Berning Writers: Words Matter
We believe that America’s founding ideals, along with the very health of our planet, are being eclipsed by corporate interests and institutionalized inequality.
(On March 14, 2016, we announced that more than eighty writers had come together to endorse Bernie Sanders for President. As of May 7, we have doubled our numbers, with the list still growing.)
The recently-formed Writers for Bernie includes Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley and National Book Critics’ Circle Award winner Jonathan Lethem; Julia Alvarez, author of the bestsellers How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies; Laila Lalami, Pulitizer Prize finalist; novelist Steve Yarbrough, Richard Wright Award winner; Susan Power, PEN/Hemingway Award winner; and Robert Cohen, Whiting Writers Award winner and Guggenheim Fellow, in addition to a wide variety of poets, short-story writers, playwrights, screenwriters, essayists, journalists and historians.
Spearheaded by novelists Marie Myung-Ok Lee and Holly LeCraw, the effort was conceived just three weeks ago. “The response has been fantastic,” LeCraw said, “but, frankly, not surprising. People are passionate about Bernie. For all of us, as for so many voters, there’s this palpable sense of relief at having a candidate we can wholeheartedly support.”
According to Lee, even though authors are still signing on, the group wanted to publicize its support ahead of Super Tuesday. “We’re building a website as we speak, and will definitely continue to take endorsements. It’s hit a tipping point, and now we’re hearing from writers from all over the country. We’re just at the beginning of this effort, and we’d like to help Senator Sanders in any way we can by fundraising and, of course, writing.” Lee, in fact, published a piece yesterday in Salon entitled “My feminist Sanders fixation: I’m a woman of color, my candidate is a white man.”
LeCraw notes, “Our tagline is, ‘Words matter.’ It’s the reason so many of us came to Bernie in the first place: his words are consistent, compassionate, and above all honest. He says what he means and means what he says, which is practically unheard of in politics.”
Our endorsement is below.
We believe that America’s founding ideals, along with the very health of our planet, are being eclipsed by corporate interests and institutionalized inequality.
We believe that in order to restore a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, we need a leader who envisions and demands economic, environmental, and racial justice, and that, in 2016, that leader is Bernie Sanders.
As writers, we have based our lives on the power of words. We are astonished that a person who speaks with such consistent integrity, honesty, and moral authority exists in national politics today. He has been fighting for the same humane causes — raising the minimum wage, getting corporate money out of politics, establishing reliable health care for all, protecting American jobs, saving our planet from climate change — for his entire career.
We believe his ideas are in no way radical or unpragmatic, but instead the course correction we desperately need to save our democracy.
2016 is not a usual political year, but, luckily, Bernie Sanders is not a usual candidate. We, the undersigned, endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for President of the United States.
Andrea Abbate * Millicent Borges Accardi * Steve Almond * Julia Alvarez * Marcellus Andrews * Tom Angotti * Gina Apostol * Brent Armendinger * David Bain * Larry Baker * Julia Lee Barclay-Morton * Emily Barton * Ann Bauer * Ken Baumann * Brian Baumgart * Karen Bender * Cara Benson * Sarah Blake * Adrian Blevins * Eric Boyd * Gayle Brandeis * Elizabeth Crane Brandt * Rich Broderick * Dylan Brody * Allison Burnett * Mary Carroll-Hackett * Kelly Cherry * Brenda Child * Margaret Cho * Philip Christman * Stephan Eirik Clark * Jon Clinch * Robert Cohen * Ron Cooper * Renee D’Aoust * Susan Muaddi Darraj * Sara David * Natalie Davis * Marisa de los Santos * Susan Deer Cloud * Tom DeMarchi * Chard deNiord * Marcy Dermansky * Boman Desai * Robb Forman Dew * Andrew O. Dugas * Hope Edelman * Mieke Eerkens * Nora Eisenberg * Okla Elliott * Brian Evenson * Jonathan Evison * Ezra E. Fitz * Sohrab Homi Fracis * Patry Francis * Ru Freeman * Jocelyn Fujii * Joshua Furst * Sean Preciado Genell * William Giraldi * Luke B. Goebel * Matthew Goodman * Greg Grandin * Jonathan Greenberg * Jessica Hagedorn * Katie Halper * Sue Halpern * Jessica Handler * Ida Hattemer-Higgins * Ernestine Hayes * Genevieve Heinrich * Arna Bontemps Hemenway * Audrey Henderson * Eleanor Henderson * Jennifer Bowen Hicks * Katherine Hill * David Holden * LeAnne Howe * Rachel Hurn * Karl Jacoby * Jac Jemc * Richard Johnson *Juris Jurjevics * Jessica Keener * Elizabeth Kelly * Amitava Kumar * Laila Lalami * Dorothea Lasky * Jackson Lears * Holly LeCraw * Marie Myung-Ok Lee * Ellen Leopold * Jonathan Lethem * Kate Levin * Kathryn Levy * Ariel Lewiton * Eugene Lim * Paul Lisicky * Bill Littlefield * Chip Livingston * Ashley Lucas * Robin MacArthur * Julia MacDonnell * Rebecca Makkai * Lucas Mann * Janet McAdams * Bill McKibben * Katherine Min * Maggie Mitchell * Melanie Mitzner * Elise Moser * N. West Moss * Ann Napolitano * Dina Nayeri * Viet Thanh Nguyen * Sheila O’Connor * Kristín Ómarsdóttir * Jose Orduña * Jodi Paloni * Ioannis Pappos * Adam Petty * Susan Power * Katherine A. Powers * Jedediah Purdy * Jamie Quatro * Janisse Ray * Corey Robin * Paul Rome * Bill Roorbach * Elizabeth Rosner * Chris Ryan * Cheryl Savageau * Zakaria Schwartz * George Scialabba * Chris Scofield * Noako Shibusawa * Ricco Siasoco * Jane Smiley * Paul Y. Song * Kate Southwood * Lara Stapleton * Paul Starobin * Sandra Steingraber * Ned Stuckey-French * Janaka Stucky * Karen R. Tolchin * JL Torres * Becky Tuch * Santiago Vaquera Vásquez * Jeff Vintar * Katharine Weber * V.C. Weeks * Irvine Welsh * Joel Whitney * Craig Steven Wilder * Beverly Willett * Brooke Williams * Lara Wilson * Lizz Winnstead * Sandi Wisenberg * Ashley Wolff * Steve Yarbrough * Rachel Yoder * Brad Zellar
