killing millions of innocent civilians does nothing to rectify either situation.

The problem isn’t that Donald Trump is incompetent. That much we could let slide. He would not be the first nincompoop figurehead to occupy The Oval Office. Perhaps we could even find a kind-of silver-lining to his presidency by framing it as a collective stupidity tax on every member of a society that allowed it’s culture to fall so deeply into the gutter that an orange racist punchline with bad hair could so easily lie his way into power.

If it were only Trump’s incompetence at play then we could all just share in the unified embarrassment of his Apprentice-style presidency for four years and then vote for Bernie Sanders (YES, then 79 year old Bernie Sanders!!) in 2020 and begin our nation’s healing process. We could work towards being a better country. We could apologize for our flawed electoral system (yes, $uper-delegates, I’m looking at you) and promise to take democracy more seriously going forward.

One day some inquisitive student would ask

“Is it true that there was once a president who was elected with no prior political experience, who bragged about sexually-assaulting women and said that women should be punished for having abortions, who made racist comments, who defended Nazis and used an ancient form of non-telepathic communication called tweeting to throw temper tantrums in the middle of the night?”

And an adult would say

“Yes, it’s true. That was when Americans woke up and realized that they had to participate in their democracy and do better as a culture. If you’d like to learn more about that dark time in our country’s history, you should check out the Mike Judge documentary Idiocracy. You can experience it in the Holodeck for just three galactic credits.”

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution has sparked great interest of late. The wording clearly states that if a president is incapable of fulfilling his duties for any reason, including mental incompetence, that the vice-president has the power to begin immediate precedings to remove the president from office.

In this scenario Mike Pence would be forced to lead the charge and he would have to convince more than half of Trump’s 24 cabinet members to declare him mentally incompetent to hold office. In this case, Pence would immediately take power (this means that Trump is stripped of his ability to use nuclear weapons) while Congress voted on the matter. If 2/3rds of Congress agrees with Pence’s assessment of incompetence then Trump is removed from office permanently, pending appeal.

Trump’s cabinet is a mess and leaks from inside The White House point to ever-increasing instability. But for Pence to perform a hostile takeover of the office, he would not only need to be certain of the outcome, he would also need to somehow perform the maneuver without alienating Trump’s base, if he were to have any hope of reelection in 2020. If Pence initiated the takeover and it failed it would redefine awkwardness as Trump and Pence would still have to continue working together after the failed coup. For this reason, and many others, Pence will have to make sure that all the pieces are in their ideal positions before launching his attack.

The GOP will be more than happy to help him with this chess-match.

If those on the left are hoping for a quick and clean dissolution of temperamental Trump’s hold on said nuclear codes, there is really only one way to effectively create this possibility. Those on the left must do something that is completely out of their comfort zone. They must do something that will be completely foreign to them. They must act like they are Republicans for one day and actually show up to vote in the 2018 midterm elections so the left can take control of The House.

The only way that Pence would make such an ostentatious move is if he could then blame the Democrat-controlled Congress for passing the measure that he, himself initiated.

You are probably wondering about my logic at this point. How could Pence initiate a move to remove Trump from office then blame the Democrats for passing the measure that he started?

Simple. Pence would just use the GOP controlled media outlets to continually cast blame at the feet of the Democrats until Trump’s base believed the corporate propaganda. This would be aligned with the wishes of the party that sees Trump as a wrecking-ball. Most Trump voters will believe whatever the corporate media tells them to believe. After all, these are the same people who fell for the Democratic Party’s cross-party manipulation of their primary process.

If the media continues to focus on the Democrat’s passing of the bill that removed Trump, then that’s where Trump’s base will be more than happy to direct their anger towards the Democrats. Pence can give a few speeches about how much he hates the Dems and how he is looking forward to carrying on Trump’s excellent leadership and the country will be duped into believing what they are told to believe. The left will feel victorious and the right will have what they wanted all along; a predictable easy to manipulate corporate puppet for president, in the person of Mike Pence.

Some will say that Mike Pence is worse than Donald Trump, due to the fact that he is actually a skilled politician who can work with the factions inside the GOP to pass draconian laws that will hurt American citizens more than Trump’s ego-tweeting ever could. I am inclined to agree with this assessment, but Pence, for all his flaws, is unlikely to launch nukes just because he’s having a rough night, whereas Trump is extremely unstable and is actually a very real threat to life on this planet. As far as passing law goes, Pence’s half-presidency would be completely handcuffed by a Democratic majority in The House and Senate.

Launching nukes is done by executive order and does not have a series of checks and balances. This is why Trump must be removed via the 25th Amendment. Any other method of removing him from power, including voting him out democratically in 2020, would result in a scorned Trump still having access to his nuclear arsenal, an inevitable scenario too dire for any of us to contemplate.

While invoking the 25th Amendment sets a dangerous precedent that will undoubtedly have repercussions going forward, it is infinitely better than allowing this wannabe dictator to continue escalating his nuclear rhetoric with his narcissistic finger on the trigger of a gun that can and will destroy all life on this planet.

If you want Trump removed from office then the next step is to do something absolutely radical, something unprecedented, something so crazy that it just might work.

You’re going to actually have to show up and vote in the 2018 midterms.

That is if any of us are still alive by then.

Michael E Sparks is a Progressive activist and independent content producer for Activist Media. If you believe in Michael’s work consider donating $1 so he can continue to expand his voice and affect positive change.

 

 

The Time We Almost Hacked the U.S. Presidential Election

Hello fellow revolutionaries!!

This is a chapter from my new book My Bernie Journey – An Inside Look at the 2016 “Democratic” Primary Through the Eyes of a Bernie Sanders Volunteer. In the book, we discuss en depth what the Progressive movement is all about and why it is alive and well even in the era of Trump’s alt-right fascism.

The book is deeply personal, but everyone who has read it has stated that it echoes their own experiences and has inspired them to increase their activism while bringing them renewed hope.

Right now we all need to band together to take on the corruption, not only in the GOP, but also in the “Democratic” Party that cheated Bernie Sanders out of the nomination in 2016.

I’m incredibly proud of the book. I worked very hard on it for two years and traveled to more than 50 cities, getting down in the trenches to make it real and authentic. It’s funny. It’s sad. And yes, it will make you angry. But more than anything it will remind you that we are actually winning this fight.

After reading the chapter, scroll down to the bottom of this page and you can order a FREE electronic copy of the book. Or if you prefer a signed copy delivered to your door, with a FREE second book, The Independent Thinker Chronicles, there are links for you to order that and I as long as you order before 12/20 it will be delivered by Christmas.

Happy reading!! 🙂

 

Shy Ridley passing out fliers for the Vermont Bernie Sanders write-in campaign at the Take Back Democracy March. Photo by Melaine Oringer.

 

Chapter 18 – The Vermont Bernie Sanders Write-In

In which the author proves his absolute insanity by trying to hack into an exploit in the United States presidential race at the risk of pissing off the very person he is trying to help

Bernie had been very clear about the plan. We all vote for Hillary and then Bernie would use the leveraging power of millions of die-hard supporters to push Clinton to endorse Progressive policies. The plan was simple enough. The problem was that this plan involved Hillary Clinton becoming president and that just seemed too much to bear for people like myself who had given everything to Sanders’ campaign. There had to be a better way.

Many noted that Hillary seemed ill. “Perhaps she will die.” people would say, but then because they were good liberals they would add “Not that I would ever wish death on anyone.” There was also a looming indictment, but none of us really believed that the courts could touch someone so powerful. But there had to be a way. Looking back now I accept that I was simply in denial. But I kept looking. “There has to be a way.” Carrie would catch me saying aloud while I tore through article after article.

Then one day, while traveling, I pulled over to get coffee. While standing in line, reading The Inquisitr, I stumbled across an article by Dawn Papple called Could Just Thousands In Wyoming or Vermont Hold the Key to a Surprise Bernie Sanders Presidency? The article spoke of a ludicrous idea that people had been discussing on Twitter. In a nutshell, the idea was that we could focus in on seven states that allow write-in voting and canvass those states, Sanders could win those states, depriving Trump and Clinton of the 270 electoral votes needed to attain the presidency. This would force the House of Representatives to choose the President, as is the law. In short, there would be a slim chance of a Sanders presidency.

One who is informed on political matters would quickly note that The House was controlled by Republicans and therefore Trump would be the obvious choice between Sanders, Clinton and Trump. This was more than likely true, but my counterpoint was that establishment Republicans hated Trump and that there was a slim chance that some may step out on both sides of the aisle to support Sanders, especially after the Democrats had blackballed him in the primary. Granted this was a Hail Mary, but when that’s all you got, you throw it deep and hope for a miracle.

To Dawn’s credit, she kept her sanity and journalistic integrity. She wrote the article with a whimsical “wouldn’t it be nice” folly. I, on the other hand, being completely desperate and insane, took the words far too seriously and began to research. I started calling into the seven states asking them about their write-in laws. I began reading obscure passages in each state’s law, getting stuck and making phone calls and asking odd questions that no one knew the answers to. I would get referred to someone who had spent their entire life studying voter law, who probably hadn’t been asked a question in twenty years. These people would be so grateful for my query that they would want to talk forever, discussing the finer points of said law and its origins. I did not have that kind of time. “Thanks!! Gotta go!!” I’d say, hanging up and heading off to the next challenge. My desk was a mess of printouts and sketches. I felt like a mad scientist who had discovered time travel and only needed a single equation to bring the whole thing together. Sleep became a distant memory. I researched and researched and researched until it was all very clear.

OH MY GOD!!! WE CAN DO THIS!!!

I’ve spent my entire life intentionally pursuing delusion. I’m not insane. I get it. I know how things work. I know statistical probabilities. But I also know that all great things are done by people who decide to do something that everyone around them thinks is completely crazy. After all, my hero is a man from Vermont who decided to run against the Clinton empire when it had already been preordained that Hillary Clinton was going to be the candidate. Bernie knew that the deck was stacked against him. He ran anyway. And now I’m sitting here writing this book and your life, just like mine, has been forever changed by him making this completely irrational decision.

When I started the Vermont Bernie Sanders Write-In Campaign someone said “This has a one in a million chance of succeeding.”

I replied “The odds of success are actually much lower, but the chances of Sanders becoming president if we don’t try this is actually zero in a million.”

So I got to work. The first thing I did was to write an article about it. I needed every volunteer I could get so I wrote an article that explained every aspect of how the plan would work. I wrote it in a question and answer style that was fairly easy to understand. Sanders’ supporters are generally pretty intelligent and this was necessary as I was attempting to explain a loophole in our electoral process and most Americans have no idea how that process even works. I didn’t either when I started the movement. People think that I’m some sort of expert on politics. Honestly, I don’t know a damned thing. I just have a burning desire for The Truth, so I read a million articles on every subject I’m passionate about. I don’t seek out articles that reinforce what I believe. I am not lured in by this appeal to my ego, nor am I seduced by extreme opinions on an issue. I seek only the illusive reality that can be found only when one is able to anesthetize their confirmation bias and enjoy the pleasant feeling of accepting that they had been previously wrong. For much of humanity’s time here on Earth, those in power kept the serfs ignorant as a means of control. Now, for this brief time in history, we have access to the entire wealth of human knowledge, yet the serfs keep themselves ignorant by diving into toxic rabbit-holes filled with rhetoric and hyperbole. It’s very sad. I suspect if you are reading this, you are as frustrated with this trend as I am.

The article exploded. Its blatant insanity inspired people to action. My email box was overflowing. I simply could not keep up. I live my life by a saying, “Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.” The first mighty force that came to my aid was Shannon Blosser-Salisbury. She became my assistant and quickly recruited others to assist her and just like that, before I knew what was happening, the Vermont Bernie Sanders Write-In Campaign was off and running.

I made several attempts to get phone lists for Vermont so that we would be able to phone-bank into the state. Everyone I asked for assistance with this project told me that I was insane, that only legitimate political campaigns had access to this information and that I was wasting my time trying. This information seemed to be accurate. I was making zero headway and time was the one thing we did not have as we had started our desperate campaign just six weeks before the general election. Finally Shannon had the idea that we would simply call through the Vermont phone-book. I wrote out a script and began training phone-bankers and then heroically, Terje Oseberg came in with the actual phone-bank info for every single person in Vermont!! He even used his own money to pay for it!! Mighty forces were coming to my aid so fast that my head was spinning!!

I had done the math and knew that we needed to convert one out of every four voters that we spoke with. Expecting this kind of result in normal phone-banking is just delusional, but we were calling into Bernie’s backyard. The people of Vermont absolutely love Bernie Sanders. The key was having an effective script. Explaining a plan to usurp the United States general election in just a few seconds in a way that sounded fun and was easy to understand was one of my greatest writing challenges to date. I must have nailed it because we were converting 75% of voters!! Even though we were angry revolutionaries who wanted to right a great wrong perpetrated by the Democratic Party, I knew that the people of Vermont would not want to hear anything like that. Instead we framed it as a “celebration of Sanders lifetime of service to the people of Vermont.”

The people of Vermont loved our idea and most everyone hung up the phone saying that they would write in Sanders name on their ballot. The problem we were running into was that we had to call 625,000 people and we only had about 20 people volunteering to phone-bank. This was incredibly frustrating. I knew that I had built a successful model, but as determined as our volunteers were, we just didn’t have the bodies to make this work. It was at this point that I promised myself that I would build a political organization that was able to generate enough funds to support worthwhile projects in the future. Had I been financially prepared for this opportunity, I could have hired a bunch of kids who needed jobs, paid them $15 an hour, rented a call-center and flooded Vermont. I can tell you with extreme certainty that Bernie Sanders would have won Vermont if only I had had the money to pour into this project. Our phone-bankers were amazing, but we just didn’t have enough of them.

I called every major newspaper in Vermont. My goal was to run full page ads alerting the population of Vermont to our plan, but I simply could not afford it. To run these ads for six weeks would have been about $20,000. I was too proud to crowdfund the project. I was used to paying for everything myself. In retrospect I was just being selfish, letting my pride get in the way like that. I should have open the conduit and let others pool their resources. We would have won Vermont if we could have raised $40,000 dollars. Of course, we know now that it wouldn’t have made any difference. In order for our plan to work, Trump and Hillary would have had to be incredibly close in the electoral college. It wasn’t close at all. Trump won the electoral college handily. Still our movement taught me a lot and I realized that in order to get anything done in politics, great ideas and determination were a great starting point, but in reality, money is required.

For such a small group, we made a lot of noise. We even had people travel to Vermont to canvass. One family came all the way across the country from Colorado, with two small children, and were greeted with smiling faces at nearly every door they knocked on. Vermont resident Claudia Pringles did the same in her own backyard. All reports were that the residents of Vermont were incredibly receptive to our initiative. Phish drummer, Jon Fishman, even wrote an open letter to Vermont residents encouraging them to write-in Bernie Sanders. Before we knew it, Vermont news stations were covering our movement and The Washington Post contacted me and asked me to do an interview on what we were doing. A similar movement even popped up in Utah, as upstart Evan McMullin decided to throw his name in the electoral college lottery by trying to win that state. Another movement, OpDeny270, sprung up to focus on the other six write-in states. It was abundantly clear that the people were not happy with the “choice” between Clinton and Trump and would grasp at any and all attempts to be able to vote for an honest candidate who represented The People.

Just when I thought my Bernie Journey was over, I found myself planning a trip to Vermont to canvass, one last time, for this great man. I scraped together a few hundred dollars and told Carrie and the kids that I was headed off to knock on doors. They had dealt with me darting off to different cities so many times at this point that they didn’t even bat an eye.

But I was scared. One thing that I had been incredibly concerned about during the entire process was the fact that I was trying to get Bernie Sanders elected president, even though he had already stated very clearly that he was endorsing Hillary Clinton. I knew that if we contacted him directly about our movement that he would be forced to denounce it, as per his agreement with the Democratic Party, so basically my goal was to keep it hidden from Bernie until we had already canvassed all 600,000 Vermont residents. In the back of my mind this always nagged at me. What if Bernie didn’t want to be the president any longer? What if he was just exhausted and relieved that he didn’t have to take the job? Would Bernie be angry at me when he learned that I was going against what he had asked me to do? Was I deceiving Bernie Sanders with all my hard work?

In addition to keeping our movement a secret from Bernie, we also needed to keep it a secret from the Democratic Party, who had become well-known for using underhanded tactics against anyone who became a threat to their agenda. Vermont was an easy win for Clinton. What would they try to do to us if they found out we were trying to steal electoral votes from her? As it turned out, we did have a political campaign attack and sabotage us, but it wasn’t the Clinton’s.

I had to get a few things lined up on the home-front before I could head out. It would be two weeks before I could touch down in Vermont. I put out an advertisement looking for a canvassing coordinator to train incoming volunteers until I could get there. This is where the wheels came off the entire operation.

The most qualified applicant was a woman named Lisa (changing her name to protect her). Lisa was not only an experienced canvasser for Bernie Sanders, but had even been canvassing for Jill Stein after Bernie was cheated in the primary. Lisa said that she lived close to the Sanders’ residence and that in Vermont, Bernie and Jane were just normal people. She added that she remembered swimming in their pool when she was a little kid. In retrospect, I should have realized that this was too good to be true, but remember, I was desperate for help and as a result I was really susceptible to believing what I wanted to believe. I forgot to anesthetize my confirmation bias and it cost me dearly. Hiring Lisa proved to be a complete fiasco.

Lisa was supposed to go to college campuses to explain our initiative and recruit canvassers, but instead each day she would tell me about how busy she had been dealing with kids, work, etc.. While I certainly understood how life can place incredible demands on us, I still reminded her that we had to get our canvassers on the ground immediately. She agreed each time and then the following day came at me with a variation on the same excuses. When I told her that I would need to hire a different canvassing coordinator, Lisa told me that her busy schedule wasn’t the real reason why she had been dragging her feet. Lisa told me that the real reason was that she felt like she was betraying her lifetime friends, Bernie and Jane Sanders.

I had to do some deep soul-searching. In my desire to see Sanders elected president I had not only started a major movement behind his back, but now I was asking his friends and neighbors to keep a secret from him. I messaged Lisa back and told her that if Bernie knows then he will have to denounce the movement or risk his position with the Democratic Party. I asked her if she would be willing to compromise and ask Jane Sanders. Lisa agreed and I waited on pins and needles for the entire day. The following morning Lisa messaged me and told me that Jane was incredibly moved by what we were trying to do, but that she wanted us to stop it. Jane said that Bernie didn’t want to be president and pleaded with us to stop doing what we were doing and to “vote for someone who is actually on the ballot.”

I was devastated. I went to our volunteers and told them that I was walking away from the movement. To their credit they told me that they were going ahead without me. I loved them for that, but I simply could not bring myself to force something on Bernie that he didn’t even want. I felt so sick and foolish. I contacted The Washington Post and told them that I was canceling my trip to Vermont. That night I wrote an addendum to the article that had started our movement that simply said that Jane Sanders had asked us to stop and that I would no longer support a movement that went against the wishes of the person it was intending to honor.

The following morning I awoke to chaos. Someone had shown my article to Jane Sanders and Jane had tweeted that my article was a lie. Jane said that no such conversation with Lisa had ever taken place and that she would never advise someone to not vote for Bernie. Also someone sent me a video of Bernie Sanders being asked about our movement and Bernie laughed and said something to the effect that it would probably be okay due to the fact that Vermont only had three electoral votes.

This was incredibly scary. Bernie and Jane knew about our movement and had both given it a pseudo-endorsement. On the other hand, I had spread misinformation about the Jane Sanders. I immediately went into damage control mode. I released a statement saying that the write-in initiative was still in effect and apologized for the confusion I had caused, even though I still really had no idea what was going on.

Sifting through thousands of messages I found a series of screen shots from a conversation that Lisa had had with someone who worked very closely with Jill Stein. I’m not going to say this person’s name either, but the gist of the conversation was that Lisa was supposed to infiltrate our group and convince us to stop our initiative. It turns out that Lisa was telling the truth about one thing. She was a huge fan of Jill Stein. Apparently some of Jill’s loyalists had come up with the naive notion that our progress in Vermont was somehow threatening Jill’s chances of attaining 5% of the nationwide vote. At 5% The Green Party would qualify for federal funding in the next presidential election cycle. Some people, close to Jill Stein, had decided that we were a threat to their federal funding and hatched a plan to sabotage our campaign. If this sounds ridiculous it’s because it absolutely is. Jill Stein was not a serious candidate in the state of Vermont or any other state for that matter, so I have no idea why her people would think that 175,000 votes (our target goal) would affect her either way. While I don’t hold Jill personally responsible for the sabotaging efforts against our campaign, it is hard to believe that she didn’t know about what was happening, considering her proximity to the person who initiated the sabotage.

In the end we didn’t win, but I took some personal satisfaction in the fact that we managed to get more people to write-in Bernie Sanders than all those who voted for Jill Stein, Gary Johnson and the other two small-party candidates combined. Our campaign for a man who wasn’t even on the ballot managed to get three and a half times as many votes as the campaign that attempted to sabotage us.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t accomplish something. With a little more time and money, we would have accomplished our goal and Bernie Sanders would have been the first write-in candidate in American history to actually win a state. We were a lot closer to achieving this than most people realize.

How to Get the Book

To get your FREE E-Book copy of My Bernie Journey simply send an email with My Bernie Journey in the title to GoBernieGoBernieGo@gmail.com

If you want an autographed physical copy sent to your door, along with the second book The Independent Thinker Chronicles (included for free) then send $27 through PayPal by clicking HERE (Be sure to put your shipping address in the notes section)

If you don’t like PayPal you can pay through Square or with a check or money order by clicking HERE.

If you don’t like any of those methods you can order through Amazon by clicking HERE (I urge you not to buy through Amazon as they represent the very corporate entities which we are standing up to!!)

I suppose you could even follow me by clicking HERE and pay through Facebook messenger (did you even know that you could send money through Facebook messenger? I didn’t either until recently.)

Also feel free to DONATE a copy of the book to a random person.

What this means is that if you already have a copy and want to get one for someone who can’t afford one right now, just write “Pay it forward” in the notes line and I’ll write Donated by (Your Name) and donate the book to a library, school or individual who has limited funds.

Consider it a nice way to give the gift of Political Revolution to a stranger.

Anyway, I hope you love the book regardless of rather you pay for it or get the free copy.

It’s your book.

I’m just the guy who wrote everything down.

Watching My Friend Meet Bernie Sanders

This is not an article and will not be edited for punctuation or grammar. It is a stream of consciousness and will not be reviewed or rewritten. I will sometimes use this space to just blog out to my friends, so that we might feel more connected. Things move at a certain pace on social media and people do a lot of talking past one another. I am suspicious of a medium that expects that we consolidate the essence of ourselves and our thoughts into fragments that people can absorb and be moved by, before their finger can flick the screen to the next message. I’m wondering if this method of methadoning for loneliness isn’t somehow detrimental to our wellbeing. I’m wondering if the nuances of what makes us human are getting lost in corporate algorithms that decide that you should see a picture of someone’s cat and then someone else’s food as substitution for actual human contact.

I wonder if Bernie Sanders ever just thinks “Fuck it! Fuck these apathetic people!! Let them have what they fucking deserve!!!”

I don’t think he ever thinks that. I’ve been watching the man very closely for a couple of years now. I was never moved like this before. I usually meet people and think “Man, if it wasn’t for (insert personality disorder here) they’d be really amazing.” But Bernie, he’s a better person than me. I try to be like him and fail, but I get closer with practice. It’s a zen thing. You can’t pretend to be Bernie. You just have to let go of outcomes and march towards what you know is right. You have to forget about ego and accolades and just act out of love. It’s hard sometimes. I’ve been watching him. All I see is strength.

I’m aware that there are those who do not get it and would say that those who do get it are basically cult members. Sure, that’s fair. I like belonging to a cult that’s about love and servitude. I believe we can make a beautiful world that way. When I feel down, I think of Bernie Sanders and how he doesn’t give up and I don’t give up and I don’t feel as down.

My friend texted me after the rally, Monday, and asked how it was. I replied

“I feel renewed. Bernie rallies are like church for us secularists.”

Can I tell you something amazing that happened at rally? First off, I am close friends with the keynote speaker at the thing, as well as having worked with most of the people who were standing behind Bernie on one political action or another, so if I wanted to be standing up there next to him I could be opportunistic and make that happen. But fuck that. That just makes me sick to even think about being that way. Bernie Sanders is a busy motherfucker. I’ve been within a few feet of him on several occasions. I just watch him and observe how kind he is to everyone. It’s incredibly genuine. I try to absorb that attitude and model it in my own life. I’m not even close, but now I know what it looks like.

When I was a little kid, I used to watch Little House on the Prairie. I’d watch Michael Landon’s character. He was such a good man. Not at all like my father or the junkies I had met in our home. Had I never watched that show, I wouldn’t have known what a good father was like. And I wouldn’t have known that the way I was being treated was abnormal. I’ve always modeled strong men since then. Bernie Sanders was the first man I’d seen in a while that really inspired me to try to improve some of my rougher edges. I want to be kind like he is. I’m pretty difficult to get along with sometimes.

Monday I saw Bernie fall backwards over some steps and my heart sank, but some heroic people caught him and stood him upright. I was imagining that the news might have caught that and that it may be used against him, should he announce he is running for president again, some nasty spin on the poor man’s stumble to try to make him look old. I hate that the world has come to that, but if they caught it, you know they put a pin in it to refer back to later.

Anyway, the rally ends and I’m standing next to the barrier with my friend Colt Silvers (badass name, right?), talking to my friend Michael Torres, the final speaker that day, telling him how amazing his speech was. Michael is such a humble man. He is beautiful and kind. He is a labor leader and he works very hard locally to advance the cause of the working man. Michael is a small, Hispanic man and I know that he is afraid to speak in public, especially after Bernie Sanders had just spoke. But he grabbed the microphone and rocked it. I watched him standing next to Bernie on the stage. I watched as everyone came over and took selfies with Bernie. I knew that Michael wanted to do the same, but I know he is not the type to bother someone for such things. He was standing right next to Bernie the entire evening and he never once bothered him. I was blown away by that.

BUT THEN SUDDENLY, as I was talking with Michael and Colt, Bernie Sanders starts walking towards us Colt says “I want you to meet Bernie!” at the same time Michael Torres, from inside the barrier says “I’m going to direct Bernie to you.”

I did not want to meet Bernie Sanders. I do not want to bother the man. I want him to go rest and spend time with his grandchildren. I do not want to exalt myself above others. But still, I was absolutely blown away by the selflessness of these two men. I stood there, accepting their offer of kindness, feeling awkward.

A mob converged on Senator Sanders and I wanted to tell him that we would start a fund to have guards protect him at all times because we just don’t like him walking around like this out in the open. That’s all I wanted to say to him. I always ask people what they said to Bernie when they met him and they always say that they cried and said “Thank you.”, which is probably what I would have actually said, had I met him, but what I wanted to say to him was that we were going to start a fund to protect him and ask him if he would accept the guards if we paid for them. But of course he would have said “No.” That’s just not how Bernie rolls. He isn’t afraid of anything. He knows his ideology is already unstoppable so he doesn’t fear for his mortality.

But I didn’t meet him…

Something better happened..

Michael Torres, who is so meek, bravely stepped right in front of Bernie Sanders and directed him to me. Bernie was overwhelmed, smiling and trying to listen to everyone at once. It looked extremely hard to be Bernie Sanders.

Michael Torres said “This is Michael E Sparks. He is writing a book about you.”

Michael Torres doing that, was about the most beautiful act of kindness I have ever seen. I would have been mortified to do that. I’m sure Michael was too. I had to pay this kindness immediately forward.

Bernie reached his hand through the crowd, right at me. Everything moved in slow motion, I looked at my friend Colt, who is an amazing man, who loves Bernie Sanders every bit as much as I do. I live loudly, so people know how I feel. Colt lives in a quieter way, but he is every bit the man I am. I knew instantly what needed to happen. I’m not sure if I actually grabbed Colt’s arm or if I just Jedi mind controlled his arm with my eyes, but either way, his hand grabbed Bernie’s and I got to watch my friend Colt Silvers shake the hand of his hero, Bernie Sanders. And if there’s one thing better than meeting Bernie, it’s watching that happen.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks, but that happened.

That will keep me smiling for a good long while.

Michael E Sparks is spreading peace and love through Independent media. His book, My Bernie Journey, debuts in October. There is also a new podcast in the works as well as a YouTube show (gotta buy a green screen and learn how to use it). Michael is currently working on editing interviews with Progressive activists that he collected while touring the country. If you believe in his mission you can donate by clicking HERE. Thank you sincerely to all those who are spreading love and light.

Berning Against the Machine (Kuh-wit It Now!!!)

The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book,

My Bernie Journey – A Behind the Scenes Look at the 2016 Democratic Primary

The book will be released on August 28.

I have been working on it for over a year and I really believe that it is an accurate portrayal of the disenfranchisement that Sanders and his supporters faced at the hands of the Democratic Party.

It’s a good read, full of the anger, sadness and euphoria that we all experienced as part of Sanders’ historic campaign.

This particular chapter explains the reasons why the Bernie Sanders movement was such a personal revolution for me. It’s intensely personal and I share aspects of myself that not even those closest to me are aware of.

I sincerely hope you find something that you can relate to in my ramblings.

After you finish reading the chapter, scroll down and there will be instructions on how you can obtain a copy of the book at no charge.

There is also an opportunity to be part of the team that gets the book to press.

I sincerely promise to do everything in my power to promote this book to anyone and everyone who may help further the truth about the travesty that occurred against our movement during the 2016 “Democratic” Primary.

Please feel free to share this post with anyone whom you think may be interested in this project.

Without further adieu, here’s the chapter.

Chapter 16 – Raging Against the Machine (Kuh-wit It Now!!!)

I was off and running again.

Damn I was fast!

The fact that I’m alive now is a testament to how fast I was then.

John Southwood’s goons gave chase and I kicked as hard as my ten year old legs could kick. And hell yeah they could kick. As I turned the corner I used my peripheral vision to see that the entire gang had given up chasing me, except for Kyle. Peripheral vision was important. There was always somebody coming after me back then and I needed to be able to see what was coming. And in this case the ability to see without turning my head may have shaved a half second off my sprint and that half second could have been the difference between making it home to relative safety or getting my face bashed in by Kyle Vandebrock.

Kyle was 15 and two feet taller than me. For everyone of Kyle’s strides, I had to take two. I was three blocks from my house. My brain started trying to do math to figure the odds, but I told it to shut up. Doing math could only slow me down. Kyle was closing fast, but not fast enough.

I made it to my front yard.

There’s some sort of kid rule that says that if you make it to your own yard then you are safe and bullies can no longer bother you. So I slowed up and began to walk leisurely towards my front door. If I came in running my mom or her boyfriend would have noticed me. It was never a good idea to be noticed in my house.

Kyle stopped at the edge of the yard and said between gasps

“Why are you running? I just wanted to talk to you?”

His tone was completely disarming. I remember thinking that he looked like a really nice guy standing there and for a moment I wondered why I had been running from him.

I walked to the edge of the yard and said

“What do you want to talk about?”

Kyle swung his lanky right arm towards me. I remember it seemed like it took forever to arrive. Perhaps I have added this part to the memory, but I recall seeing Kyle’s fist eclipsing the sun as it majestically hovered over the treeline behind him. The adult-me wants to tell Kyle to keep his punches compact and to remember to always keep his guard up. A huge sweeping roundhouse punch like this, in a street-fight, will get you punched directly in the face with a jab, followed by a right-cross. Kyle was leading with a hay-maker that traveled through several time zones to reach its destination.

“Now boarding Kyle’s fist to Michael’s stomach! Please present your tickets! All aboard the pain express! Next stop Extreme Abdominal Pain!”

Kyle’s fist landed squarely on my malnourished frame and took the wind completely out of me. As I fell to the ground, Kyle hovered above, blocking out the sun. I remember he looked reluctant, almost compassionate, like a man just doing his job, going through the motions, taking no joy in his role as Southwood’s henchman.

While I lay there writhing in pain, Kyle said

“And this is for making me chase you.” and then he brought his size 13 Converse All-Star crashing down on my ribs.

As Kyle walked away, I saw him meet up with Southwood and his gang. I saw him gesture to them that the job had been completed. High-fives were exchanged and cigarettes lit. Another hard day at the factory. Soon the sun would set, we’d all sleep and then we’d have to report to work again. Me with my job as whipping boy, they as the neighborhood bullies. My bruised ribs would buy me no sanctuary tomorrow. A new school-day meant we all hit the reset button.

You might be wondering what the impetus behind these daily beatings was. I can answer it simply by saying that my family was poor. Looking back, I realized that John Southwood and his gang were also poor. But they weren’t poor like we were poor. They could afford luxuries like cigarettes and beer. And their clothes seemed to fit okay, whereas mine were hand-me-downs from my cousins, who were younger than me.

Once a year my Aunt would drop off several trash bags full of clothes that her kids had outgrown and that would be my wardrobe for the next year.

My mother got angry at me for growing.

I would try to force myself into the trash-bag clothes, which were several sizes too small and my mother would see me and say something like

“If you didn’t grow so goddamned fast then your clothes would fit!!”

To my mother’s credit, she did everything she could to keep me from growing. We rarely had food in the house and when we did, eating it would usually lead to some sort of major screaming match, which more often than not lead to me getting knocked across the room.

I arrived early to school each morning to get the bowl of free corn-flakes that the school gave out to kids on the free lunch program. I didn’t realize at the time that showing up an hour before the first bell was a way to let every kid in the school know that I received free lunch. I didn’t even know what was going on. I just knew that we were poor and that the other kids hated me for that.

At lunch time there were two lines. Kids with money would go through a line where they could point to different foods they wanted. Those foods always looked so much better than the slop they would throw on our trays, which I would later learn was the exact same crap they were feeding the prisoners a few miles down the road.

There was a popular commercial at the time, for Life cereal, in which a small boy named Mikey was presented with a bowl of cereal. One of the kids would say “Mikey won’t eat it. He hates everything!” then Mikey would eat the Life cereal and the kids would scream out “He likes it!!” This somehow resulted in kids coming by and dumping their leftover food on my tray and saying

“Mikey will eat it! He eats everything!”

And everyone would laugh.

And I would eat it too, as long as it looked like they hadn’t put any trash in it. We never had dinner at our house and it was a long time between lunch and the free cereal the next morning, so I would eat as much as I could at lunch each day. The kids all got a huge kick out of watching the scrawny little poor kid eat the food they were going to throw in the trash. I guess there was something about that joke that I didn’t really understand. I never really got the punch-line on that one.

As you might expect, as an adult I developed a pretty strange eating disorder that really just amounted to me always finishing every last scrap that was on my plate, even when I was stuffed, as well as any leftover scraps on my children’s plates. I just couldn’t bear the thought of throwing food in the trash, after not having it for all those years. As you might also expect, this behavior lead me to gain a lot of weight.

But as an adult, I had the means to solve problems that were impossible to solve when I was a child.

I solved my eating disorder by getting dogs.

They get all the leftover food.

I go to the gym everyday.

But man I have some really fat dogs.

When I heard about this poor kid from Brooklyn who had spent his entire life fighting for equality, it struck a chord in me. I saw the pictures of him handcuffed and fighting against the police and I saw myself. I read the stories about him growing up in a tiny Brooklyn apartment and hearing his parents fighting over money and I related. I saw him standing on the Senate floor, still angry, yelling at the rich bastards who had kept him and his family down and something shifted in me.

This guy was just like me, but he was actually doing something about it.

Bernie Sanders woke me the fuck up and all that rage I had put on the shelf came flooding back with a vengeance. For the first time in my adult life I had a constructive outlet for my anger. I listened to every speech that Bernie had ever given and it put me in touch with something I had lost. Some of my friends said that they felt like I had joined a cult. I wondered how the hell they hadn’t joined it.

“There’s a revolution happening in America right now!!” I would tell them.

They thought I was crazy. And to be fair, I was. My well-meaning friends were probably the same kids who watched and did nothing while the rich kids dumped food on my lunch tray and laughed.

They couldn’t understand why I had such a strong reaction to this angry Senator from Vermont. They had never been truly poor a day in their lives.

They weren’t like Bernie.

They weren’t like me.

But I met a lot of people who were.

For every school cafeteria in America, there is a kid who sits alone, who doesn’t fit in, whose clothes don’t fit right. There are millions of us, but we never knew about each other before Sanders stood up. Alone, we are powerless, destined to be stomach-punched by the wealthy elite, destined to have leftover scraps heaped on our plates, while those in power laugh at the fact that we are so hungry that we must eat their waste.

We are the outcast misfits who started in the back of the line when the race began. We are brilliant and resourceful, because we’ve had to be. And when the rich kids call us “basement dwellers” we wear this title with pride. And when our friends think us crazy, we get new and better friends, because we are past the point of apologizing for our insanity and now accept fully that all truly amazing things have been accomplished by those that others dismissed as crazy.

Bernie Sanders stood up in the backyards of America and spoke to the poor and disenfranchised and every castaway, gypsy and vagabond stood up as one and raised their fists in solidarity. Soon there were so many of us that arenas could not hold us. While the rich kids grew weak and stringy from never having to fight, we grew stronger and more resourceful because fighting was all we ever did.

When someone says to me

“It’s too bad Bernie lost.”

I often say something like

“Bernie has already won. Millions of people are awake now. Bernie cannot lose, because what he stands for are a set of ideals. It is now our job to go forth and make sure those ideals come to fruition. This movement supersedes Sanders. It is the eternal battle of good versus evil, poor versus rich, The People vs The Oligarchy. This Revolution is just getting started.”

Then they look at me like I’m crazy. Because, in fact, that’s exactly what I am. But I am not alone. I have several million crazy friends.

And we are organized.

The rich kids are shaking in their $200 shoes.

THAT’S THE CHAPTER – I REALLY HOPE YOU ENJOYED IT!! THERE ARE MANY MORE EXCITING CHAPTERS IN THE FULL VERSION OF THE BOOK. 

HERE ARE ALL THE DETAILS YOU NEED IN ONE EASY TO UNDERSTAND VIDEO (<—-CLICK HERE)

The video is kind of long.

 There was a lot I wanted to fit in.

Here are the bullet points.

If you want an electronic copy of the book, I’ll send you one out absolutely free

Just send an email to

 GoBernieGoBernieGo@gmail.com

 And I’ll get an electronic copy sent out to you as soon as it goes to press on August 28.

 If anyone wants to contribute to the publishing costs, they can do so by clicking the link below.

 DONATIONS ARE NOT REQUIRED TO RECEIVE THE BOOK!!

 There is also an exciting bonus program for founding members.

 Anyone who donates $27 or more will be part of The 27 Buck Club.

 Those people receive a physical copy of the book, shipped to their home, along with a second book, The Independent Thinker Chronicles.

 The Independent Thinker Chronicles is a compilation of articles I wrote while on the road with the campaign.

 In addition, anyone in The 27 Buck Club gets their name credited inside the book for being an integral part of getting the book to press.

 If joining The 27 Buck Club, please be sure to include the address of where your books are to be shipped.

 If no one donates I’ll foot the entire bill for the publishing and I’LL STILL SEND OUT THE FREE COPIES!!

If the crowdfunding is successful and there is any money left over after paying the publishing costs, these proceeds go to pay Ari’s schooling (see video for details).

 I wanted to structure this where everyone could get the book without paying for it.

But I also wanted to structure it where there was freedom to participate for those who wanted to and I wanted to reward those people with something exciting.

 This is my first time doing crowdfunding and also my first time self-publishing so I hope I did a good job with the structure.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this chapter and I really look forward to getting the book to you.

I’ve spent so much time trying to make it amazing.

I sincerely believe that it is a book that needed to be written and I’m honored to be able to be part of such an incredible movement.

Your friend in Revolution,

Michael E Sparks

Is the “Russian Hack” Really Just a Smokescreen for Another US War for Oil?

 

Bernie Sanders came out on live TV recently and said that he agrees with American intelligence saying that Russia was responsible for the alleged hacks of the DNC and that their goal was to “undermine our democracy”.

Julian Assange has been on record stating that the Russian government was not the source of the alleged hacks.

Whom do we believe when two leftist icons disagree?

Furthermore, why is this even important?

Regardless of who leaked or hacked the emails, the content remains the same. When taken as a whole, we see very clearly that the DNC not only wanted Hillary Clinton as their nominee, but that they were in collusion with corporate media outlets to insure that Sanders never stood a realistic chance to win.

Let us not forget that the DNC sought to use these same corporate media arms to help Donald Trump to become the GOP nominee, because they felt that this would lead to an easy Clinton victory.

America sat by and watched this strategy blow up in Clinton’s face, in an absolutely disastrous election, that saw the Democrats lose control of every branch of government.

Now from the rubble of the Democratic Party come accusations that the Russians are behind the Wikileaks. Some even go so far as to say that we need a complete reelection, starting at the primary level.

This entire situation is such a huge mess that it’s difficult to even begin unraveling it. Even if the Russians were responsible for the alleged hack, this certainly does nothing to change the fact that the Democrats conspired to ruin Sanders and some would say that the source of the leak is not relevant, due to the content found in the emails.

It’s no wonder that Sanders’ supporters find it particularly disturbing that Sanders is on TV saying that the “evidence is overwhelming” that the Russian government is behind the alleged hacks, when he and his followers were the victims of the content found in the emails.

When leftist icons like Sanders and Assange disagree, what are Progressives to believe?

 

Even though Sanders says that the evidence supports the intelligence claim of Russian involvement, we the people, have no hard evidence that can be linked to the Russian government and there is no reason to believe that Senator Sanders has any more knowledge than the public has.

These accusations against the Russians smell eerily similar to the Bush/Cheney administration’s claims that Iraq was secretly harboring Weapons of Mass Destruction, in the Bush administration’s efforts to sway public sentiment, in order to enter into a war that should have never occurred.

These accusations are dangerous.

What the US government and their corporate media arms hope to accomplish with these allegations can be the subject of infinite speculation, but if we use history as our guide, it is likely a power-play designed to increase the United States’ leverage in their agenda to supplant Assad in Syria, which would give the US access to the building of a pipeline, which would result in trillions of dollars in gains for the corporations that own our government.

Or perhaps it is a ploy to weaken Trump and set him up for impeachment, in hopes of putting the more malleable Mike Pence in charge.

The American people are left to speculate when their government claims that they have proof, but are unwilling or unable to provide said proof.

The unnecessary declaration of war on Iraq lead to the creation of Isis and now we see what appear to be similar maneuverings by our government less than two decades later.

Am I saying that the accusations against the Russian state are untrue? I would not go that far. But upon careful investigation, we see that there is no concrete evidence available to the public to support such a claim.

Forgive us, if we do not trust our government.

But they have a long history of lying to the American people.

Julian Assange has repeatedly busted the American government in the act of cheating and therefore has become a hero to leftists everywhere. But Assange clearly has an agenda and it is not necessarily simply finding the truth.

It is curious that somehow each time Assange finds out something about the American government and its shady dealings, that somehow these findings always seem to benefit Russia. If we are to find truth, we must hold our icons up to the light of skepticism and expect the same transparency that we desire from our own government.

Had Assange released Donald Trump’s tax returns, as Wikileaks originally promised, then the American voter would have had a much clearer picture of the two incredibly corrupt candidates that were running for our nation’s highest office, but Assange reneged on Wikileaks claim that they would deliver Trump’s tax returns and repeatedly focused on Clinton’s corruption. As a result, the American people will learn about Trump’s malfeasance firsthand, once he begins running our country further into the ground by using our nation’s highest office to line his pockets.

Disdain for Hillary Clinton is a separate issue and does not let Assange off the hook here. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend and Assange has a history of helping the Russian government. Add to this Putin’s desire to see Trump in office and we begin to see Assange’s one-sided agenda through a lens of suspicion.

It is no wonder that Assange has become such an icon for the leftist movement. His boyish good looks, charm and accent make him incredibly likable. The fact that he is hiding from our tyrannical government makes him seem downright heroic. Furthermore, he brought down the oligarchy, which makes him an activist legend. But, if you are searching for actual truth, it is worth asking why Assange’s findings repeatedly benefit the Russians. Assange is literally on the Kremlin payroll, with his show, The World Tomorrow, airing on Russian Times, a network founded by Vladimir Putin.

Putin wanted Trump.

Putin pays Assange.

Assange helps deliver Trump.

Don’t we always say to “follow the money”?

Have we become so angry at our own government, that we are willing to embrace Vladimir Putin and allow him power in our elections?

Are we so disgusted with the findings regarding the DNC, that we forget to ask the obvious questions about the intent of those who went hunting for said information to begin with?

Do any of us actually believe that the Russian government is any less corrupt than our own government, with its recent history of propping up dictators in France, Germany, Austria and the Ukraine?

The American people are right to be suspect of our own intelligence agencies, as they have lied to us repeatedly, but you would be doing yourself a great disservice, if you didn’t ask why Putin was so excited to see Trump’s rise to power.

Just as it would be foolish to accept American intelligence as gospel, it would be equally foolhardy to dismiss the preponderance of circumstantial evidence that points directly to Vladimir Putin and his employee, Julian Assange.

Wikileaks fans will repeatedly point out that Wikileaks have never had to retract a single story in their ten year existence. And while I definitely think they deserve tremendous credit for being one of the only sources of truth left on this tyrannical, corporate-controlled planet, it is the stories that Wikileaks isn’t covering that should make you suspicious of their motives.

So why did Bernie Sanders say that the “evidence is overwhelming” when the American people have no hard evidence to implicate the Russians?

Before we attempt to answer this, let’s first congratulate the corporate media, on finally getting Sanders to say something that they can use.

For nearly two years they have been putting microphones in Sanders’ face and asking him tough questions, much tougher questions than any other candidate was ever asked. Each time, Sanders did what he always does, he answered with the truth and then the corporate media did what it always does, they cut out everything he said, only to air a sensationalist story to deceive and distract the public.

But that’s not what happened this time. This time Bernie Sanders said something that actually was consistent with what the corporate media wanted him to say and they have ran the sound-bite on a nonstop loop since he uttered it.

As Sanders attempts to reform the Democrats in his image, those scorned by the party, have been quick to accuse Sanders of being a puppet for the corporate establishment, a scenario that is possible, but highly unlikely.

Sanders has no such record of being in bed with these corporatists and has literally spent his entire life fighting them. Sanders’ life would have been much simpler had he buckled and joined the Democratic Party decades ago, but instead he literally spent his entire career fighting against the Dems and the GOP simultaneously.

What’s more amazing is that he won most of these battles.

Let us also take note that since the general election, Sanders has been incredibly critical of the Democratic Party, saying that it was not enough to say “I’m a woman. Vote for me.” and repeatedly calling on party leaders to shed their corporate ties and serve the American people again.

So if there is no concrete proof of Russian involvement in the DNC hacks, why did Senator Sanders say that “the evidence is overwhelming.”?

I submit that Sanders simply said it because he believes it to be true.

Sanders was asked a direct question on live TV and he spoke on the matter for 30 seconds and never revisited the topic.

He did not bring it up.

He did not say that it cost the Democrats the election.

He said that he “agreed with the intelligence community’s assessment” and based on this, many on the left went right to the “Bernie sold us out” rhetoric that has become the mantra of wannabe revolutionaries.

Of course, it makes perfect sense that every word Sanders says is amplified with white-hot intensity. It is, at once, the best and worst part of his revolution. Sanders brought new blood into politics. Many of the people who follow him are incredibly passionate, but passion can be a double-edged sword. The same people who exult Sanders one minute, will oppose him with intense anger a moment later.

Sanders has become a leftist political icon, but perhaps his followers put him under too much scrutiny, constantly looking for the tiniest defect to prove their hypothesis, that all politicians are corrupt, much in the same way that a teenager will rally behind an obscure punk band, only to turn on that band when the band achieves some measure of commercial success.

Sanders has become Kale Soup for the Leftist/Activist Soul.

When the mountain seems too steep to climb, Sanders’ supporters think of him speaking to those empty Senate floors and feel emboldened. When they feel overwhelmed in their attempts to free our country from tyranny, they think back to the young man who was so determined to fight injustice that he had to be dragged away in handcuffs.

Sanders’ has become more than just a politician. He has become a symbol of hope in the face of impossible odds. So it is only natural that his followers would hover a microscope over his every word and action, looking for cracks in the facade. It is only natural that Sanders’ followers would have a religious zealotry towards this great man and come apart at the seams at the possibility that he has been absorbed by the very machine they have been attempting to bring down.

But Sanders isn’t in anyone’s pocket.

He simply believes that Russia was behind the alleged hack.

You can choose to believe him.

You can choose to believe Julian Assange.

You can choose to believe neither and hope that further evidence comes to light.

 

The truth is out there.

But in this case, we will probably never know.

Michael E Sparks is a Progressive independent writer. If you believe in the importance of his voice, you can donate $1 by clicking HERE.

 

 

 

Bernie Sanders Gave Me a Christmas Present

I walk into my local bookstore and see my favorite human, Bernie Sanders, staring at me from directly inside the store window. His book, Our Revolution, is flying off the shelves. As I bring it to the register the clerk says

“I read it. I cried. I love Bernie.”

And we are immediately friends.

Leaving the shop, I pull up at the stop-light and start looking for the latest Young Turks podcast on my phone. As I do there is honking from behind and beside me. I look up to see what is going on. The guy to my left gives me a thumbs up. It says “Feel the Bern 2020” on both sides of my car. The girl in the car behind me also gives me the thumbs up too and then starts taking pictures of my Bernie-mobile.

This happens almost every time I stop at a light.

My faith in humanity is constantly being restored.

Someone told me that Bernie Sanders lost the election, but they completely missed the point. Bernie won and we won. More importantly, we are still winning, because Sanders started something and we will not stop until it is finished.

Everywhere I go, I meet people who believe in Sanders message of compassion. The air is alive with people talking political change. This is the most informed generation in our country’s young history. I can go anywhere in America and find people who believe as I do, that every man, woman and child deserves the right to healthcare, a living wage and an opportunity to pursue higher education.

Bernie Sanders made it okay to be a proud Socialist and taught millions of people what the word actually means. He woke us up and we aren’t going back to sleep. He introduced us to each other and we are a powerful force to be reckoned with.

That is the incredible gift that Bernie Sanders gave to all of us.

The revolution is going on right now.

It began the moment Sanders stood up in the backyards of rural areas, where Democrats fear to tread and said what we had all been thinking.

Bernie was clear from the beginning that it was about US. He told US to stand together and we would win. I know that it is hard, right now, with the utter mess that our country’s political system has become, but out of chaos arises opportunity.

The confluence of America’s political system hitting rock bottom at the same time as this great man rising up and becoming a voice of awakening for an entire generation, is exactly what needed to happen for our country to take a giant leap forward into a new Progressive era.

Sanders started a conversation and traveled from town to town sharing these truths that we hold to be self-evident.

Now it is up to US to continue the conversation.

It is up to US to help our neighbor. It is up to US to fight injustice. It is up to US to run for office, to boycott corporations, to push until every one of Bernie’s dreams becomes a reality.

Because Bernie’s dreams are our dreams.

Before Sanders, we were fragmented. We felt alone and powerless.

Now awake, we are an unstoppable force.

As I walk into a local coffee shop, Bernie Sanders is on corporate media. He is applying pressure to Barack Obama to declare Standing Rock a national monument. Later the same day, I walk into the gym and one of the Republican guys yells…

“Boy, Ol Bernie is really lettin em have it, Mike!!”

I look up at the TV and Sanders is on talking about reforming the “Democratic” Party and ridding it of corporate influence.

“Show this guy your Bernie tattoo!!” another one of my Republican friends hollers.

I do and we all laugh together.

Bernie has united people from all different walks of life.

Bernie has a platform now. People are awake. They are listening. And anyone who knows anything about change, knows that first people have to become aware of what needs to change before change can begin.

For the next few years, things will be hard and we will have many opportunities to band together to fight injustice and if we fight hard enough and make our voices loud enough, we can begin usher in a new age of enlightenment in America.

It is up to US to take this wonderful gift that Bernie has given us and continue to give it to everyone we meet.

After doing some (non-corporate) Christmas shopping, I returned to my car to find a note. I cringed, thinking that some Trump supporter might have taken umbrage with my First Amendment right to express my Socialist views.

I was wrong.

Instead there was a beautiful letter, from a friend I haven’t met, telling me how much they love the Bernie-mobile, leaving me warm and fuzzy this holiday season. This was just the latest in a million reminders that our movement has only just begun.

2016 brought us together.

In 2017 we will continue the fight.

In 2018 we lay claim to the House and Senate.

And in 2020 we right a great wrong and vote Bernie Sanders into The White House.

Happy Holidays to all my amazing Bernie friends everywhere.

Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Michael recently published an epic book about his adventures touring the country for Bernie Sanders. You can get a free copy HERE. Merry Christmas everyone!!

How Hillary Clinton Burned the “Democratic” Party to the Ground

Donald Trump is President of the United States and liberals are in chaos.

Around the country people rally in anti-Trump protests.

I can’t help wondering where these people were when Bernie Sanders supporters were screaming from the rooftops that Hillary polled poorly against Trump, whereas Sanders beat Trump in a head to head match-up by a record-breaking 18-24 points.

Actually, I know exactly where they were.

They were at their jobs and in their homes, living their lives, just as they normally would.

Sanders supporters were screaming about the impending iceberg, while Clinton voters were calling them “sore losers”.

They weren’t out knocking on doors.

They couldn’t be bothered.

Bernie people knocked on doors.

In fact we traveled from state to state interrupting people in their homes to talk to them about Bernie Sanders.

It wasn’t just that we believed that Bernie was a better candidate.

It was also because we had looked at the numbers.

We knew that it was likely that Clinton would lose to Trump.

I even wrote articles reflecting the reasons WHY this would happen.

But our voices were silenced.

Hillary supporters didn’t want to hear about universal healthcare or creating 13 million new jobs repairing America’s crumbling infrastructure.

They didn’t want to hear about expanding Social Security or making sure all qualified students could attend public colleges, regardless of socioeconomic level.

They didn’t want to force corporations to pay their fair share of taxes and they didn’t care about ending mass incarceration in for-profit prisons.

They wanted a woman president.

“It’s her time” they told me.

“It’s time for a woman.” they said.

“She’s just more electable.” they parroted.

The Hillary supporters didn’t seem to know why they were voting for her, outside of the fact that she was female and electing a woman president after a black president just seemed like the next step for liberals.

Never mind her hawkish record or weekly scandals.

They didn’t want to hear it.

They didn’t need our votes.

We were just “basement dwellers” who tried to disrupt their coronation.

When I tried to speak with my Hillary supporting friends about real issues they would say either…

“I don’t believe that!!”

or

“So what? You want Trump then?”

We didn’t want Trump.

We wanted Bernie Sanders.

We wanted free and fair elections.

We wanted veteran’s programs.

We wanted a fair living wage.

We wanted a candidate who supported LBGT rights since day one, not someone who supported DOMA and only came over to our team when it was politically expedient to do so.

We wanted someone who wouldn’t install a no-fly zone over Syria and start a war with Russia.

We wanted a candidate who could beat Donald Trump.

Now liberals are pointing fingers wildly.

Jill Stein is to blame.

The electoral college is to blame.

James Comey is to blame.

Sexism is to blame.

I have even heard people say that Bernie Sanders is to blame for not campaigning hard enough for Hillary.

Of course all of these arguments hold little basis in reality and point to an overall victim mentality that Hillary fostered throughout her campaign.

She, like her supporters, reminded us often that she was a woman, as if that should hold more weight than $153,000,000 in Wall Street speaking fees.

As if Hillary’s gender was going to make us forget how she helped to create Isis by selling her Iraq war vote to George Bush.

As if BEING a woman made it okay to sell arms to countries that OPPRESS women.

Bernie Sanders would have been our nation’s first Jewish president, but he never mentioned it, because Progressives know that it is inexcusable to vote for someone based on race, gender or sexual orientation.

Voting for someone based on gender is just as insulting as voting AGAINST someone for this reason, yet still Clinton and her supporters seem to point the finger at everyone but themselves.

I guess this is to be expected from someone who literally played The Woman Card as part of her disastrous campaign.

The blame for this complete and utter defeat lies clearly at the feet of the “Democratic” National Committee and Hillary Clinton and any attempts to blame others will keep the Dems from learning the lessons they so desperately need to learn in order to rebuild their crumbled party, which has become completely out of touch with the working class it once represented.

Hillary’s loss was not the fault of third-parties.

Jill Stein received 1% of the vote and if you look at the states where Clinton lost close races like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, you will see that Stein was not a factor at all in those states.

The Dems would do better to ask themselves why people feel so disenfranchised that they need to reach out to an underdeveloped party to feel represented.

Voters on both sides of the aisle are fed up with corporate money controlling their politicians.

When Sanders stood up and said that he refused to take money from super-pacs the people responded in a YUGE way.

Instead of the “Democrats” adapting, they just sabotaged Sanders and in doing so sabotaged their party.

Of course it is much easier to blame others for Clinton’s epic fail, than to ask why her campaign had multiple field offices in deep-red Texas, yet never stepped foot in formerly-blue Wisconsin.

Before blaming a third-party, it might be important to ask why 90,000 Michigan voters filled out their down-ballot, but refused to vote for president.

Perhaps they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for another Clinton after watching NAFTA send their jobs overseas and destroy their cities and towns.

Perhaps they could no longer support a party that left the children of Flint to drink poison water under the Obama administration, while Clinton used their suffering as a campaigning opportunity.

Of course it’s easier to blame James Comey for dropping a bombshell a week before the election, but perhaps the finger should be pointed at the party itself, who chose to force an already rejected candidate down our throats when The People clearly did not trust her.

And of course, winning the popular vote while losing in the electoral college is heartbreaking, but any Clinton supporter who cries foul is engaging in blatant hypocrisy, as they blindly supported a candidate who used closed primaries, corporate media propaganda and $uper-delegates to insure a “victory” for a candidate that was highly vulnerable against Trump.

And yet there are still Clinton supporters who actually believe that her loss was about sexism.

Of course people who voted based entirely on gender would think that others refused to vote for Hillary based on this same “reasoning”.

Clinton supporters didn’t want to talk about policy.

 

They wanted to talk about the first woman president.

Even as prominent feminists like Camille Paglia came out and stated why Hillary’s policies were anti-feminist, Clinton supporters continued to blame every criticism on sexism.

If you were to point out how female civil rights leaders were murdered as a result of Clinton’s foreign policy, then you were told that “you just can’t handle women in power.”

Try to point out that Clinton paid her female employees 38% less than male employees, when she was Secretary of State and you were called misogynist.

Ask any Clinton supporter why a feminist would use her power to cut funding to single mothers with dependent children and you would likely receive a lecture about “how women have to make hard choices”.

And let’s never forget that it is MUCH harder to be a woman in America than it is to be a man, but Hillary’s gender didn’t work against her.

It worked FOR her.

America actually wanted a woman president.

They just didn’t want her.

People just don’t like Hillary Clinton.

And to blame that on sexism, would be to dismiss the real reasons why people refused to vote for her.

Before you accept the idea that Hillary lost because of her gender, realize that more white women voted for Donald Trump than for Hillary Clinton.

This election WAS largely about sexism, but not AGAINST Hillary Clinton.

The ugly sexism in the 2016 election was the fact that Clinton supporters voted for a genocidal tyrant based COMPLETELY on her gender.

Had Clinton been male, she would have been susceptible to the same scrutiny as any other politician, but instead her followers saw her as immune to criticism.

In the mind of a Clinton supporter, every scandal was the result of either a right-wing witch-hunt or an attack on her womanhood.

She was the victim of James Comey.

She was the victim of Bernie Sanders.

She was the victim of Jill Stein.

She was the victim of Julian Assange.

She was the victim of the electoral college.

She was a victim of the Russians.

Accountability isn’t part of the faux-feminism of the Clinton supporter.

Although I rejoice in the fact that Hillary’s cheating was not rewarded, it is sad that the “Democrats” had this amazing opportunity to reinvent itself as a true party for The People, but instead took the populace for granted and lost all branches of the government.

There is no doubt that there will be hard times in America with Republicans controlling the House, Senate and the presidency and our children’s children will be dealing with these alt-right Supreme Court judges that Trump will nominate.

In the words of Clinton supporter, Morgan Freeman, in The Shawshank Redemption, the time is now for Progressives to “get busy livin or get busy dyin.”

Our backs are against the wall and drastic activism is needed.

Although I find it laughable that Clinton supporters have chosen to wait until AFTER the election to finally start protesting, it’s good that they are learning how to use their voice.

We will need their voice.

Progressives can allow themselves a short period of time to say “I told you so.”, especially after the reprehensible way that they were treated by Clinton supporters over the last 18 months, but ultimately we have to move on and forgive if we are going to have an actual revolution in America.

Progressives and Independents must join forces with the LBGT+ community and Black Lives Matter and take hold of this amazing opportunity to rebuild the broken “Democratic” Party in our own image.

Our revolution is just getting started and we all have a common enemy in power.

The “Democratic” Party needs us more than we need them.

We can use that.

Their firewall is down and they are vulnerable.

Attention DNC,

Move to the left or perish.

Represent The People or be replaced.

If the 2016 election taught you anything..

It should have taught you that we will no longer be held hostage.

Sincerely,

The People

Hillary supporters direct your angry comments at this guy. For those of you who believe in Independent Progressive voices, you can support Michael’s work by donating $1 by clicking HERE.