Senator Bernie Sanders may have lost his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, but the Marxist message of social and economic transformation which he articulated during the campaign marches onward. Among the most ardent disseminators of that message are the members of Our Revolution, a movement which was established last year by supporters of Sanders’s White House run. Seeking to “reclaim democracy for the working people of our country” by “harnessing the transformative energy” of the “political revolution” that Sanders led, Our Revolution is headed by a board of directors that includes former NAACP president Ben Jealous, Arab American Institute founder James Zogby, and former Sanders chief-of-staff Huck Gutman. Earlier this year, Our Revolution endorsed Rep. Keith Ellison – who has numerous ties to Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islamic groups and to Louis Farrakhan’s notoriously anti-Semitic Nation of Islam – for the position of Democratic National Committee chairman.
Lamenting that most of America’s financial assets are “controlled by a tiny handful of individuals,” Our Revolution characterizes “wealth and income inequality” as “the great moral … economic … and … political issue of our time.” To diminish the “grotesque level” of inequality that pervades America, Our Revolution promotes policies that would: force “the wealthy and large corporations” to “pay their fair share in taxes”; increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour; put “at least 13 million Americans” to work by investing $1 trillion over five years on infrastructure projects; create “1 million jobs for disadvantaged young Americans” by investing $5.5 billion in a “youth jobs program”; expand taxpayer subsidies for rental assistance as well as the construction of “affordable housing” units; and expand Department of Housing and Urban Development programs for first-time homeownership,” particularly through down-payment assistance, loan guarantees, and a lowering of credit standards for underqualified loan applicants. Notably, these very same programs were some of the principal causes of the catastrophic housing crisis and economic meltdown of 2008.
Our Revolution contends that America is awash in “structural and institutional racism,” and cites, as proof, the fact that African-Americans are, on average, much more likely than whites to be arrested or incarcerated. The demonstrably higher levels of black criminality do not factor into the equation for Our Revolution. Moreover, the organization depicts blacks as the frequent victims of “hateful acts of violence” perpetrated by white “extremists who want to intimidate and terrorize black, brown and indigenous people in this country.” “Today in America,” says Our Revolution, “if you are black, you can be killed for getting a pack of Skittles during a basketball game. Or murdered in your church while you are praying.”
Our Revolution also objects to laws “requiring voters to show photo ID” at their polling places, “restricting same-day registration and early voting,” “purging voter rolls of ineligible names,” and disenfranchising convicted felons – on grounds that such statutes are akin to the “literacy laws and poll taxes” of yesteryear. Further evidence of racism, says Our Revolution, is the fact that black students are suspended or expelled from school at much higher rates than their white counterparts. Even the natural environment, Our Revolution claims, is affected by racism, as “communities of color” are “the hardest hit by air and water pollution.”
Asserting that America is not merely a racist country, but also a fundamentally sexist nation that “still has a long way to go in addressing the issue of gender inequality,” Our Revolution charges that the Republican Party in particular is committed to “blocking equal pay for equal work.” To address the “outrage that women earn just 78 cents for every dollar a man earns,” Our Revolution – presumably unaware of the fact that the 78-cent myth was thoroughly debunked decades ago – calls for the Paycheck Fairness Act to be signed into law.
Calling on all Americans to reject the “racism,” “bigotry,” and “anti-immigrant and xenophobic hysteria” that allegedly undergird conservative calls for border security and the strict enforcement of immigration laws, Our Revolution wishes to “build upon” President Barack Obama’s DACA and DAPA executive actions which granted millions of illegal immigrants an opportunity to obtain temporary work permits, tax rebates, Social Security cards, and protection from deportation. In addition, Our Revolution favors the establishment of “a swift and fair legislative roadmap to citizenship for the eleven million undocumented immigrants” in the U.S.; a rejection of “the politics of fear” promoted by critics of “sanctuary city” policies; and the termination of “so-called ‘merit-based’ … immigration policies that discriminate against women.”
In the realm of foreign affairs, OR exhorts the U.S. to “move away from policies that favor unilateral military action and preemptive war, and that make the United States the de facto policeman of the world.” In 2015 the organization supported the Iran nuclear agreement, which allowed the Islamist regime in Tehran to enrich uranium, build advanced centrifuges, purchase ballistic missiles, fund terrorism, and be guaranteed of a near-zero breakout time to a nuclear bomb approximately a decade down the road.
Additional policy priorities of Our Revolution aim to:
As you can plainly see, Our Revolution, despite its name, essentially holds all the major political positions that are espoused by modern-day mainstream Democrats. In other words, the revolution has already been fought and won within the Democratic Party. And as a result, the party has thoroughly rejected the traditional pro-American liberalism of JFK Democrats, and has embraced instead a Marxist
mindset rooted in perpetual, seething anti-Americanism.
Leave a Reply