That isn’t, however, how Bernie-or-Bust folks see it. In fact, democracy this year looks like this: “This is what democracy looks like!” the crowd replied in unison. “Tell me what democracy looks like!” a speaker shouted. They do not even represent a majority of Democrats. I n reality, like any political gathering at which participants insist on the need for a revolution that radically upends the existing order, those present did not represent a majority of Americans, let alone 99 percent, whether they are right or wrong. Together they chanted, “We are the 99 percent.”
As one speaker put it: “This is what matters, not what happens in the arena.” A political rally in public space is, for them, the purest sort of civic participation. politics, regardless of what happened at the ballot box or the DNC. Those present varied in their Clinton grievances, as well as what they liked most about Sanders, but almost everyone agreed that the Vermont senator and the movement to which he gave rise are “the only ones that can do it”––the only coalition that can transform an unjust America.ĭue to their certainty about their own correctness, they see themselves as the most legitimate actors in U.S. “I see that this world needs to change,” she explained, “and we’re the only ones that can do it.”Īfter several hours among the Bernie-or-Bust faction, the people who insist, at least for now, that they will not back Hillary Clinton, even to stop Donald Trump, I found that last assertion to be the common theme. I think we have way bigger priorities that we need to focus on.” She plans to vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, or to write in Sanders if Ohio allows it. There’s no doubt in my mind that she would be bad if not worse. “The things that we all fear in Trump we have already seen from Hillary Clinton. “That’s what a lot of people feel, but in my opinion, I do not believe that she is better,” Kurek said. Would you vote Clinton, I asked, if only to stop the deportation of Hispanic immigrants or the introduction of policies that discriminate against Muslim Americans? But neither Democratic unity nor the lens of identity resonates with Kurek-who is white yet relatively unprivileged-as much as alternative lenses, like flaws in the electoral system, economic injustice, and environmental crises. On consecutive nights, Sanders himself endorsed that message in words and deeds. Part of the DNC’s official message is that the left is better off sticking together, that liberals must unite to stop Donald Trump from harming women, Hispanics, and Muslims.
“I do not plan to vote for Hillary Clinton,” she told me Tuesday at a Bernie-or-Bust rally near City Hall, where hundreds gathered for speeches, songs, and chants extolling Senator Bernie Sanders and attacking his rival, who hours later formally became the first woman to win a major-party nomination for the presidency. She felt it was her civic duty to show up and make her dissent known. Recently, she has been working as many hours there as possible there so that she could spend her week of vacation at the Democratic National Convention and still have enough money to eat and pay rent upon her return. “I’ve been emancipated since I was 16 years old.”Īfter a stint living in a Baltimore women’s shelter, where she fled to escape an abusive relationship, she has returned to her hometown-Toledo, Ohio-where she is a manager at a retail store. By the time she was a teenager, her parents had descended from prescription drug abuse to heroin addiction. PHILADELPHIA––Tara Kurek describes herself as an orphan.
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