I witnessed something yesterday unlike I’ve ever seen before in my lifetime. Even Obama’s 2008 rallies, as great as they were, didn’t quite have the kind of unabashed spirit and joyful exuberance I found today in droves. It was hard to believe that it was only two days ago that an email arrived announcing the event. And this was to be the first time in almost 40 years a president or presidential candidate visited this poorest concentrated area of the United States.
A park in the South Bronx was the site of one of the single most moving, uplifting, spiritual and inspiring congregations of human beings I’ve ever been in. For a middle-aged white guy I never felt more at home with my species. The overriding sentiment was of good will and joy. There was just unbounded joy everywhere. If you could bottle what was elicited today you’d have global contentment leading to everlasting peace.
There were fly Hip Hop dudes and hip mama’s from the barrio, next to freak flag-flyin’ stalwart hippies and young bearded hipsters. There were Muslim women in headdresses, throngs of excited black school kids, Hispanic women together with their kids all in Bernie buttons, young people of all stripes proudly proclaiming themselves “Socialists.” I saw black women downright giddy at the prospect of seeing Bernie in the flesh. Giddy. I saw Puerto Rican nationalists with their faces painted, and heard kids at the feet of their parents on neighborhood stoops chanting “Let’s Go Bernie!” All mixing it up, toasting each other with all the naturalness of long lost friends, comrades in a joyous struggle. #MakeAmericaLoveAgain.
“Feel The Bern” and “Fuck Trump” t-shirts were selling like wild at sidewalk set-ups all around the perimeter.
It felt like something between Woodstock and a Caribbean carnivale, mixed with Wattstax and Occupy Wall St.
People were clearly there for a reason, there was little doubt. Everybody knew the speech lines, the issues and intimately understood how bad they’ve been fucked over by the status quo of politics as usual beholden to big money/Wall St. Everybody felt like we were going to win. With an unbelievably immense turnout, how could we not? On Twitter, we were finding out that the opponent was caught on film mixing it up with a Greenpeace activist, flaring her anger in the face of a protester who up challenged her fossil fuel donors. Meanwhile, she was also giving a speech, a little upstate at Purchase University in Westchester. About 300 people showed, including 50 protesters.
We were here today by the thousands and thousands and thousands to say Enough Is Enough. And to make a loud and clear statement to the the political world and the media: New York is All In For Bernie Sanders, big-time!
A cop on the street at around 6pm told me there were about 20,000. Probably was a lot more by show time. It was MASSIVE.
I saw this headline just now at Huffington Post, “Hillary Clinton’s Support Among Nonwhite Voters Has Collapsed,” but wasn’t sure if I believed it.