C.A.P.

UPDATE
By Robert Smith, NAFSR C.AP. Delegate

On Monday February 15 Senator Bernie Sanders held a presidential campaign rally

on the campus of Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, MI. The seventy-fouryear-old Independent Senator from Vermont, who is currently running for the
Democratic Nomination for President, was warm, funny, and energetic throughout
an hour-long speech to over ten thousand supporters.
Senator Sanders was introduced by a representative of the Michigan Nurses
Association. Citing Sanders call for single-payer healthcare and the union nurses
own belief that healthcare should be a human right, our sisters and brothers in the
MNA have enthusiastically endorsed Sanders for the Presidency.
Sanders, for his part, hardly limited his speech to healthcare. To a nearly packed
stadium he began by talking about Flint. He had just come from Flint where he had
what he described as being the hardest meeting of my political career. He spoke
specifically of one mother who had watched a very bright childs learning ability and
intelligence diminish over a two-year period due to the lead in the water of which
she not know about in time. He spoke generally about other parents he met with
who had similar stories. He renewed his call for Snyders resignation; and added
more helpfully that if the local government cant fix the water problem in Flint and
the state wont then the federal government had better get in there.
He spoke of election finance reform, marriage equality, womens rights, fair pay for
honest work, college tuition, and many other points. Not the least of which is
strengthening unions and the middle-class.
He spoke of a broken criminal justice system and how the United States has more
people in prison than any other country on Earth. He spoke of our young people
getting criminal records and prison time for possessing small amounts of marijuana
while the Wall Street bankers fraud the American people out of billions of dollars,
breaking our nations economy, without any of them spending a single day in jail.
He pointed out that a college degree today is equal, in terms of helping to find a
decent paying job, to a high school diploma fifty years ago. Because of this, he
insisted, a college education must be provided to all students as a right, to be paid
for by a new tax on Wall Street. He further pointed out that We the People bailed out
Wall Street after they broke our economy and that therefore, it is their turn to help
out the middle-class.
He, of course, expounded his signature campaign point: income inequality. He
explained how many corporations pay nearly nothing in taxes, and in some cases
even walk away with huge tax credits, while the middle-class is forced to pay higher
taxes in order to cover the public assistance that many full time workers still qualify
for. Half of all new wealth in this country is going to the top one percent, while just

twenty families have more wealth than the bottom forty percent of We the People.
Senator Sanders insists that this must change.
Senator Sanders did show his funny side at the rally. There were many in
attendance holding up signs which had the word huge purposely misspelled as
yuge. When the crowd groaned at the Senator referring to a big problem, Sanders
responded with, Okay, a yuge problem, then commented on the impact of his
Saturday Night Live appearance. In speaking of marriage equality, he pointed out
that if someone had said ten years before that same-sex marriage would be legal in
every state by 2016 the person next to him would have asked, What are you
smoking? Sanders then added, Which bring me to my next point!
Senator Sanders overall kept to a positive message, although he did take his shots
at Republican leadership, the Republican presidential candidates, and the one
percenters who finance their campaigns. And yes, he called on his Republican
colleagues in the Senate to hold confirmation hearings for whomever President
Obama nominates to the Supreme Court in a timely manner as is their
Constitutional duty.
Before leaving to speak at a UAW hall in Dearborn, he finished by restating his call
for a Political Revolution. He insisted that Football is a spectator sport; Democracy
is not! Change does not come from the top. The top changes when We the People
insists that it does. That was a message worth hearing!