Hey all, I've been watching a lot of Bernie content since the election because quite frankly, we need his voice right now. I noticed in his podcasts, he kept promoting his book and said you can donate any amount to receive a copy. I found the webpage and donated to get one, but it's been 2-3 weeks and I haven't received any confirmation of it shipping or anything. Anyone know if this is still an active offer? I noticed it stated that the proceeds would go to the progressive campaigns for the November elections, so I'm wondering if I just missed the boat on this lol

i'm listening to the Pod Save America episode with Hasan Piker. Only in bits because I can't stand the host being all typical corporate democrat and not listening to what Hasan Saying (PS as I'm writing this Hasan just said what I'm about to write haha)

Bernie subtly called out corporate politicans in 2016 like Hiliary without naming her and even admitted so in the book I'm reading "Our Revolution." In the past several years I've seen a new generation who just got into politics not be aware of this dynamic within the Democratic party that's getting in the way of progress. And now hearing everyone's post-election analysis its clear that the Democratic party needs MUCH more aggressive revamping while simultaneously working towards building 3rd parties.

When AOC got elected I was hearing a LOT about how Pelosi was obstructing her. So then I did some googling on Nancy Pelosi's finances and WOW lmao. I have learned MANY lessons about how much you can find someone's motivations in politics when you research how much they're getting paid by donors. (Hence why I have to watch this episode in bits because the hosts's response to Hasan about Joe Manchin voting no against democrats was primarily motivated by his financial interests made me see red and I can't ruin my sisters new 72 inch TV lol)

Its wishful thinking but.. it would just be so altering in a good way if he did.

If so, sources?? A YouTuber mentioned it

Want to arm myself with my democrat family today on Thanksgiving lol

I saw on my YT recommended 2 videos based on the newest email he sent. One of the lines indicated more support for Independent workers. Its not a huge indicator to me but I love that he said that. I'm i a subreddit regarding concerns over voter manipulating in the voting system and its frustrating to see people who are mad at the Dems for not doing more. This is the same party that schemed to prevent Bernie in 2016 to help normal Americans. They're in bed with the same corporate donors.

I really did hope that after this election people like AOC and Bernie would rally together to create a new party. Especially since George Washington said himself that a 2 party system would fuck us up. If anyone hasn't read his farewell address its haunting.

Would anyone happen to know the artist of this sticker and/or where I can find more or the artwork?

I originally got it in San Francisco around 2015 during the first presidential campaign and someone just left a stack on a desk.

I've been putting it on my laptops ever since (I only had 2) and even transferred it once, but this time it's just too worn out to do so 🙁. Thanks!

What can supporters do to collaborate in person aside from being in Vermont and outside of the election cycle? I'm new to the idea organizing for political reasons and want to be an advocate but not just through donations or online discussion. I haven't participated in organizations for the democratic party either, so I've no experience in that either.

EDIT Here's the link as I go through the book!: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSZFIMkBjRym2P11zsbvXB1OaxIDTCRtaYkb209ZoADnSh9fr1MRCW_Gln2aRacdZAJFhhhcx2yHSI4/pub

I will not give up. As a therapist, anger is what motivates us. In the same way anger motivated Trump supporters to create Project 2025 so will we. I’m furious at them and the corporate democrats. I passively supported but now this is a fight for not just my life but anyone who isn’t a white racist man in America. That’s what this is. It’s life threatening to me and I’m mad.

So since I got no kids, divorced and time I’m working on turning this corporate democratic party inside out starting with my local elections.

Bernie has an incredible story. He ran as an independent and he has people from all backgrounds who vote for him. AOC’s IG question to those who voted for her and Trump opened my eyes that these people are out there. They just need someone to reach out to them and talk to them. They need face to face discussion about their actual day to day life problems.

His path is the way we need to follow, not whatever these million dollar consultations the DNC hired.

I picked up his book Our Revolution and have learned a LOT so far. He has another book called Guide to a Poltical Revolution that has helpful to understand the ins and outs of the problems we’re facing from a factual perspective, not one like the media spins.

Anyway all that to say I’m taking notes on how he was able to get people from opposite sides of the political spectrum to vote for him.

Would anyone be interested in reading the notes?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/11/20/senate-vote-israel-weapons-gaza/

Senate Democrats force Israel weapons vote, citing Biden inaction

The chamber ultimately voted down the measure, brought by Sen. Bernie Sanders and a handful of Democrats, to block the sale of some $20 billion in U.S.-made weapons.

By Abigail Hauslohner

November 20, 2024

The Senate on Wednesday voted down a measure, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders and a handful of Democrats, that sought to block the sale of some $20 billion in U.S.-made weapons to Israel, in a last-ditch effort to limit the carnage, suffering and destruction caused by its 13-month war in Gaza.

The measure failed, with none of the three resolutions it comprised garnering more than 19 supporting votes. But the effort — the first time Congress has voted on whether to block an arms sale to America’s closest Middle East ally — also served as a bellwether of the dissatisfaction within President Joe Biden’s own party about his handling of the Middle East crisis.

Wednesday’s vote, spurred by Sanders’s filing of rarely invoked joint resolutions of disapproval, follows the Biden administration’s determination a week ago that it would not take punitive action against Israel for failing to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza. The administration in October warned Israel that absent “concrete measures” to surge food, medicine and other basic supplies into the ravaged Palestinian territory within 30 days, it could risk losing some U.S. military assistance.

Biden’s decision not to act — after international aid groups and the United Nations said the crisis in northern Gaza had reached catastrophic levels over the past month — infuriated liberals, who have called on him repeatedly to hold Israel accountable for a war that has killed roughly 2 percent of Gaza’s population, according to local health authorities. The International Criminal Court, meanwhile, has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of war crimes, charges he strenuously denies.

Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, was slow in the first few months of the war to join other liberals’ calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, even after thousands of Palestinian civilians had been killed under Israeli bombardment. That reticence drew a backlash from his progressive supporters. He has since been among the most vocal critics of the administration’s approach to Netanyahu.

What is happening in Gaza now “is unspeakable,” Sanders said from the Senate floor ahead of the vote. “But what makes it even more painful is that much of this has been done with U.S. weapons and American taxpayer dollars. In the last year alone, the U.S. has provided $18 billion in military aid to Israel,” he said. It has delivered more than 50,000 tons of military equipment.

“In other words … the United States of America is complicit in all of these atrocities. We are funding these atrocities,” Sanders said. “That complicity must end, and that is what these resolutions are about.”

Sanders cited the data that has been reported by the United Nations and aid groups: more than 43,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli bombardment and more than 103,000 injured — “60 percent of whom are women, children or elderly people,” he said, noting also that 87 percent of Gaza’s housing has been damaged or destroyed, along with 84 percent of its health facilities and 70 percent of its water and sanitation plants. Families have been “herded” into so-called “safe zones,” only to be bombed in their tents, he said, and there has been no reliable electricity for 13 months.

As he spoke, an aide rotated a display of photos beside the lectern, showing the skeletal frames of starving children and babies, children clamoring for food, and buildings reduced to rubble.

A growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers, including several close to Biden, along with legal scholars and human rights groups, contend that providing offensive weapons to Israel under such circumstances represents a clear violation of U.S. and international law.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) on Wednesday read out the terms of the laws that govern the provision of U.S. weapons to foreign countries. Israel is violating them, he said. “By refusing to take action, the president and the United States are complicit in those violations of American laws and American values,” he added.

Israel has claimed that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is exaggerated and has blamed Hamas for hindering the delivery of vital humanitarian aid. It has framed the uninterrupted flow of U.S. weapons as vital to maintaining Israel’s defense against Hamas and other regional adversaries.

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, decried Wednesday’s vote as a threat to Israel’s national security. It was Iranian-backed Hamas that led the deadly assault into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited the war and set the region on edge.

“Our success in turning the tide of this war — deterring Iran, degrading Hezbollah, and defeating Hamas — advances the free world’s interests. Pushing for daylight between the U.S. and Israel on this matter is wrong and sends the wrong message to our enemies,” Herzog wrote on social media.

He wrote that he had “one message to American lawmakers: Anyone urging you to ban critical arms to Israel during an existential war is NOT pro-Israel.”

The resolutions sought to block three recently announced sales to Israel of weapons that rights groups say are most commonly implicated in attacks that have killed Gaza civilians. They include shipments of 120mm tank rounds, 120mm “high explosive” mortar rounds and precision-guidance kits that are attached to bombs.

The White House, which strongly opposed the resolutions, warned lawmakers privately that suspending arms shipments to Israel at this moment would jeopardize its efforts to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and would embolden Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas “at the worst possible moment,” according to talking points first reported by HuffPost, and echoed on the Senate floor Wednesday.

Israel is a “steadfast” ally, opponents of the resolutions said, a force for good in the Middle East. They warned that banning the sale of weapons would empower terrorists, and send “the wrong signal” to Israel and America’s shared adversaries. It would tell the world that America is willing to abandon its allies, they said.

“I know many of you here are torn,” said Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada), leading the counterargument. “You want to do the right thing! And I’m here to tell you that voting against these resolutions is the right thing,” she said.

“There are ways to express criticism, and to work on addressing these criticisms without impacting Israel’s security,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said, also urging senators to vote against the resolutions.

Still, activists said the simple fact that the vote occurred at all, and the support it mustered, underscores a shift underway in American public opinion when it comes to Israel. Polls over the past year have shown at times that more than half of Americans — and 75 percent of Democrats — disapproved of Israeli military actions in a war in which local journalists have uploaded to social media a steady stream of videos showing the bodies of children pulled lifeless from the rubble, others withering from starvation, and families living in squalid encampments.

The Biden administration has repeatedly resisted taking punitive action against Israel, despite registering its own increasingly dire assessments. Young progressives — Arab American and Muslim voters in particular — registered their frustration with the administration’s handling of the Gaza war this month at the ballot box, with many saying that they chose not to vote in the presidential election or that they cast their vote for Donald Trump, hopeful that he would end the bloodshed.

The vote was “not going to prevent the sales of any arms to Israel,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a liberal advocacy group that urged Democrats to support the disapproval resolutions. But it was indicative of a growing disapproval of Israel’s actions and the Biden administration’s “unwillingness to use the leverage that it has,” he said in an interview.

It was the first vote of its kind concerning America’s closest Middle East ally, and the recipient of roughly $251.2 billion in U.S. military aid over the past 66 years. And for that reason, “this is a vote that has tremendous symbolic importance,” Ben-Ami said.

It also underscored the toxicity of challenging aid to Israel in a Congress that has historically trended right of the general population on the issue; where pro-Israel lobbyist groups have pushed a steadfast and conservative stance on Israel — and worked successfully to unseat those who challenge it; and where lawmakers have long cited military aid as foundational to Washington’s commitment to the creation and survival of a Jewish state in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Ben-Ami said that based on his conversations with lawmakers in recent weeks, he believes the number of Democrats who disapprove of U.S. arms sales to Israel is larger than the number willing to say so out loud. “The quiet conversations indicate to me a broader level of agreement that a blank check as the form of U.S. support to Israel is no longer appropriate,” he said. But many remain too afraid of the political consequences to vote that way.

Sanders’s frustration with his colleagues bubbled forth Wednesday.

“A lot of folks come to the floor to talk about human rights,” he said, remarking on the various speeches made by members of both parties condemning the abuses of China, Iran, Russia or Saudi Arabia. “Nobody is going to treat what you say with a grain of seriousness,” Sanders bellowed.

“You cannot condemn human rights around the world and then turn a blind eye to what the United States government is now funding in Israel,” he said. “People will laugh in your face. They will say, ‘You’re concerned about Iran? You’re concerned about China? Then why are you funding starvation of children in Gaza right now?’”

Yasmeen Abutaleb, Meryl Kornfield and John Hudson contributed to this report.

I feel like there is no good way of breaking the 2 party system normally, but right now I feel like we might have a chance to. Creating a 3rd party, having Bernie lead it as he gained some grace with his support of Trump’s promise of capping interest rates. I feel like a party focused on bottom up policies and even single earner households would gain support by a lot of people. Using the push for single earner households as a way to allow whichever parent stays home to teach personal values to their children would get some conservative votes. But in all using everyone’s disenfranchisement from the current state of politics to thrust a new party into the spotlight, one that has no long standing history of smear campaigns that focuses primarily on cost of living and the betterment of common people.

This would help Bernie put forward his ideas but through a candidate that is younger with less of a history of smear campaigns ran against them. I know Bernie would do what is right for the American people, and has a good amount of popularity, but I am not sure if enough people would vote him against their party. This way in him leading the formation of a new party, you get his support, but more of a fresh face candidate to put forward. In creating a new party now, it might be possible to shake up the fragile hold to power both parties have by introducing a new, uncorrupted party that focuses on the well being of the people.

But would his popularity be enough to form a strong enough 3rd party to make waves in a short period of time? I feel like ideas on other some other policies can be flexible, as long as the focus is cost of living. But would this be feasible?

Edit Sorry everyone I assumed people would go to my post history but it’s this book: https://a.co/d/9TMqjp2

I recently posted about picking up one of his books to learn how he did it. And MAN Bernie had so many life experiences that really shaped his understanding. Tax research job. Small business making videos about history. Running a rural home with no electricity and having to bake a car battery in the oven to keep it from dying.

He also makes a great point that I didn't consider about race issues. He labels it as a distraction from the oligarchs who promote the divisiveness to take away from the real issue that unites us all: wealth inequality.

And that's really what helped him win his seats from mayor to senate. That's what people can get on board with despite where we come from / what we look like. And this new understanding on my end also coincides with what I saw when AOC asked people why they voted for both Trump & her. Its not the identity politics, its our day to day life.

I learned a lot about how the Bill Clinton era changed the party to be more in line with the wealthy. And that is fucked up.

If anyone is fired up to learn how make progressive change, I think learning from him about how he did it from his book is a great starter. Its extremely fascinating. (And personally fun for me because for some reason I am reading in his voice lmao)

When he passes, I'm going to be fucked up. He's the Princess Diana of our time in that he truly cares about the suffering of people.