Bernie Sanders For President

The Candidate We Need

By David Mosqueda

So many have voiced their opinions that Bernie Sanders’s reaction to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Planned Parenthood as the “establishment” is an attack based solely on bitterness; yet, this is still a representation of Senator Sanders no hold bars rhetoric, which has established his campaign as a strong choice amongst the American youth who truly want change. Senator Sanders’s campaign has him reading straight from Queer theory textbooks, and essays by our greatest Queer Theorists, like Foucault, who wrote, “where there is power, there is resistance.” It was written in the constitution plain as day:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

Senator Sanders is the only candidate to effectively encompass what it means to stand up to our oppressors. What it means to ruffle the feathers of those that have stood on pedestals for so long with absolutely no one to regulate them, or ask why they remain there.
Many have made the case that Sen. Sanders is just as much part of the establishment as Clinton if not more since he has been in Washington for so long. The important thing to look at is what it means to be “establishment.” In an analogy, we can look at the Black Lives Matter movement. The movement is an anti-racism movement, in comparison with something being non-racist. Anti-racism is when we stand up against the systems that oppress. So, we must look at housing markets, job opportunities and the state of our education system, that are institutionalized forms of racism. Similarly, we can be non-establishment, and anti-establishment. The only problem we have here is being non-establishment is just as bad as being establishment. In other terms, being color-blind is actually detrimental to the war on racism. Not acknowledging white privilege only empowers it further.
The HRC has endorsed Hillary Clinton, and it is only appropriate given that their connection to heteronormativity in the LGBT community is the same as the modern day’s politician to the establishment. Who and what are the establishment? The HRC rather than asking to reconstruct the institutions that are oppressing the LGBT community: fair housing, job security, federal recognition; are more involved with creating amendments to the institutions for inclusion. A deconstruction is much more effective, because when it is rebuilt by the people, it can be programmed to function with all aspects of an egalitarian method to benefit everyone as a whole. Each piece in conjunction with the next working equally and receiving an overall equal end result.
The HRC was called out by Senator Sanders as being establishment as they endorsed a candidate that has truly not listened to the needs of our community. She was against same-sex marriage for so long, then she announced she was in favor of civil unions, which, in so many words can be compared to separate, but equal segregation. Clinton is constantly asking the voters of America just to look at her record, and there it is, she was against us, and now according to the recent HRC magazine, “Her fight is our fight!” LGBT members should feel outraged because this is just another way that the HRC has thrown away their fight, and outcasted so many. Those of us that support Sanders, and are LGBT, are now looked as being a part of a group that is turning their back on all our progress, but it is the other way around. The HRC has made a career off of just bending to the system, and not truly deconstructing and rebuilding it with the equality we need. In many vocal spheres, and in my writing, I have called out how the acceptance of the current marriage laws are ridiculous, and we as a very rebellious community should have stood in a different way, rather than wanting marriage as it is, wanting marriage to be rewritten, not amended. This idea that the government can have the regulation on your relationship is ridiculous, and the lack of push back from our community to exist in our post-sexual revolution world is only reinforced by the HRC. In a likely comparison, Mrs. Clinton has done nothing but talk about amending the systems that exist. We fail to see the true systemic issues affecting the US citizens.
Clinton has made her campaign on simply making pre-existing institutions only being inclusive of the rest of the world. Her extreme support of the ACA is only further proof of how she fears deconstruction. Bernie Sanders has over and over again explained how he wants to create a single payer healthcare system like many of the industrialized nations of the world all have int heir arsenal of social programs. Hillary Clinton has repeatedly retorted Sanders by criminalizing him for wanting to repeal the ACA. Bernie has never stated that he will repeal the act. He has said that it will remain until the single payer program is worked out, and then at that point the ACA can remain, but what use is it when the new program does what the ACA dreamed of, and that is 100% coverage for the entire nation. Clinton’s plan for universal healthcare involves adding items to the ACA that would make it reach the 100% coverage from the 90% it is currently at with 29 million people uninsured, and a larger number of people underinsured. The main problem here, Clinton fails to see the reason the ACA, not to say it failed but does not work as we progressives believed it to be able to. There are pharmaceutical companies that understand it is much more profitable to treat rather than cure, and insurance companies that understand that high deductibles, high copays, and increasing private rates are extremely profitable. Drug companies can increase a drug’s price overnight, and there is no law to stop that. There are so many institutions against the current ACA, and Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly said it exists this way to work with the healthcare system that we adopted, the one that has been passed on since the end of World War II.
The ACA does not accommodate itself for these obstacles. So, here is the problem, this affects mostly low-income Americans, minorities especially. Seniors realize the drugs are far out of their price range, and we find them cutting pills in half to save money. Low-income minorities fail to seek medical attention adding to their mortality, and institutional racism that exists in our country. The ACA is a great model, but it has proven to not work to its full potential. The single payer insurance would, in fact, get rid of all the obstacles. It would deconstruct health insurance as we understand it. It would get rid of the privatized medicine that exists, and reconstruct it as an egalitarian system. My coverage is not worse nor better than yours, and we can all benefit from a decreased mortality rate. If we just add on to the ACA, we neglect the true systematic issues that exist within our health care system. We must deconstruct, and rebuild it all to benefit the people most importantly those that have been historically neglected when it comes to these systems, minorities, low income, and undocumented peoples.
Establishment candidates fail to see the problems that are underlying a true social cause, because the underlying issues are, most of the time, funding the campaigns of our political candidates. Something we can see with the big banks funding Hillary Clinton as Sanders bases most of his campaign on the fight against the big banks.
With all respect, Clinton has spoken out on her issues, but she has only glossed over them. She has constantly made her campaign by pointing out that she is more than just a single issue candidate. She is constantly saying how she wants to be president, if she wants to talk about a single issue, her single issue has been that, because she is a woman, and because she has tried so often now, it is her turn to be in The White House. She fails to see the true issues that are working against the American people; perhaps because she is a part of the problem and an obstacle to the American people.
Being with the establishment does a lot of damage to the citizens. The political system in this country is rigged. If Hillary Clinton wants to be a progressive she must do what no politician has done before, and that is to truly listen to the people. In our country that is now being run by social movements, it is about time that we have a President that understands what we are getting angry about. Clinton is from a generation of politics far out of touch with the American people. Since the 60s when she sided with a Republican that was very to the right of his party of the time. To her non-support for LGBT individuals until close to 2013 when it had become extremely politically popular. Clinton has constantly jumped on the bandwagon, doing nothing for herself to isolate herself from the herd. She and her husband destroyed the American workforce with NAFTA. Most importantly they destroyed the middle class, they sent our jobs to Mexico where labor is by far much, much cheaper. This harmed the poorer classes, which in this country are by far much more disproportionately Latin@ and African American, how can we even consider her to be our nominee for the people when she ruined the people. She is a for profit candidate, and her profit was the failing of people like my grandparents.
This is establishment politics, it is the person that understands there is a problem with campaign finance, yet her biggest campaign donors are two wealthy people, and Super PACs aplenty. She understands that Wall Street is a problem to our American economy, and solely responsible for our worst market crash since the depression; still, she takes speaking fees and those that have attended the speeches she gave have said she was there sounding like one of them, applauding the work that they do. She has said time and time again that the speeches were to warn them of their actions, and hold them responsible for the crash, but here we are, listening to people come out and point at her lies. Clinton is constantly ridiculing the people of America; she ignores the very facts that stare her back in the face from the cover of the newspapers, and now they have become anthropomorphized in Bernie Sanders, the living, breathing social movement.
The establishment has existed for too long. It is about time the American people stand to take back what has been ours. We must be hungry for our country to understand what is truly affecting us. We must elect Bernie Sanders as he is what will truly be the great equalizer. His plan to make public colleges tuition-free and to provide healthcare to all is a boost for the lower classes of our nation. We must move away from the dishonesty of the Clinton family. The establishment that has allowed itself to create a status quo in this nation can not continue, as it has proven term after term to fail the American people, which, this may shock people, is more than the top one percent.