[B]ENNINGTON — As he often has, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders drew boisterous cheers here Friday as he articulated the progressive agenda during a Rights and Democracy event focusing on health care and economic justice.
But the crowd of nearly 200 that packed a steamy parish hall at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church responded in equal measure when Ady Barkan, an activist suffering from ALS, spoke about dedicating the rest of his life to overturning the Republican-controlled Congress, ousting the Trump administration, and electing a more progressive government.
The event was organized by Rights and Democracy of Bennington, aiming to inspire progressives and galvanize support for universal health care and related issues.
Sanders, Barkan and other speakers also made two other stops in Vermont on Friday — earlier in Brattleboro and later in Bristol — to promote universal health care.
They celebrated the anniversary of the American with Disabilities Act and promoted Barkan’s “Be A Hero Tour,” which is visiting cities and towns around the United States.
Barkan, 34, spoke slowly as ALS has affected the muscles that enable him to speak. He had what he described as the “perfect life” and family before being diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, two years ago.
The news was also “a clarifying moment,” Barkan said.
Barkan asked the crowd to look around the room where so many had gathered on a muggy Friday evening.
“There is standing room only in the fight for justice,” Barkan said, which he said “means to me that all of you here share the same hope.”
In his tour across the country, Barkan said more Americans are advocating for “a new social contract” on economic and social issues.
He told the crowd to remember the elections of 2000 and 2016, when Democrats were defeated for the presidency despite winning the popular vote. He asked people to think about what more they could have done then to reverse those results.
“And we have two more coming up,” he said — the Nov. 6 election and 2020.
‘An American hero’
Sanders described Barkan as “a true American hero.”
“He is doing as much as anybody in this country to make the case that the time is long overdue then the United States of America should join every other major country on earth to guarantee health care for all, as a right,” Sander said.
Sanders urged the crowd to heed Barkan’s advice not “to isolate health care” as a single issue, because it is closely related to economic and civil rights.
Sanders said he and others are seeking “a political revolution,” which “means not only winning elections — and we have been winning elections all over this country — but it means transforming American society to make this country, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, the country that we know we can become.”
The event in Bennington was recorded by CAT-TV and will be shown on the network and posted online.
