Anti War Activists

"All the while, truly severe looming threats like climate change have failed to capture much-needed attention and commitment. The scientific community is virtually unanimous in telling us that climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity, and that it is already doing devastating harm throughout the world. If we don’t act boldly to address the climate crisis, we are all but certain to see more drought, more floods, more extreme weather disturbances, more acidification of oceans whose levels are rising, and, because of resultant mass migration, more threats to global stability and security. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we only have about 12 years to take action before a rise in the planet’s temperature will cause irreversible damage."

"...even now, Bernie Sanders, the senator who has relentlessly campaigned for healthcare for all, is considered an outlier in his bid for the White House, even by his own party."

"Terrorism is a very real threat, which requires robust diplomatic efforts, intelligence cooperation with allies and partners, and yes, sometimes military action. But as an organizing framework, the global war on terror has been a disaster for our country. Orienting U.S. national-security strategy around terrorism essentially allowed a few thousand violent extremists to dictate the foreign policy of the most powerful nation on earth. We responded to terrorists by giving them exactly what they wanted. The war on terror has also been staggeringly wasteful. According to the most recent study by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, it will have cost American taxpayers more than $4.9 trillion through the end of this fiscal year. Factoring in the future health-care costs of veterans injured in post-9/11 wars, the bill will be closer to $6 trillion. And even after this enormous expense, the world has more terrorists now, not fewer. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, there were nearly four times as many Sunni Islamic militants operating around the world in November 2018 as on September 11, 2001. That is no coincidence: the way the United States and its partners have prosecuted this war has caused widespread resentment and anger, which helps those terrorists recruit."

"We need to take a step back and rethink what we are doing, both in Iran and in the broader Middle East. In the nearly two decades since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States has made a series of costly blunders that have not only weakened our democracy but also undermined our leadership. We need a foreign policy that focuses on core U.S. interests, clarifies our commitment to democratic values both at home and abroad, and privileges diplomacy and working collectively with allies to address shared security concerns."

"The United States invaded Afghanistan in response to the worst terrorist attack in our country’s history, and with a specific purpose: to bring justice to those who planned the 9/11 attacks and those who supported them, and to make sure that such an attack would never happen again. Our military has now been in Afghanistan for nearly 18 years. Instead of staying focused on those who attacked us, President George W. Bush’s administration chose to declare a global “war on terror” in order justify its 2003 invasion of Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. The war on terror has turned into an endless war. We will soon have troops fighting in Afghanistan who were not even born on September 11, 2001. We have fathers who completed tours of duty there, only to be followed by their sons and daughters. Withdrawing from Afghanistan is something we must do. My administration will not make critical foreign-policy decisions like this one via tweet, as our current president does. We will work closely with our partners and allies to design a serious diplomatic and political strategy to stabilize the region, promote more effective and accountable governance, and ensure that threats do not re-emerge after we leave."

"For many voters, the 2016 election was their first introduction to the Vermont senator with the unkempt hair and radical ideas. He knew more people would know his name if he ran again in 2020, but he needed to do more: He needed to hire a more diverse staff, attend events at historically black colleges and universities, speak to black media and black people directly, and, perhaps more than anything, listen to black voices. He did all that. But despite his efforts, the support never quite materialized. From the South Carolina primary through Super Tuesday, among black voters, Sanders was trounced by former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders offered a revolution; voters rebuffed it. The black people who did support Sanders tended to be younger—and young people tend to vote at lower rates than older people do."

"Climate change is a clear example of an issue on which American leadership can make a difference—and from which our endless entanglements in the Middle East have diverted crucial resources and attention. Europe cannot address this problem alone. Nor can China. Nor can the United States. This crisis calls out for strong international cooperation if we are to leave our children and grandchildren a planet that is healthy and habitable. American leadership—and the economic and scientific advantages that only America can offer—can and must facilitate this effort."

"But just to end our military interventions in these places is not enough. We need to rethink the militaristic approach that has undermined the United States’ moral authority, caused allies to question our ability to lead, drained our tax coffers, and corroded our own democracy. We must never again engage in torture or indefinite detention, and we must limit the use of drone strikes that too often result in high numbers of civilian casualties, boosting the very terrorist organizations that we aim to defeat. And we must seriously reinvest in diplomacy and development aid, both of which have been allowed to atrophy under the current administration. Addressing issues like civil and religious tension, corruption, and lack of opportunity before these conditions give rise to conflict can eliminate the need to address them militarily in the future."

"This is not a radical idea. Vermont and Maine allow inmates to vote and more than 30 nations — including Israel, South Africa, and Canada — also understand that voting rights for all citizens is a basic principle of democracy. When we look at the history of why our country has banned incarcerated people from voting, we must understand that the efforts to rob citizens of their voting rights was a legacy of slavery and continuing racist attitudes post-Jim Crow. After the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, which extended civil and legal protections to formerly enslaved people, many state governments rushed to create new felonies to put black people in jail and then institute lifetime disenfranchisement as a way to protect their own privilege and power."

"And Black voters over 45 have lived long enough to see the history made by Obama, but also have an even longer memory of the disappointment and shortcomings of candidates who failed. They’ve surveyed the polarized political landscape and bitterly divided Congress, and they doubt that a Sanders’-style political revolution is even a remote possibility in an age when just voting to fund the government is regularly up for debate. Many of them admired the grit and talent of Warren but had no faith that white men in any significant numbers would support a woman for president, even if she was the best choice. The entire black constituency is not unified behind Biden, however; there’s a significant generational split, with many younger voters backing Sanders. These younger voters grew up in the shadow of new possibilities presented by Obama’s victories. For them, the first election they participated in or can even recall was an election of phenomenal change, where a black candidate defied all expectations to win back-to-back terms as president. These are voters who know that hope has worked and believe it can work again, so they are open to Sanders’ critiques of the high costs of college and income inequality, and they agree there’s an urgent need for change."

"Indeed, our present-day crisis of mass incarceration has become a tool of voter suppression. Today, over 4.5 million Americans — disproportionately people of color — have lost their right to vote because they have served time in jail or prison for a felony conviction. It goes without saying that someone who commits a serious crime must pay his or her debt to society. But punishment for a crime, or keeping dangerous people behind bars, does not cause people to lose their rights to citizenship. It should not cause them to lose their right to vote. This should not devolve into a debate about whether certain people are "good enough" to have the right to vote. Voting is not a privilege. It is a right. In my view, the crooks on Wall Street who caused the great recession of 2008 that hurt millions of Americans are not "good" people. But they have the right to vote, and it should never be taken away."

"The reason why this issue is so important right now is that Trump and cowardly Republican politicians all over this country are working overtime to suppress the vote. Instead of trying to increase voter turnout, they are making it harder for people to participate in the political process. In Florida, the Republican legislature is trying to undermine the will of 64 percent of the people who voted to reenfranchise formerly incarcerated people. In Georgia, we have a Republican governor who took office by instituting barriers to voting for people of color. In Tennessee, the Republican legislature is trying to shut down groups who do voter registration work. In New Hampshire and Iowa, the Republicans have tried to make it harder for college students to vote. The point here is simple. At a time when voting suppression is taking place all across the country, we must make it clear that casting a ballot for American citizens is not a privilege. It is a right. If you’re an American citizen who is 18 years or older you must be able to vote, whether you're in jail or not."

"The United States has been at war for too long. Even today, we seem to be preparing for a new war with Iran, which would be the worst yet. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump ordered thousands of additional U.S. troops to the Middle East to confront Tehran and its proxies. And we recently learned that the Pentagon had presented the White House with plans to send tens of thousands more. I am very concerned that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the Trump administration’s moves against Iran, and Iran’s moves in response, could put us in direct conflict. We should all understand that a war with Iran would be many times worse than the Iraq war. U.S. military leaders and security experts have repeatedly told us that. If the United States were to attack Iran, Tehran could use its proxies to retaliate against U.S. troops and partners in Iraq, Syria, Israel, and the Persian Gulf area. The result would be the further, unimaginable destabilization of the Middle East, with wars that go on year after year and likely cost trillions of dollars."

"I have been attacked in recent days by President Trump and others for my conviction that people who are incarcerated should be given the right to vote. I make no apologies for that position. Our country has had a long and shameful history of voter suppression. At our founding, despite rhetoric to the contrary, only land-owning white males were given the right to participate in our democracy. Lower income people, Women, Native Americans, African-Americans, and young people were excluded. We have been engaged in an ongoing 243-year project to expand participation in our democracy. Thankfully, we have made much progress in that struggle. But our work is not done — not even close. If we are serious about calling ourselves a democracy, we must firmly establish that the right to vote is an inalienable and universal principle that applies to all American citizens 18 years and older. Period. As American citizens all of us are entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and all the other freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights. We are also entitled to vote. Yes. Even if Trump’s former campaign manager and personal lawyer end up in jail, they should still be able to vote — regardless of who they cast their vote for."

"The headlines dominating the news understandably deal with the outrageous behavior of President Donald Trump and the attempted coup he inspired at our nation’s Capitol. Yes, it was important for the House of Representatives to impeach Trump. Yes, the Senate must convict him. No president, now or in the future, can lead an insurrection against the United States government and get away with it. But as enormously important as that is, we must not lose sight of the pain and anxiety of millions of working families all over this country, as they suffer through the worst public health and economic crises in the modern history of our country. In fact, many working families are facing more economic desperation today than any time since the Great Depression. As a result of the pandemic, tens of millions of our fellow citizens have lost their jobs and incomes. Hunger is at its highest level in decades, and 40 million could be on the brink of eviction when the federal moratorium expires at the end of January. While more than 24 million people in our country have tested positive for the Covid-19 virus, tens of millions of Americans are uninsured or under-insured."

"Enough is enough. In March, we had a historic vote in both houses of Congress to end U.S. military involvement in Yemen’s civil war. This vote demonstrated strong bipartisan concern over unconstitutional and unauthorized wars, and it served as an important reminder that Congress must reassert its constitutional authority over the use of military force. I was one of those who opposed the Iraq war. Trump claims he opposed it too, but, in truth, he only did so after the fact. Trump campaigned on getting the United States out of "endless war," but his administration is taking us down a path that makes another war more likely. We can and we must pursue a different option. The American people don’t want endless war. Neither do we want a foreign policy that is based on the logic that led to those wars and corroded our democracy: a logic that privileges military tools over diplomatic ones, aggressive unilateralism over multilateral engagement, and acquiescence to our undemocratic partners over the pursuit of core interests alongside democratic allies who truly share our values. We have to view the terrorism threat through the proper scope, rather than allowing it to dominate our view of the world. The time has come to envision a new form of American engagement: one in which the United States leads not in war-making but in bringing people together to find shared solutions to our shared concerns. American power should be measured not by our ability to blow things up, but by our ability to build on our common humanity, harnessing our technology and enormous wealth to create a better life for all people."

"At a time when working families continue to struggle, poll after poll shows that the vast majority of the American people support the provisions in President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act. Some 88 percent believe we should lower the cost of prescription drugs, 84 percent believe we should expand Medicare to include dental care, hearing aids and eye glasses, 73 percent support establishing Paid Family and Medical Leave, and 67 percent want universal Pre-K. Further, 67 percent believe the federal government should raise taxes on high-income people and corporations to help pay for these desperately needed programs – which is what this legislation does. So, given this overwhelming support, why is it taking so long for Congress to pass this bill? The answer is simple. Follow the money. As part of our corrupt, big-money dominated political system, the pharmaceutical industry is now spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying, campaign contributions and television ads to defeat this legislation because it does not want Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. In order to increase their profits they want American taxpayers to continue paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for our medicine – sometimes ten times more than the people in other countries. Last year alone, while nearly one out of four Americans could not afford to fill the prescriptions their doctors wrote, six of the largest pharmaceutical companies made nearly $50 billion in profits and the ten highest paid executives in the industry made more than $500 million in compensation. In order to preserve their corrupt and greedy pricing system, the drug companies hired nearly 1,500 lobbyists, including former leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, to protect their interests. That is 3 lobbyists for every member of Congress. Unbelievable!"

"Biden cleaned house, earning over 60 percent of the African-American vote according to exit polls—a dynamic that suggests a familiar challenge ahead for Sanders. In 2016, his insurgent campaign against Sec. Hillary Clinton saw its momentum blunted repeatedly by her overwhelming support among African-Americans. Sanders very well may have won that nomination if he could only have drawn more black support. After licking his wounds, Sanders learned his lesson and did the hard work of establishing more of a sustained presence in black and brown political life. He dramatically diversified his campaign at the top and made inroads with younger, more progressive up-and-coming community leaders and politicians of color who tend to be more open to his ambitious agenda than more moderate, older African-Americans. For some time now, it appeared as though Sanders’ work was paying off. He handily won Latinos and held his own with African-Americans in Nevada, the first truly diverse state to participate in the 2020 primary to date. And until recently, polls showed him surging in South Carolina, even threatening to take the lead. Pundits will have a field day trying to diagnose what went wrong for the 2020 frontrunner in South Carolina. Was it the Clyburn endorsement (which felt dramatic and inevitable at the same time)? The impact of the most prolonged attacks on Sanders by his competitors since the race began? Sanders continues to show strength with black voters under 40, which is more than can be said for Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and arguably Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who have all garnered almost no support from African-Americans to date."

"Our bill does what the American people want by substantially increasing the estate tax on the wealthiest families in this country and dramatically reducing wealth inequality. From a moral, economic, and political perspective our nation will not thrive when so few have so much and so many have so little."

"In America today, we have more wealth and income inequality than any other major country on Earth and it is worse now than at any other time since the 1920s. Unbelievably, while millions of American workers are forced to work two or three jobs to pay the bills and over half of our people live paycheck to paycheck, the three wealthiest families in our country now own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans – 160 million people."

"Today, while hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college and millions are struggling with high levels of student debt, the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 92 percent. Today, while CEOs of major corporations make over 300 times what their average workers earn, thousands of veterans sleep out on the street and 20 percent of senior citizens are trying to survive on a paltry $13,500 income or less. For 40 years, under Democratic and Republican administrations, we have seen a massive redistribution of wealth and income from the working class of this country to the top one percent. In fact, if the distribution of income remained what it was 40 years ago the average household in America would have about $11,000 more in income today. Do you want to know why the American people are angry? Today, despite an explosion in technology and worker productivity, the average worker has seen his/her income go up by just 5 cents an hour over the last 43 years after adjusting for inflation. And, if we don’t turn the economy around, economists predict that the younger generation will have an even a lower standard of living than their parents. This is not acceptable to me. We need an economy that expands the middle class and reduces poverty and not one that makes the very rich much richer."

"Like Trump, Sanders comes from outside the institutional party he seeks to lead, and a substantial portion of his appeal rests precisely on that independence, and on pent up frustration with the party leadership. Like Trump, Sanders is leading a movement deeply bound up with his own persona, something hard to imagine sustaining itself in his absence. And like Trump, were Sanders to achieve victory, he could face persistent resistance within the party to promoting his agenda, and he would certainly have difficulty staffing his administration with people associated with his movement rather than the institutional party. That's a fact that will surely affect the actual course of policymaking in a Sanders administration as it has in Trump's. But there are two crucial differences between Sanders and Trump. First, Sanders is a sincere ideologue like Goldwater and Reagan, not an opportunist. He is running to transform his party ideologically rather than simply conquer it and make it his plaything. There's a reason why Trump has done so little to actually turn the GOP into a worker's party and to repudiate the wealth-favoring policies backed by its donors: Because he is not actually that interested in policy. Sanders is. That difference cuts both ways, however. It makes it easier for Sanders to get between Trump and his lies, and separate him from that portion of his supporters who believed he was a relative moderate in 2016. But it also makes it easier for Trump to retain the loyalty of his party's regulars, and to separate Sanders from the portion of his coalition that is worried about him not because he might lose but because he might win. Cynicism has its advantages as well as its drawbacks."

"At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the three richest Americans own more wealth than 160 million Americans, it is literally beyond belief that the Republican leadership wants to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 0.2 percent..."

"What I fear is going on in the House now is an effort to target Congresswoman Omar as a way of stifling that debate. That’s wrong Anti-Semitism is a hateful and dangerous ideology which must be vigorously opposed in the United States and around the world We must not, however, equate anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of the right-wing, Netanyahu government in Israel."

"Coming from a lower-middle-class family, I will never forget how money or, really, lack of money was always a point of stress in our family... My experience as a child growing up in a family that struggled economically powerfully influenced my values,” he went on, describing growing up the son of a Polish-Jewish immigrant paint salesman who lost nearly his entire family in the Holocaust....Unlike Donald Trump, who shut down the government and left 800,000 federal employees without income to pay their bills, I know what it’s like to be in a family that lives paycheck to paycheck... I did not have a father who gave me millions of dollars to buy luxury skyscrapers, casinos, and country clubs. I did not come from a family that gave me a $200,000 allowance every year beginning at the age of 3. As I recall, my allowance was 25 cents a week...I did not come from a family that taught me to build a corporate empire through housing discrimination, I protested housing discrimination, was arrested for protesting school segregation, and one of the proudest days of my life was attending the March On Washington For Jobs and Freedom led Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."

"For all the policy differences and political minutiae Democrats delve into when criticizing President Trump, the most enduring attacks on Trump from the Democratic establishment remain accusations that Trump is supporting white supremacy and is controlled by Russian President Vladimir Putin. These are over-the-top accusations, and it’s hard to accept that even most elected Democrats actually believe them. But pushing that message on America for the last three-plus years comes at a price for both sides. For the Democrats, the price is becoming clear: it’s made moderate presidential candidates look less viable than ever. Think about it: if you really believe the president is a traitor and supporting violent plots against non-white Americans, is this really the time to support mainstream Democrat or Republican candidates? Sanders may be a career politician, but he’s never been a mainstream politician. His persona and political brand fits much better into the current Democratic narrative that we’re living in desperate times. Establishment Democrats are reaping what they sowed. As a result, it’s looking more and more like Sanders has unstoppable momentum going into the Super Tuesday primaries and beyond. The big question now is whether that Democratic establishment will try to derail Sanders before or during the Democratic National Convention. But either way, the party would be playing with fire and risking alienating those younger voters forever."

"When Donald Trump ran for president he made a lot of promises to working families. He told them that he would protect their interests while standing up to the Establishment. Unfortunately, he did not tell the truth. During his campaign, Trump said he would provide "health insurance for everybody,” but as president he has pushed to repeal the Affordable Care Act and throw 32 million Americans off of the health insurance they have. His efforts would also end the protections that are currently in existence for pre-existing conditions and end the ability of people under 26 to stay on their parents’ insurance plans. Meanwhile, while 34 million Americans currently have no health insurance and even more are under-insured with high deductibles and co-payments, a handful of health care CEOs paid themselves more than $1 billion last year. In my view, at a time when we spend almost twice as much per capita on health care as do the people of any other nation, we should not be throwing millions of Americans off of health care they have. Quite the contrary! We should join every other major country on earth and guarantee health care to all people as a right through a Medicare for All, single-payer program. Medicare today is a popular and effective health insurance program for seniors. Over a 4-year period it should be expanded and improved to cover every man, woman and child in the country. And when we do that we significantly reduce the cost of health care for the average American family."

"We are going to transform this country and finally create an economy and a government which works for all of us, not just the 1 percent. The underlying principles of our government will not be greed, hatred and lies. It will not be racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and religious bigotry. This campaign will be based on justice—on economic justice, on social justice, on racial justice, on environmental justice."

"What he [Donald Trump] is doing and this is his entire political strategy is to divide the American people... So you have a president who gives tax breaks to billionaires and wants to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. That's not what he's going to run on. You've got a president who tried to throw 32 million people off health care. He ain't gonna run on that one. You got a president who gave 83% of the tax benefits to the top 1%, not going to run on that one. So how do you win an election? What do you say — "You see those undocumented people, they all your enemy. Stand with me. Hate them. Let's divide this country up." I think that is an incredibly ugly and dangerous thing to be done. And I will do everything I can to stop that."

"In the richest country in the history of the world, it is not radical to demand that when people turn on their taps, the water they drink is safe and clean. It has been 5 years since the start of the Flint water crisis. This is absolutely unacceptable."

"If somebody commits a serious crime – sexual assault, murder – they're going to be punished. They may be in jail for 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, their whole lives. That's what happens when you commit a serious crime. But I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy. Yes, even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, 'Well, that guy committed a terrible crime; not going to let him vote. You're running down a slippery slope."

"The U.S. military, unlike any other, maintains a doctrine of global power projection: that it should have the ability, through roughly 800 overseas military bases, to intervene with deadly force absolutely anywhere on the planet. In a way, though, land forces are secondary; at least since World War II, the key to U.S. military doctrine has always been a reliance on air power. The United States has fought no war in which it did not control the skies, and it has relied on aerial bombardment far more systematically than any other military-in its recent occupation of Iraq, for instance, even going so far as to bomb residential neighborhoods of cities ostensibly under its own control. The essence of U.S. military predominance in the world is, ultimately, the fact that it can, at will, drop bombs, with only a few hours' notice, at absolutely any point on the surface of the planet. No other government has ever had anything remotely like this sort of capability. In fact, a case could well be made that it is this very power that holds the entire world monetary system, organized around the dollar, together."

"Attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman are unacceptable and must be fully investigated... but this incident must not be used as a pretext for a war with Iran, a war which would be an unmitigated disaster for the United States, Iran, the region, and the world... The time is now for the United States to exert international leadership,... and bring the countries in the region together to forge a diplomatic solution to the growing tensions...I would also remind President Trump that there is no congressional authorization for a war with Iran... A unilateral U.S. attack on Iran would be illegal and unconstitutional."

"The media largely have portrayed the dynamic... as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) rises, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) must fall... If you’re scouring campaign white papers you’re going to have trouble clearly laying out the difference between these two candidates, except by matters of degree. One is all in on “Medicare for all” and the other is all in on universal coverage, with Medicare for all as one of a range of good options. One wants to cancel all student debt; the other wants to cancel most student debt. You’ve got to look bigger-picture at their fundamental approach to politics and philosophy of political change. To state it simply: Sanders is a revolutionary and Warren is a reformer... Warren has been unequivocal that she is a capitalist and believes in markets. She identifies this as the most significant ideological split between her and Sanders."

"During his campaign, Trump said that he would stop the pharmaceutical companies from “getting away with murder.” Well, that didn’t happen. They’re making more money than ever. During the first half of last year there were 96 drug price increases for every price cut. Today, in the United States, we pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, while the top ten pharmaceutical companies made $69 billion in profits last year alone. Shockingly, one out of five Americans cannot afford to purchase the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe. That is insane. As president, I will implement legislation I have introduced which would lower prescription drug prices by 50 percent so Americans no longer pay any more for their medicine than the people of other countries. During his campaign, Trump promised he would not cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. But the budget he proposed in March would cut $1.5 trillion from Medicaid, $845 billion from Medicare, and $25 billion from Social Security. As president, at a time when so many seniors and people with disabilities are struggling, I will not cut Social Security. In fact, legislation that I have introduced would expand Social Security benefits while extending its solvency for over 50 years. During his campaign, Trump promised that “the rich will not be gaining at all” under his tax plan. But the reality is that the plan that he helped pass provides 83 percent of the benefits to the top one percent by the end of the decade. Further, as a result of his tax plan, major profitable corporations like Amazon, General Motors, Chevron, IBM and Eli Lilly and dozens of other major corporations paid zero in federal income taxes after making billions in profits. That is a regressive and unfair tax system that must not be allowed to continue. At a time when the very rich are getting much richer and when corporations are enjoying record-breaking profits, I believe that the wealthiest people in this country have got to start paying their fair share of taxes and that we must end the tax havens that exist in places like the Cayman Islands where corporations and the rich stash trillions of dollars to avoid paying their taxes."

"I learned a great deal about immigration as a child because my father came from Poland at the age of 17, without a nickel in his pocket, without knowing one word of English. He came to the United States to escape the crushing poverty that existed in his community, and to escape widespread anti-Semitism. And, it was a good thing that he came to this country because virtually his entire family was wiped out by Hitler and Nazi barbarism... The underlying principles of our government will not be racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and religious bigotry. I did not come from a family that taught me to build a corporate empire through housing discrimination. I protested housing discrimination, was arrested for protesting school segregation, and one of the proudest days of my life was attending the March on Washington for jobs and freedom led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."

"Sanders had his weaknesses. He failed to win over a majority of Black voters, particularly those in the South, and struggled to compete with all voters over 50, who make up a large chunk of those who show up in primaries. His socialist brand limited him in states like Florida. His age, while a novelty in 2016, probably hampered him in 2020. A liberal coalition of Democratic voters, those deeply loyal to Clinton, always reviled Sanders, while his supporters who merely disliked her had evaporated four years later, choosing Biden instead."

"Cancels $1.6 trillion in student debt for 45 million Americans"

"Today, we say to our young people that we want you to get the best education that you can, regardless of the income of your family. Good jobs require a good education. That is why we are going to make public colleges and universities tuition free, and cancel all student debt..."

"I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical leave. I believe that every worker in this country deserves a living wage and that we expand the trade union movement."

"I happen to believe also that what, to me, democratic socialism means is we deal with an issue we do not discuss enough... not in the media and not in Congress. You’ve got three people in America owning more wealth than the bottom half of this country. You’ve got a handful of billionaires controlling what goes on in Wall Street, the insurance companies and in the media. Maybe, just maybe, what we should be doing is creating an economy that works for all of us, not 1%. That’s my understanding of democratic socialism."

"Paid for by a tax on Wall Street speculation"

"We have to talk about democratic socialism as an alternative to unfettered capitalism, where the rich get richer and almost everybody else is getting poorer. I think that’s a message that young people are receptive to, and I think it’s a message that working people are receptive to."

"The forces fomenting antisemitism are the forces arrayed against oppressed people around the world, including Palestinians; the struggle against antisemitism is also the struggle for Palestinian freedom. I stand in solidarity with my friends in Israel, in Palestine, and around the world who are trying to resolve conflict, diminish hatred, and promote dialogue, cooperation, and understanding."

"Right now, the average worker in America is making, in inflation-accounted-for dollars, and despite a huge increase in technology and worker productivity, exactly the same amount of money that he or she made 43 years ago. That’s incomprehensible."

"Instead of spending $1.8 trillion a year globally on weapons of destruction... to kill each other, maybe we pool our resources and fight our common enemy which is climate change... I do believe this is the existential issue... People of color in fact, are going to be the people suffering most if we do not deal with climate change."

"Now there’s a real competition going on up here... My good friend Joe (Biden)... he’s received contributions from 44 billionaires. Pete (Buttigieg) on the other hand, is trailing, you only got 39 billionaires contributing."

"President Donald Trump’s own words helped inspire the worst act of antisemitic violence in American history."

"Some people are attached to the idea that the Democratic National Committee will “rig” the presidential nomination against Bernie Sanders. The meme encourages the belief that the Bernie 2020 campaign is futile because of powerful corporate Democrats. But such fatalism should be discarded. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Of course top Democratic Party officials don’t intend to give up control. It has to be taken from them. And the conditions for doing that are now more favorable than ever... progressives have organized effectively during the last two years..."

"We have to be clear that while antisemitism is a threat to Jews everywhere, it is also a threat to democratic governance itself. The antisemites who marched in Charlottesville don’t just hate Jews. They hate the idea of multiracial democracy. They hate the idea of political equality. They hate immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, women, and anyone else who stands in the way of a whites-only America. They accuse Jews of coordinating a massive attack on white people worldwide, using people of color and other marginalized groups to do their dirty work."