On a cold wintery Thursday last week, myself and 6 other Bernie Sanders grassroots Volunteers met at the Chappaqua train station in NY. This was my 3rd trip to BERN Chappaqua, to hand out hand out Bernie lit. I call this the “Chappaqua Project”, a sort of play on words based on Richard Mellon Scaifes “Arkansas Project” which was run from the American Spectator magazine and David Brock and was intended to take down the Clintons in the 1990’s. The point of the Chappaqua Project was to establish a Sanders presence in Hillary’s hometown, right in her backyard.
Not that elections are won or lost by employing these kinds of activities, but events like this do garner media attention, especially if you feed info to the local press. The opportunity was there to be taken, so we have to grab it and hold on.
So I was finally contacted by a reporter from the county paper. I did a 20 minute interview by phone Wednesday and he met us at the Chappaqua train Station on Thursday.
A small gaggle of young people gathered in the dimly lit overpass, unified in their support for the one man in America who must be giving Hillary Clinton a bad case of hives — Bernie Sanders. So, in a manner of speaking, the Sanders volunteers were ensconced in the belly of the beast, which was the whole point.
The reporter gets it. We want him to come to Chappaqua so we can tell him our story and he wants the story. Hillary, we are the political revolution, and we are….knocking on your back door.
Michelle Castañeda, a 28-year-old, Yale graduate who is currently working toward a doctorate at Brown University, said Clinton’s presidential candidacy is far from inevitable. “You can’t underestimate Bernie’s power here in New York, or anywhere in the country,” Castañeda said. His backers, she said, have unbridled passion while Clinton suffers from an “enthusiasm gap.”
“People who support Hillary are at best tepid about their support,” she said. “They say she waffles on important issues; They say that she’s a political opportunist.” Castañeda called the former secretary of state a “technocratic incrementalist,” defined as someone who toys with small bits of policy initiatives and piles on “compromise upon compromise until you basically have nothing.”
Ouch. If that doesn’t make Hillary “feel the Bern,” nothing will.
This is why I sent my Mom a copy of the paper:
Sanders volunteers at the train station — all of whom were in their 20s, except for the “Westchester4Bernie” field coordinator, Roger Fox, who is 57.
Fox, who lives in Harrison, is a veteran organizer of political campaigns. He describes himself as an “FDR Democrat” and a “policy wonk.”
“We intend to prove that she’s not strong in her backyard,” he said.
Fox expressed confidence that Sanders would get the Democratic nomination, despite the long odds set by the pundits, the unofficial bookies of the political horse race. On Monday, he will organize a phone bank in Harrison to help get the vote out in Iowa.
Thursday I will interviewed on WVOX, 1160am at noon. If you’re in the NYC Westchester area tune in. Stay tuned, we’re going back to Chappaqua on Friday and we’re not going to surrender Chappaqua to Hillary. We’ve staked out Chappaqua and its now Sanders territory.
Heres the link to the Full Story with a cool pic of my crew.
This was in November with Barry.