SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
jane sanders
Three-Day Sanders Institute Event Details the Case: 'Housing Is a Human Right'
While the policy discussion around housing has a reputation for being dynamic and complex—especially as an issue that straddles municipal, state, and federal governance—the human story at the center of what it means to have a home or be housed is simple and universal, a thread woven into over a dozen panels, presentations, and keynote speeches by progressive lawmakers, top experts, frontline advocates, academics, and community organizers.
In a conversation with Common Dreams, Sanders and Driscoll explained that everyone who attended the event—kept intentionally small and low-profile—was told that the focus would be on "concrete remedies" and "replicable policies" with the ultimate purpose of informing a national audience about not only how severe the housing crisis has become, but also the concrete ways to address it.
"We believe democracy requires an informed electorate and civil discourse and bold ideas. That's part of our mission," Sanders said. "And the purpose was to come at the housing crisis from many aspects—not all of the aspects, but many of them—with the goal of actionable solutions."
"None of us are very interested in making small incremental change, which might mean building some more affordable housing or supporting this or that initiative. That's not what this is about." —Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders, The Sanders Institute
But why housing? Why now? According to Sanders, the issue is potent politically because it's an issue that is not just about the poor and unhoused, but also central to the working class.
"Everybody knows somebody that has a problem getting affordable housing or just affording their life and having to make different choices," she told Common Dreams. "It's middle-income people, it's everybody having a problem with the housing crisis, and elected officials are getting pressure. Those lawmakers and politicians are hearing it more and more. And we said, okay, now's the time to bring people together around this."
Driscoll targeted private equity, Wall Street investors, and real estate developers that have used their outsized economic and political power to further skew the nation's housing market in search of ever-larger profits, squeezing out low- or middle-income individuals and families in the process.
"It's just another way in which the gap is growing between the rich and the poor and increasing inequality," said Driscoll. "And that needs to stop."
It is powerful interests most of all, says Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), who must be named, shamed, and overcome if any of the progressive solutions championed at the gathering—including rent control, social housing models, community land trusts, more climate-resilient communities, and proven efforts to curb homelessness—are to have any hope of being implemented at the necessary scale.
Weinstein—a driving force behind the event, a supporter of the Sanders Institute, and a major player in California's healthcare and housing political landscape—agrees fully with Sanders and Driscoll that the moment, both in California and nationally, is ripe for an invigorating politics focused on housing.
Rent Control for All
Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, presenting at the Sanders Institute event in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 4, 2024. (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)
During opening remarks focused on "perpetually affordable housing" and a 2024 ballot initiative in California that would end the state's existing ban on local rent control ordinances, Weinstein said that he has argued for years that "the housing issue was not high enough on the progressive agenda."
"This is a battle for the poor and working-class people in California," Weinstein said of the Justice for Renters campaign, an effort funded by AHF, local unions, and others to see the Justice for Renters Act become law via a ballot measure this year.
"There are 17 million renters in California—that's 45% of the population," he explained. "There are tens of millions more renters across the country. Our primary job as progressives is to improve the lives of people and housing is their greatest need."
If enacted, the law would remove the existing ban on rent control laws in California, encourage expanded rent control at the local level, and curb the power of "predatory landlords" who charge "unfair and unaffordable" rent.
While everyone at the gathering agreed more housing stock is a key part of the solution, Weinstein was among those who emphasized that the biggest obstacle is unaffordability of homes and rental units—a problem attributable to the greed of landlords and the investor class within an economy designed to siphon the wealth of workers into the coffers of the already rich.
"We can't address the housing crisis by chopping the weed off at the top. We have to pull it out by the roots," Weinstein explained. "And high rents are the root cause of the housing affordability crisis. It's that transfer of wealth that's causing the problem. And if we do nothing about rising rents, then nothing else we do in terms of producing housing or other changes will make a difference. If we continue to treat housing as a commodity, we'll never be able to house everyone. It's very similar to healthcare. If we leave it up to the marketplace, we're lost."
With the homeless population in Los Angeles estimated to be over 70,000—in a city of approximately 3.9 million—Weinstein said that L.A. is "not just the homeless capital of this country" but the "homeless capital of the world." This, he lamented, is "truly shameful," but also the reason why California has a vital role to play in showing people that the crisis can be confronted.
As a veteran healthcare advocate and the head of a nonprofit organization focused on AIDS, Weinstein rejected the accusation he sometimes receives from political opponents that he is somehow "out of his lane" by pushing so loudly and aggressively for rent control reforms. One reason that assessment is wrong, Weinstein explained, is that housing is the largest predeterminant of health, which is also why so many at the gathering rallied around the demand that housing be treated like the human right it is.
"But the main reason I'm involved in housing," Weinstein told the audience at the gathering, "is that I feel the same outrage about the housing situation and homelessness today as I did in the 1980s about AIDS, where the benign neglect saw tens of thousands of people die needlessly."
In his remarks, Weinstein stressed the crisis is a result of the most powerful in society refusing to meet the needs of its most vulnerable. But he said the galvanizing potential of housing—and the political potency and opportunities of social uplift embedded in the solutions presented at the conference—must be recognized.
"This is a cry for unity," he said. "Unity behind rent control and unity behind opposing corporate real estate and unity behind housing justice. There's no better time than now."
Putting the Housing Crisis at the Top of the Agenda
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) said during the event that Democrats are ready to put housing back at the top of the party's national agenda. (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)
The sense of urgency felt by attendees of the event was unmistakable.
Speaking at the opening night dinner for the conference, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), who represents parts of Los Angeles County, said the creation of the Renters Caucus in Congress last year is a sign that lawmakers are beginning to take housing more seriously at the federal level.
The goal of the new caucus, Gomez said, "is to make sure that the renters agenda is at the top of the Democratic Party agenda." This was a focus of all the members of Congress who attended the gathering in some capacity, including Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), also notable as Jane's husband. Driscoll is their son.
"Housing Should Be a Human Right in the Richest Country in the History of the World"
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass speaking with attendees at the event focused on the housing crisis, where she delivered an opening speech on the issue that focused on both the local battles for housing and, as a former member of Congress, the need for federal action. (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)
Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who left Congress to provide more local leadership, said she did so because she saw that the rightward political shift at the local government level was set to take the city backward on a numerous fronts, including on the issues of affordable housing, education, and homelessness.
Calling housing "one of the most important issues of our lifetime right now," Bass praised the Sanders Institute's focus on the crisis and for bringing the event to California. "I know that you are going to be the brains behind what we need, which is a national movement," said Bass. "That's the only thing that is going to bring about the type of fundamental change that we need."
"What we need... is a national movement." —Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass
Speaking after Jayapal—who had told the audience the battle for better housing policy in the United States should be viewed much like the battle for universal healthcare—Bass acknowledged there are things on the housing agenda that will require action by leaders at every level of government.
"But nothing takes the place of the grassroots day-to-day organizing that is needed," she said, "so that we can win what Pramila said: Housing should be a human right in the richest country in the history of the world, just like healthcare should be a human right."
According to Sen. Sanders, who delivered the keynote address and was an active participant throughout, the purpose of the gathering was to get beyond talk in order to get down to the real work of making change.
"Our task is to organize and to educate," Sanders said. "It's easy to come up with rhetoric—which I have done once or twice in my life—but when you're the mayor of a city, you're going to need some concrete plans. How do you do it? You're going to have to bring a lot of smart people together to figure out the best way forward."
Social Housing: A Solution That Works
California Assemblyman Alex Lee (D-25), center, and South San Francisco Mayor James Coleman, right, present on social housing models during the event in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 4, 2024. (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)
A constant theme at the event was that not only does the housing crisis demand progressive solutions, but the implementation of those solutions are themselves opportunities to revive democracy, increase social cohesion, and expand the public imagination.
In their joint presentation on social housing, California Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-25) and South San Francisco Mayor James Coleman, also a Democrat, detailed a vision for "social housing" which aims to demolish preconceived notions that tend to dominate understandings of "public housing" throughout the United States.
When it comes to defining the term "social housing," Lee explained that he likes to "keep it simple." Social housing, he said, "is beautiful, sustainable, and publicly led developed housing that is available to everyone and for everyone."
The idea of universality, he emphasized, is critical in the U.S. context where public housing is typically subsidized housing only for low-income individuals or families. Social housing models across the world provide housing across economic classes, which creates more buy-in from communities and residents.
"There's a very deliberate reason of why we stick to the term social housing," Lee said, "even though it is three letters away from a scary thing that Americans fear." But it is the term used around the world, he explained—both in highly capitalistic economies like Singapore's as well as in the various social democracies of Europe and beyond.
Because it's housing for everyone—the poor, the middle class, and even the upper-middle class—Lee and Coleman explained that "universality" and the lack of means-testing are core components of a model they believe can transform people's understanding of what's possible in this country.
"With social housing," argued Coleman, "you'll see broad spots of the public be able to look at it and say: 'That is quality housing. I want to live there. I want my children to live there and I know I'm going to be paying lower rents than market rate.' And when people start seeing that, then they're going to want to continue to invest in social housing and we won't see the decades of disinvestment that we have seen here in the United States for our public housing program."
In an interview with Common Dreams, Lee offered a parallel example.
"In America," he said, "there is no constitutional guarantee of education, yet every parent will wake up tomorrow not having a single doubt in their mind that their child will go to school." Lee acknowledged not all children go to the same kinds of school, but said that people never doubt that education will be there for their families.
"But there is not the similar sense of options in housing—people don't have that." But they should, he said, and there are models out there—not just abroad but also examples in the U.S.—that show how it could work.
Citing housing construction in the post-war years, Lee said the country has shown it's capable of amazing things when it comes to housing.
"We could end the housing crisis in four years, at true scale," said Lee. "That's why it's really important to prove that this can work at the state level, especially in a state as populous as California. If we prove the concept here, we can show nationally how it can be done."
Like the Housing Crisis, "The Climate Crisis Is Actually a Massive Health Crisis"
Actor and activist Jane Fonda and community organizer Nalleli Cobo speak to the audience at The Gathering. (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)During another session, actor and activist Jane Fonda presented alongside local activist Nalleli Cobo, a cancer survivor who has been fighting the oil industry that operates drilling wells in her urban neighborhood since she was a child.
Cobo, co-founder of the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition and a 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize winner for the activism that she initiated while still a teenager living in South Los Angeles, told the audience that the hard-fought victories she and her allies were able to win against the fossil fuel industry "were made possible because of a frontline community that was historically viewed as silenced, invisible, and disposable finally said: 'Enough is enough. We deserve to open our windows and our home and we deserve to breathe clean air.'"
"This is the largest crisis humanity has ever faced. We're running out of time and we have to fight back." —Jane Fonda
Living her whole life in a home neighboring a fossil fuel operation beset Cobo with health challenges throughout her childhood and ultimately led to a cancer diagnosis. Now three years in remission, she said affordable and healthy housing is something that every single member of society is entitled to.
"They may not be drilling in your community right now, but they can be unless we stand up and fight back," she said.
With nearly 3 million Californians living within a mile or less from oil and gas drilling wells, Fonda championed the courage and determination of Cobo to end this toxic practice, including with a ballot fight in California this year to ban such operations permanently.
"What Nalleli didn't tell you," Fonda told the audience when she took the podium, "is that at age 10 and 11, she and her mother had to be put into a witness protection program because of her organizing in the community to shut the oil well down; that at 19 she had to have a total hysterectomy; that her dream was to be a dancer and now that is no longer possible for her."
People must understand, Fonda said, that "the climate crisis is actually a massive health crisis" for people living in communities made toxic by fossil fuels all over the country and around the world. A cancer survivor in her own life, Fonda said she was told by someone when she threatened to tattoo the phrase "climate emergency" on her bald head if the chemotherapy took her hair that "the cancer community doesn't like to be looped in with other causes."
"Causes?!" she recalled exclaiming in response. "Honey, the climate crisis is not a cause. This is the largest crisis humanity has ever faced. We're running out of time and we have to fight back."
Climate Resilience and Housing Justice
(From left): Author and labor organizer Saket Soni, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Consumer Watchdog's Jamie Court. (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)
Also on the climate front—which highlighted the intersectional style of the Sanders Institute's gathering—Congresswoman Jayapal joined with author and labor organizer Saket Soni as well as Jamie Court of the California-based Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group, to discuss the linked issues of community resilience amid extreme weather disasters and soaring insurance costs that have arrived hand-in-hand with rising global temperatures.
While Soni in his work has been at the forefront of building up climate resilience in communities for decades—both by helping to mitigate the impact of extreme weather and also working on disaster relief and rebuilding—Jayapal explained that she has a bill in the U.S. House—called the Climate Resilience Workforce Act—that would formalize processes and establish funding to make such work a more integral part of federal, state, and local planning.
Among others, one component of the legislation would be to make sure that people in communities "disproportionately affected by climate change are actually at the table" when federal funds are dispersed.
According to the panel, the increasing impacts of climate change are a key driver of housing costs but nothing will get better without a justice lens through which to see the crisis of housing in an increasingly hotter world that is resulting in more floods, larger fires, and too little accountability for the corporate interests profiting from those extremes.
"In the context of our climate crisis," Soni explained during the panel discussion, "there is an opening for justice that Jayapal's bill is trying to take and that we're all trying to take. There is an opening where resilience is a framework that can accelerate housing justice, justice for the incarcerated, and justice for immigrants. And that's what we should all be trying to do, is look at how resilience is a real majoritarian framework—maybe one of the last ones left in our country—and inside of that there is so much consensus that we can push justice forward in many, many ways."
"There Is a Lot of Potential for Prop 1"
California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom talks with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) during the event in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 4, 2024. (Photo: © Bryan Giardinelli / The Sanders Institute)
On the state level, California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom arrived at the event to champion the recently approved measure known as Proposition 1, which will, among other things, provide state revenue from a nearly $6.4 billion bond to build and service more treatment beds for those experiencing severe mental health and addiction disorders as a way to curb homelessness across California.
During a panel discussion with Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and California Secretary of Health & Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly, both Democrats, Newsom said that Prop. 1 would allow for a "strike force" that could better confront the overlapping issues of housing, homelessness, mental health, and substance addiction disorders.
Acknowledging the potential for hyperbole, Newsom said he believes what's contained in the new law "are the most significant" and far-reaching "behavioral health reforms happening anywhere in the United States of America."
While the debate over Proposition 1 was heated in the state, including among progressives who landed on various sides of the initiative, a subsequent panel focused on the implementation mostly landed on the side of cautious optimism for what it could be and what kind of model it might represent.
"There is a lot of potential for Prop 1," said Dr. Margot Kushel, professor of medicine at University of California San Francisco and director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.
"No matter where you stood on it before it passed," Kushel added, "there is a lot of potential now that it's here and we need to exercise that in the right way, which is that we need to be sure that it is used to enable these living-in-the-community, choice-driven, client-driven, but very supportive programs for people who are suffering terribly."
The evidence for what it will take to solve the mental health crisis as it pertains to homelessness, said Kushel, is overwhelming. "You don't need me to do more studies on it," she said, "we actually just need to bring to bear that funding [supplied by Prop 1] to solve some of these really sticky funding issues so that we can create the workforce, sustain the workforce, and create the programming" that will really serve the unhoused population "with dignity" in the communities they live in.
Several researchers presented on the severe impacts that homelessness and housing insecurity have on students and young people, including those in the foster care system. Other presenters described how community land trusts and other innovative housing collaborations, including faith-based initiatives, are providing models that could be replicated nationwide. Separately, a panel focused on the struggle of homeless veterans told the harrowing tale of former U.S. soldiers denied access to housing and care in Los Angeles who remain in a protracted legal fight with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs over land set aside for exactly that purpose.
"We don't suffer from scarcity in this country, we suffer from greed. We have enough money to house people and to create situations where people aren't going to fear for what tomorrow's going to look like." —Rep. Pramila Jayapal
In her reflections as a presenter and participant of the gathering, Congresswoman Jayapal explained to Common Dreams that the event was significant because "it lifted up an issue that" has been central for progressives but too often ignored and neglected by those in the media and within both major political parties.
"We don't suffer from scarcity in this country. We suffer from greed," Jayapal said. "We have enough money to house people, and to create situations where people aren't going to fear for what tomorrow's going to look like."
"We Need to Call Out the System"
Sanders Institute co-founder Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders in Los Angeles on Friday, April 5. "We're talking about transformational change," she said about the event. (Photo: J. Queally / Common Dreams)
The germination of the gathering, Jane Sanders explained to Common Dreams in the wake of the three days, was like "peeling back the onion" as one area of focus led to another, and a discussion with one invited expert resulted in the introduction to another.
As she realized the issue of housing was such a "hornet's nest" of intersecting issues, overlapping viewpoints, and innovative thinking, Sanders said it became increasingly clear that was exactly the reason to go forward with the event.
"We're talking about transformational change," she said of the work that she, Driscoll, and their colleagues are doing at the Sanders Institute. "None of us are very interested in making small incremental change, which might mean building some more affordable housing or supporting this or that initiative. That's not what this is about."
The Sanders Institute was initially in founded in 2018 with the goal of extending the energy, ideas, and political movement sparked during Bernie's presidential run in 2016. When the senator decided to run again in 2020, Jane and Dave decided to pause operations and then went into full hiatus when the coronavirus pandemic hit. In this context, holding an intimate housing conference in Los Angeles was conceived as a reawakening for the organization and a chance to let people know the time has now arrived to continue their original mission.
Reflecting on his experience after the gathering had concluded, Driscoll said it had been great to see so many people—whether in government or through an organization or at the grassroots level—having the chance to connect, learn from one another, and hopefully collaborate in the future.
"Sometimes this can be a lonely fight, whether or not you're fighting for housing or you're fighting for healthcare, sometimes you feel like you're not getting anywhere," he said. "But when you bring all these people together like we did over the last couple days, I felt at times a real energy in the room. People felt good about a really tough fight. So I think it inspired and fired people up, and also gave people hope for the future."
While they don't have it pinned down yet—that was the admission of the gathering—the point going forward is to clarify what the progressive agenda on housing should be and help push out to others how that fits into the broader movement for bold and lasting change.
When it comes to the opponents of such transformational proposals—national rent control, expansion of social housing, ending homelessness, or forging the Green New Deal for public housing—Driscoll said it's important that people understand powerful financial interests will fight such ideas with everything they have.
"We need to start calling people out like we did with tobacco money or with oil money," Driscoll said. "We need to start calling people out and saying, you're taking money from big real estate and developers that are causing this harm and stopping this progress." As is true in so many other areas of policy and politics, he said, following the money will be key in the battles to come.
"I don't like to call out individuals," Sanders said, "but we need to call out the system."
"It's a systematic problem that we don't say 'housing is a human right.' That's not shared in a capitalist society," she continued. "Not everybody would agree with that statement. We agree with that statement, but it's not one of those accepted truisms in this country. So what's our goal? That it become one."
The Sanders Institute's Gathering Was About Saving the World, But It Was Not About Bernie Sanders
"What do we need to do to improve the quality of life of our citizens of the world?" —Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders, The Sanders Institute
"I think it's important that we realize the intersectionality of the issues," explained Jane O'Meara Sanders, who along with executive director David Driscoll founded The Sanders Institute and organized the Gathering. "I mean environmental sanity has to do with income inequality and so many things. And that's why we intentionally do things more comprehensively because we don't want to say, 'We're having an environmental conference,' or 'We're having a housing conference.'"
The conference, she said in an interview with Common Dreams, was one that wanted to ask: "What do we need to do to improve the quality of life of our citizens of the world?"
And while Jane's husband, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), was at the conference—delivering the keynote and sitting on several panels—the weekend was distinctly not about him. Throughout the weekend, the senator could be found waving off reporters, sitting quietly in the back row during panel discussions, trying not to be seen, but listening intently to what was being said by the assembled speakers and the engaged attendees.
"I'm a guest here," Bernie told The Real News Network in an interview on Saturday as he credited his wife and the Institute for putting on the event.
"And what Jane understood," he explained, "is that when we deal with climate change, when we deal with the economy, when we deal with housing, when we deal with criminal justice or immigration issues—we have got to deal with them in a holistic way. We cannot see them as silo-ized, separate issues. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that we live in a nation owned and controlled by a small number of multi-billionaires whose greed—incredible greed, insatiable greed--is having an unbelievably negative impact on our entire country."
Despite being sandwiched between the just-concluded 2018 midterms and the hugely consequential 2020 race—which is already driving frenzied discussion and speculation—the three-day retreat was devoid of the kind of horse-race, personality-driven noise that tends to dominate the vapid political discourse seen on MSNBC, Fox News, and in the pages of America's major newspapers.
Aside from the occasional "Bernie 2020?" outburst from an audience member—and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis' short but forceful demand that Sanders run for president for the good of the world—the Sanders Institute Gathering was predominantly driven by and organized around the issues and crises affecting the everyday lives of ordinary people in the United States and across the globe, from grotesquely unequal healthcare systems to the climate crisis, which threatens to render the planet uninhabitable for future generations if immediate and bold action is not taken.
What's love got to do with it?
"Only all that we love is on the line," declared Our Revolution president and Sanders Institute fellow Nina Turner during a panel on the moral necessity of Medicare for All, capturing both the ethos of the retreat and the urgency of the issues at hand.
How We Win Medicare for All
Applauding nurses and others leading the charge for progressive change throughout the U.S. and the world, Turner said success will only come from working together "to soften the soil, to have the conversations, one person to another, that are necessary to ensure that our family and our friends and our play cousins understand what is at stake. You can't win somebody's head unless you win their heart."
"You can't win somebody's head unless you win their heart." —Nina Turner, Our Revolution
Winning over a critical mass of hearts—as the progressive experts and organizers emphasized repeatedly across panels on human rights, the criminal justice system, labor, and the climate crisis—will require an enormous grassroots movement that is not merely single-issue focused and national, but far-reaching and international in scope.
"Capitalism isn't working for a huge number of people on this planet," said journalist and activist Naomi Klein during a panel on the necessity of a Green New Deal as she explained why the crisis also carries with it a political opportunity that must be recognized.
"If we can come up with a framework for responding to climate change that is actually a challenge to economic inequality, joblessness, economic precarity, the need for Medicare for All, and the rest of it," Klein said, "then actually we're gonna build a much broader movement, and also a movement that will fight harder, because it has so much to gain. Because not only is it not threatened by systemic change, it's hungry for it."
"What is required now is transformation of every aspect of society," Klein added. "In other words, a political revolution."
The Climate Crisis & the Green New Deal
But simply winning over hearts is not sufficient, said many participants, for the kind of transformative change that is necessary for the United States and the world to confront staggering levels of poverty and inequality, lack of healthcare, and the existential threat posed by the climate crisis. In addition to a vision of justice for all, argued the diverse array of voices featured at the Gathering, any successful progressive movement must also rest on a solid intellectual foundation that demonstrates not just the moral necessity of bold progressive initiatives, but also the striking practicality of these objectives.
Social justice from below and the criminals at the top
Discussing criminal justice and the necessity of holding power to account in the U.S., academic and social justice activist Cornel West denounced the two-tiered nature of the nation's justice system. "Why are the criminals at the top hardly talked about?" West asked during a morning panel discussion. "All that market manipulation, insider trading, predatory lending, fraudulent activity on Wall Street. How many of them went to jail? Not at all, not at all. Massive corruption in government, Republicans and Democrats. Republicans are not the only gangsters. And greed is a difficult thing not to be seduced by when you're not accountable."
"When we talk about criminality," West added, "we have to put it in the right context. If we had all the prison reform in the world and still had high levels of poverty, still had decrepit school systems, still had inadequate housing, still had dominant images of a corporate media in which you deal with conflict by killing other people, we still have a problem."
Criminal Injustice
On the broader effort of building a viable progressive movement, West told attendees: "It's got to be solidaristic. If we don't have a left populist option that's credible, we're headed down a neo-fascist road. There's no guarantee that we're gonna win. So what? We're gonna fight anyway."
In the panel discussing why organized labor is essential to democracy, Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Good Jobs Nation, argued that in order for the broad progressive movement to be successful, workers must be marshalled in order to ensure there is political power behind its shared and visionary demands.
"There's been an all-out attack by the corporate class to destroy worker power," Geevarghese said. "That's significant because the power of workers is the only thing that stands between our democracy and having a completely corporate-run government. The working class has been eviscerated and we don't have a powerful countervailing force to take on capital."
"The working class has been eviscerated and we don't have a powerful countervailing force to take on capital."
--Joseph Geevarghese, Good Jobs Nation
And so, he added, "If we are to win the vision that all of us share, I would argue that the conditions precedent for that are empowering the working class to take on the corporate class."
RoseAnn DeMoro, former head of National Nurses United, told Common Dreams after the panel that organized labor and non-unionized citizens who support progressive solutions like Medicare for All should work alongside one another in order to call attention to "all the different sectors in this economy that are harming people" because they all tie into the shared human condition.
"If you tie your workers into the human condition," she said, "then they can take a stand for all the people in the society. And when the labor movement connects with the public good, guess what? When you're out on strike, the public good connects with you."
The Labor Movement: Essential to Democracy
While Republicans have shown amazing commitment to attacking organized labor, lamented Geevarghese, Democrats have failed to show their commitment to defending workers.
"The problem on our side is when we elect Democrats--or, mainstream Democrats--their goal is not to immediately grow the labor movement. But it should be," he said to applause from the audience. "It fundamentally should be. The challenge for all of us, if we are to realize the vision that the Sanders Institute is giving us space to articulate, I think it is imperative that we do everything possible to increase the number of workers in unions."
What's a progressive economy good for?
Separately--sitting on a panel focused on civil rights, immigration, and human dignity--Radhika Balakrishnan of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University opened the talk with a simple question, invoking the astronomical riches of just three American billionaires who together own more wealth than the bottom half of the U.S. population--approximately 160 million people.
"What's the economy for?" Balakrishnan asked. "Why do we go buy stuff, make things, get paychecks, do all these things? What's the purpose of it? Is it so those three men have half the wealth of the nation, is that what the economy is for?" While the audience responded with a resounding, "No," she explained the imperative of world economies being judged not by the amount of wealth they generate, but by whether the people living within those economies are able to survive and thrive.
Civil Rights, Immigration, and Human Dignity
Balakrishnan argued that whether it's a focus on various forms of gender inequality or racial inequality, the real questions should be about the freedoms people have, what rights they have, and whether their real material needs are being met. "Are people eating?" That's an important question, she said. "We talked about housing, we talked about mass incarceration, we talked about poverty. Now if we were to judge economic policy by the fact that it does not fulfill these rights, then we can think about a different kind of economy."
Ben Jealous, the former NAACP president and Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Maryland, agreed with Balakrishnan's model of putting "human need at the center of economics and not human greed." But he added that progressives must approach economic debates without allowing conservatives and corporate Democrats to frame bold initiatives as costing too much.
"In reality, you dig into it and what we're actually talking about is saving money, because Medicare for All will save us money," Jealous said. "You end mass incarceration and it turns out you have enough money to lower the cost of higher education dramatically."
"We talked about housing, we talked about mass incarceration, we talked about poverty. Now if we were to judge economic policy by the fact that it does not fulfill these rights, then we can think about a different kind of economy."
--Prof. Radhika Balakrishnan, Rutgers University
"Our policies are not only the right thing to do from a rights perspective, they're also the right thing to do from an economic perspective," he added. "They're the right thing to do from a public safety perspective. And we've got to be willing to stop and say, 'Wait a second, Medicare for All will save us money.'"
Helping to prove that point, the Sanders Institute Gathering also featured the unveiling of a first-of-its-kind analysis of Medicare for All which comprehensively demonstrates that single-payer healthcare is economically feasible and beneficial in addition to morally necessary.
Authored by a team of researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the new paper found that Medicare for All would save the U.S. a staggering $5.1 trillion over ten years while guaranteeing every American comprehensive coverage.
'Medicare for All' - I like it! How do we pay for it?
"It's easy to pay for something that costs less," said economist Robert Pollin, the paper's lead author.
The distance from policy prescriptions to claiming power
In remarks connecting policy solutions to the kind of politics needed to achieve them, Jealous invoked a phrase that was repeated throughout the weekend, applauding progressive victories in state houses and legislatures during the midterm elections and imploring progressives to stay engaged in fighting for progressive solutions and social justice even while Republicans still control the White House and the Senate.
"At the end of the day we root this movement in our cities, in our counties, in our states," Jealous said. "What we'll find is that we'll move further, faster. It's not that change comes from the top down. Change has always come from the bottom."
"[Our progressive] policies are not only the right thing to do from a rights perspective, they're also the right thing to do from an economic perspective."
--Ben Jealous, former NAACP presidentReflecting on his time spent at the conference as an attendee, educator, and organizer Nikhil Goyal, author of Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice, told Common Dreams that even though he wished his area of specific focus had been given more attention at the conference, he strongly believes the progressive movement needs to hold gatherings such as this this more often.
"We need to have opportunities to mull over, debate, analyze, and thrash out the details of the agenda we are pursuing for the United States and the rest of the world," Goyal said. "The right-wing does this consistently with its numerous think tanks and the left needs to counteract that force."
On the Front Lines, a Mayor's Roundtable
Goyal said the absence of a firm "hierarchy" at the Gathering--in addition to its small size and casual atmosphere--made speakers and participants accessible to one another and created space for people from various regions and backgrounds to chat, share stories, and make connections.
The empire in the room
It was in the hallways outside one panel where Jeffrey Sachs, economist and Columbia University professor, took stock of American foreign policy and discussed why the American people--and certainly people around the world--are ready for an end to this century's wars and the gratuitous and destructive military spending driving them. The Pentagon budget was a frequent touchstone for many at the conference.
"People are definitely ready to hear about a new U.S. foreign policy," Sachs told Common Dreams in an interview. "They know the last 25 years has been disastrous. You can't point to one success--in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, or elsewhere in the Middle East. There's not one U.S. success. People understand how much has been wasted."
"You spend money on stupid, wasteful, destructive, unsuccessful wars... and sure enough you're not going to have money for your own kids in this country."
--Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia UniversityThose bragging about or defending the size of the military budget--including Trump, the Republicans, and many prominent Democratic leaders--have it exactly backward, warned Sachs. "If we stand with our people in uniform," he said, "we should stop these wars, get them to safety, and not use the rhetoric of building the military budget as the patriotic thing to do."
Both lawmakers and the American people "need to get serious about this now," Sachs concluded. "Is the public ready? Yes. The public wants peace. Is the Washington establishment ready? No, not yet. Are there voices in Washington that are ready to tell the truth? Absolutely yes."
Also a focus of his new book, A New Foreign Policy, Sachs argues there is a great hunger among other nations to forge new agreements of cooperation and end the failures of U.S. hegemony and the imperial mindset that so infects the nation's politics.
"The fact of the matter is," he told Common Dreams, "there's a world of counterparts out there that would actually like to cooperate to solve problems like climate change, poverty, hunger, the need for building infrastructure, and creating a future that people want. That world's actually out there. I travel and meet leaders all over the world and they cannot understand how the United States digs deeper and deeper into this hole."
The link between U.S. failures abroad and domestic struggles, Sachs continued, is the outrageous size of the nation's military and the economic damage wrought by the deluded religion of American exceptionalism.
"We have more than 800 military bases in more than 70 countries around the world," he said. "We have troops stationed in more than a hundred countries around the world. The costs of this are absolutely mind-boggling. They have drained the budget. They have created massive debt. The wars have cost trillions of dollars, and then we hear Congress turn around and say, 'Oh, there's no money for health, for education, for modernizing our infrastructure.' So the links are absolutely direct. You spend money on stupid, wasteful, destructive, unsuccessful wars... and sure enough you're not going to have money for your own kids in this country."
The Housing Crisis in America
Ben Cohen, Vermont political activist and co-founder of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, joined Sachs at the conference in putting emphasis on the ills of military spending, but also paired his critique with the Republican Party's systematic attack on voting rights.
"We are part of a large and potentially powerful movement," he told a room of conference participants during an interlude at the event. "We all have our pet issues, but in general we all want the same stuff: a world that is life-affirming instead of death-defying. But there are these two threshold issues--Pentagon spending and voter suppression--that must be addressed before we can get anything else that we want."
"We all have our pet issues, but in general we all want the same stuff: a world that is life-affirming instead of death-defying."
--Ben Cohen, ice cream maker & political activistThe country, said Cohen, "needs to learn to measure its strength not by how many people we can kill, but by how many people we can feed, clothe, house, and care for."
According to Sachs, it is time for the U.S. to get its priorities straight.
"We don't need hundreds of military bases around the world," he argued. "We don't need a military budget that's not only the $700 billion of the Pentagon itself, but when you add up all the other military-related budgets is closer to a $1 trillion. It eats up our budget and for what? We're not getting security out of it. We're not getting solutions out of it. We're not getting peace out of it. We're getting the illusion, which is the illusion of each president after the next, that the United States somehow runs the world--which is a bizarre idea to begin with because we're only 4.4% of the world's population. So maybe we should take a look at the mirror and realize we're really not here to run the world and we should take care of our own problems."
Existential concerns and the need for a global movement
Sachs says he's not arguing for isolation, but rather global cooperation.
Sitting on a panel with Bernie Sanders, Greece's former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, Mayor of Barcelona Ada Calou, Canadian House of Commons MP Niki Ashton, and Irish economist David McWilliams, Sachs said on Friday night that international cooperation will be absolutely key if the world is to seriously address war, poverty, and the climate threat.
"Everybody can be a part of [the Progressive International] and what ties it all together is the understanding that we need to come together in pursuit of the justice that we all deserve."
--Canadian MP Niki AshtonIt was at the end of this panel when Jane Sanders and Varoufakis announced their new joint project, the Progressive International, and issued a call for progressives worldwide to join the effort in order to fight the rise of fascism with a bold call for solidarity and the creation of "a global network of individuals and organizations that will fight together for dignity, peace, prosperity, and the future of our planet."
Talking with Common Dreams about the new project, Ashton said "it's clear to me that we're all facing similar elements" and that the "rise of the right" is a threat that cannot be ignored. The Progressive International, she added, "gives us an opportunity to learn from each other and find ways to fight back. It is for elected representatives, but it's also for activists, it's for concerned citizens. Everybody can be a part of it and what ties it all together is the understanding that we need to come together in pursuit of the justice that we all deserve."
International Roundtable
In a Guardian op-ed published by Varoufakis and his European colleague David Adler on the morning after the announcement at the Sanders Institute Gathering, the pair argued that progressives from around the world must recognize the importance of seizing established institutions--both political and economic ones--in order "to transform the world for the better, and reclaim them as our own. The alternatives--the technocratic status quo and the strongman unilateralism that has emerged to challenge it--are simply unacceptable."
In her talk with Common Dreams, Jane Sanders explained: "We need to include people of all walks of life, of all backgrounds, in different countries and make sure that we have communication with them so that we know when there are things happening in their countries that need progressive support."
Such communication and organization, she said, will be essential in order to shift the Progressive International from a concept embraced by a handful of political figures into "a movement around the globe that is looking for peace, prosperity, environmental justice, racial justice, social justice, and economic justice."
Reclaiming existing institutions and building new ones
And one of the central themes that emerged from the conference was the urgent need for progressive organizers--and the social movements they represent--to address the real institutional needs of a movement that is clamoring for far-reaching and transformational change.
In a conversation with Common Dreams at the conference, veteran Canadian journalist Avi Lewis, co-founder and strategic director of The Leap, argued that a hard, but liberating, truth of the current moment is that progressives "are now in a position globally and historically where we need an all-of-the-above change strategy" when it comes to taking over existing institutions as well as creating new ones.
"We have to take over and use existing institutions--and not to reform them, but transform them."
--Avi Lewis, The Leap
In terms of how transformative change happens, Lewis said, one of the most exciting things now happening is "a renewed interest among social movements in North America to engage with the electoral sphere. And part of that is a recognition of the existential urgency and the short time left on the clock. There isn't time to build institutions from the ground up if we're serious about the imminence of the climate crisis. And so we have to take over and use existing institutions--and not to reform them, but transform them."
But that's not all. Progressive forces, he added, also "need to build new institutions at the same time" in order to challenge the corrupted political mechanisms that have so far shown to be incapable of making the kind of radical changes both climate science and outrageous levels of inequality demand.
"We need to do it all," Lewis said. "We just simply need to do it all, so I think it's an interesting historical moment when you're seeing lots of social movement energy trying to intervene in the electoral sphere as a shortcut to taking over and trying to use existing institutions. This is a recognition of the conditions of urgency we are now forced to work under."
Puerto Rico - Austerity or a Green New Deal?
Naomi Klein, who is married to Lewis and also helped launch The Leap initiative in Canada, told Common Dreams in the same conversation that the choice before humanity is no longer a choice between half-measures and bold solutions. Responding with market-based prescriptions or paying lip service to the threat while continue to drill for, mine, and burn fossil fuels is what we've been doing for the last 20 years. And as the science has become more dire and the here-and-now evidence of climate catastrophes pile up all around us, she says, that approach has not even come close to solving the problem. In fact, it has only increased the threats we face.
The choice now, says Klein, is one "between a model that failed and a model that is really our last chance."
"There are a lot of people on the liberal end of the spectrum who can talk a really good game about the urgency of the climate crisis," she explained, "but if we look at the track record of the kind of legislation they produced; the kind of one-step-forward and three-steps-back approach" that took place under President Obama in the U.S. during his tenure--and happening now under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada--there are important lessons that must be recognized.
"We are up against the wall... For some reason we are acting like it's thirty years ago when it would have been possible to gradually introduce renewables and maybe have a carbon tax--that is not the stage we're at now."
--Naomi Klein, journalist & activistKlein says the all-of-the-above energy strategy pushed by Democrats under Obama was absurd, given the science. Now, she says, that is exactly the model that cannot be replicated.
"We are up against the wall," Klein declared. "We need a rapid transition off fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable energy. That is not an all-of-the-above approach. And for some reason we are acting like it's 30 years ago when it would have been possible to gradually introduce renewables and maybe have a carbon tax--that is not the stage we're at now."
The demand for a Green New Deal--an energy and economic transformation on a global scale and matched with a deep commitment to climate justice--is now one of the unifying and defining features of the international progressive movement and it was a big topic of conversation throughout the weekend in Vermont.
In her assessment of the conference, and the purpose behind it, Jane Sanders said the institute's goal was to amplify the most important issues that good people are organizing around in communities across the country and the world.
"There are so many people that are doing really important work, and it can be anything," she told Common Dreams on the final day of the Gathering. "It doesn't have to be that you have to go across the world to go help people with a big project. It can be trying to influence the education system. Or everybody can make a difference no matter what you're doing. So you don't have to spend a lot of time or money to do it, you just have to come to it with kindness."
"I guess that's my message to progressives around the world," she concluded. "Where do you want to take it? And please just come from a sense of kindness, spirit of generosity, and inclusion."
In his final thoughts about the trends that are being seen and felt around the world--as well as the ideas, issues, and solutions offered by those at the Sanders Institute event--Avi Lewis said the big question was not whether or not the prescriptions on offer were the correct ones, but whether or not there was enough time, movement cohesion, and political acumen to see them executed within the time frame now available to humanity.
The big question, he concluded, is this: "Can we hear this in time to really change course--fundamentally, economically, and culturally? This is the great drama of our age. Can enough of us hear the alarm bells?"
Most Popular