[A]bout 20 students and Burlingtonians crammed into a sweltering first-floor apartment to participate in a volunteer drive for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
They joined as many as 100,000 of spectators across the nation in a live-streamed 10-minute speech given by Sanders in Washington, D.C., to an online audience. In a brief speech, Sanders rattled through his platform, starting out with standard stump fare — slamming income inequality and the role billionaires play in government — then moving on to issues he’s been criticized for overlooking in recent weeks.
“Tonight really is an historical night, and all of us are part of making history to the best of our knowledge,” said Sanders opening his comments. “There has never been a political online organizing effort this early in a campaign which involved over 100,000 people in 3,500 locations in every state in the United States of America. That’s pretty impressive,” he said.(The entire video can be seen here.)
Some of the UVM students in the first-floor Isham Street apartment, just steps away from Bernie’s mayoral home, said the speech made them want to volunteer for the candidate. Others said the online talk nudged a vote away from Sanders’ opponent for the party nomination, Hillary Clinton. For the party’s host, Sarang Murthy, 20, an economics major in his third year at UVM, it might have been the first push in a long line of campaign events, if all goes well for the Vermont senator.
“I want to see this one event really get people into the grassroots organizing. This is the most effective way to get the word out,” Murthy said. The Dallas, Texas, native said he was worried about Sanders’ ability to reach a broad enough audience, he said he had hope a fractured Republican Party would cause more voters to look to Sanders.
“For me, from here, if this campaign’s still moving even more quickly, this political revolution may change what I’m doing in school right now,” he said. “I might want to change America in 2016.”
Murthy introduced the video, and had the students go around the room and introduce themselves and explain why they came out, which they did, skipping over the three reporters and camera persons present.
While most of the students were UVM juniors, a master’s degree candidates, one Ph.D. student and some local residents came out as well. Students said they were interested in Sanders because of his views on wealth distribution, getting money out of politics and environmental concerns.
When the video finally came on, the room went quiet.
“I am often asked by the media why there is so much excitement in our campaign, why so many people come out to our rallies … why are we seeing spontaneous uprisings if you like, in meetings, in cities and towns all over this country, and here is my answer. The American people are saying loudly and clearly, ‘enough is enough.’ This great country and our government belong to all of us, and not just a handful of billionaires.”
As Sanders spoke, a few of his talking points provoked applause: Free tuition to public universities and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Sanders also spoke out about the Texas arrest and subsequent death in custody of black activist Sandra Bland, 28, whose arrest video made national news.
“We are tired of seeing black women yanked out of a car, thrown to the ground, assaulted, put in handcuffs, and then sent to jail and died three days later in the case of Sandra Bland, for what crime? She didn’t signal when she made a left turn. And we’re seeing that all over this country. Enough is enough, we have got to combat institutional racism in the United States,” Sanders said.
“It seems to me that maybe – just maybe – instead of having the highest rate of incarceration of any country on earth, instead of throwing our kids in jail maybe we should provide them with education and jobs,” Sanders said.
Two weeks ago, Sanders was slammed in the media for dismissing Black Lives Matter protesters at a campaign event in Arizona. When demonstrators drowned out the candidates with chants, Sanders, who wanted to talk about his economic agenda, got frustrated and dismissed the activists. “Black lives of course matter, but I have spent 50 years of my life fighting for civil rights and if you don’t want me to be here that’s OK,” Sanders said.
A Pitch to Volunteer
Following the speech, a campaign worker prompted the streaming audience to text the word “Work” to his campaign from their smartphones, dialing 82623, to be automatically signed up to volunteer.
A former union organizer, Larry Cohen, urged those watching at home to reach out to three people and get them involved with Bernie 2016 over the coming days.
The UVM students took that challenge a step further. As people filed outside, a master’s student, Skyler Perkins, 27, urged the organizers at the house to eat hot peppers for a “Feel the Bern” viral video.
Similar to the ALS ice bucket challenge fundraising videos, the challenge requires a person to eat a hot pepper or hot sauce, and challenge someone else to do it in the video (or, following the ALS challenge lead, donate to Sanders’ campaign instead). Murthy, Perkins, and two upstairs roommates, Noah Mostow, 20, and Graham Wright, 20, took the challenge.
“I’m ‘feeling the Bern’ for changing this world, getting a grassroots movement started, get the real issues onto the table, get those billionaires out,” said Mostow, before nominating three potential pepper-eaters.
Aside from coughing up jalapeño pepper seeds, it wasn’t clear how many in attendance were ready to start knocking on doors, but Mostow, who is from Ohio, said he would consider volunteering when he went home.
“I’d love to have those conversations with some of my neighbors,” he said.
Ashley Chase, 20, who is from New Hampshire, said she was ready to go knock on doors. “It’s totally picking up momentum and I am so excited about that,” she said.
She says Sanders’ frankness will win over her home state. “He doesn’t want students to be just completely in debt for going to school. I think he makes sense,” she said.
While Chase said she’d veered away from being a Clinton supporter when Sanders announced his run in May, moving from supporting a woman leading the country, for Francie Merrill, 20, was brand new.
“I was so pleasantly surprised. I’m kind of a skeptic about politics,” said the Maine native. “I don’t feel often that things can get done. Especially from the level that I would participate,” she said. “But he’s trying to. Even though he’s a white male. He’s trying to. It’s amazing.”
Seeing him speak and hearing his voice helped, she said. “It was pretty incredible. I actually believed what he was saying,” she said.
“It’s nice to hear somebody speak with so much force and power and seriousness about something that I agree with.”
