While driving home from walking my dog Boss, I ran smack into Bernie Sanders' grass roots campaign,.
While driving home from the park where I go to exercise my dog, I came across a pleasant surprise. Cruising through the Virginia Highland entertainment district I spotted a group of young folks carrying Sanders for President signs. Delighted, I honked my horn and gave them the thumbs up. Naturally they responded with smiles and waves.
As it turns out, I'd run into a spontaneous demonstration by the just organized, ad hoc, local Sanders campaign. When I say "just organized" I mean it literally. I later found out they had come from the groups first meeting that was held a few blocks down the street at Manuel's Tavern, a long time Democratic Party watering hole.
Although, I missed the meeting I know a number of folks who did attend. They're pretty enthused and pointed me an article about the gathering in one of our local weeklies. Some of the highlights that show why they're fired up:
More than 130 supporters packed the new bar of Manuel’s Tavern on Sunday to start building a grassroots network for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, the perpetually ruffled and outspoken socialist who’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination.
"More than 130" may not sound like much but believe me it's impressive by Atlanta standards. Even more encouraging was this:
The crowd was overwhelmingly white but spanned multiple generations. For nearly every gray-haired Atlanta liberal activist, there was a college student. Judging from the group’s Facebook page, the work didn’t end yesterday. Activists are sharing breakdowns of counties to target.
Instances where you have a Progressive gatherings in this town that are inter- generationally balanced are vanishingly rare, so that alone would be cause for excitement. While the description of the crowd as "overwhelmingly white" sounds like a negative at first glance, it's actually encouraging that the crowd wasn't entirely white.
The harsh truth is that progressive politics in Atlanta reflect the continuing division between the Black and "white" communities in the city. Whether this can be overcome is one of the challenges the Sanders campaign faces. The fact that some people of color are already interested suggest that we have a real opportunity for outreach and solidarity, if we're savvy enough not to blow it.
You can read the whole article here.
1:08 PM PT: Here's the link to the Georgia for Bernie FB page which has photos from the event along with assorted other goodies.
https://www.facebook.com/...