The biggest sticker on my laptop reads, “Not me. Us.” I received it after promising to make regular, monthly donations to the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders.
The sticker with the best real estate (i.e., it covers my laptop’s central, glowing Apple) came from a friend of mine. It reads, “Bernie is my homeboy.”
(The third sticker, a relic, advertises the now-defunct library in which my wife and I grew our love).
Despite these two stickers (and my monthly contribution), I have been wavering in my support for Senator Sanders. I still believe he will make a great president, but his mild heart attack in the Fall and his advanced age make me hesitant to vote for him.
As with most progressives, I’ve considered voting for Senator Elizabeth Warren. She impressed me years before she ran for office, back when she first appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and helped his viewers (myself included) better understand the financial shenanigans that are harming the American economy. She was down to Earth, clear, and funny. I’ve supported her ever since.
Like every politician, Senator Warren makes missteps, and like every female politician, she suffers from those missteps to an unfair degree, but unlike every politician, Senator Warren truly cares about helping those who struggle, and she is willing to stand up and fight on their behalf. If she wins the Democratic nomination, I will cast my vote for her with pride.
But then I think about that sticker on my laptop, the one that reads “Not me. Us.,” and I think about the design of the sticker, the silhouette of Bernie’s upper body and upraised fist filled in with the multicolored silhouettes of a crowd.
I don’t want to vote for a politician in 2020. I want to vote for a movement, a progressive wave that will create laws recognizing education as a universal right (and not just the right of children), healthcare as a universal right (and not just the right of the employed), and protection from harm as a universal right (and not just the right of the white majority). I want to vote for the people who recognize that the Earth too has rights, as do all the people and creatures on it; as our rights cannot be compromised, neither can the rights of the Earth.
When I cast my vote for Senator Sanders to become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States later this Spring, and again when I cast it for him to become the nation’s 46th president in the Fall, I will do so with the faith that those who share my values will cast similar votes, and together, we will empower progressive representatives throughout the country, from city council members in Texas to U.S. Senators in North Carolina, from school board officials in Hawai’i to governors in Vermont, a wave not of Democrats, but of Berniecrats, individuals who believe as I do, not in Bernie, but in the movement.
If enough Berniecrats show up not just to vote, but to take office, the movement on which Senator Sanders staked the power of his presidency will, can, and must deliver on the laws and programs promised by his campaign. And when we get those laws and programs, it won’t be because he did it, but because we did.
Not Bernie. Us.
I’m voting for us.