Fellow Class Warriors, Despair is Not an Option

Friends, Comrades, Berners, and My Dear Readers;

I know things look rough at the moment, we are not sweeping the elections like we hoped we would and the media is doing everything in their power to squash our spirits, to make us give up and accept Biden as our fate.

I know that we are tired and weary, and sick of the up hill battles we keep having to fight in this election.

The moderates and the establishment are telling Bernie to drop out, that our movement is failing, and that we should give up now because Biden has won a few of the primaries.

I know that it is disheartening, even disillusioning, to see a candidate who has no ground game and a problematic past be crowned as an inevitable victor by an out of touch elitist class. I know our feet are sore from walking from door to door and our hearts are broken from hearing so many tragic tails of rationed insulin, sky rocketing rents, and career crushing student loans.

I know it is maddening to see the media and our misinformed Boomer relatives say things about Bernie that are genuinely, factually, and mathematically not true. That his loss is inevitable, that he is either racist or sexist, that Trump is somehow his and our fault.

We are so tired of it all.

I am here to tell you something though, it may sound harsh, it may sound like I am being mean, but it needs to be said.

Buck up soldier!

This is class war, and in war you may lose a battle or two, but you do not surrender until the last soldier falls, and you hold your head up high until the end when you can crush your enemy once and for all.

We want this to be easier than it is or has been because we are sick, dying, panicking about our burning Earth and weary from living day to day, paycheck to paycheck. We want this to be easy because we have put in so much work, made so many calls, sacrificed so much time.

When we see someone like Bernie who has been so consistent, so integral, so engaging to the electorate, so ready to be on the right side of history, even when it’s not a popular side to be on, not be anointed with the highest office in our government but instead be smeared by people who will never in their lives understand the degree of privilege they have, it is heartbreaking, especially when we see them rally behind a genuine racist and senile sexist like Joe Biden.

But let us remember a few things that I think will help put this all into perspective;

Neither Bernie nor Biden has half of the delegates needed to lock the nomination, and there are 26 states left to vote, including New York and Pennsylvania.

Votes and delegates are still being counted in California and multiple counties in Texas are doing recounts.

Biden and Bernie are about to debate each other, ALONE! Just Biden and Bernie! The DNC is so nervous about it that they actually announced there will be no live audience at this debate. Biden will have to go against Bernie alone, no Klobuchar, Pete, or Bloomberg to hide behind

And this is the part I really want us to remember, because while I am sympathetic to the doom and gloom, I genuinely think we are really being pathetic if we give up just because a few out of touch pundits and capitalist party insiders are telling us to.

Here is some more perspective for you;

Nelson Mandela had to wait 27 years until he could live as a free man.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Freedom Riders were dragged and beaten by angry mobs with baseball bats.

How many times were the police and thugs called out to beat down striking laborers until unions got respect in this country?

Did the suffragettes not suffer beatings and rape just to cast a ballot one day?

Nothing historic or revolutionary ever happened easily. Many Freedom Fighters who came before us have endured much more than we will ever be capable of imagining, and you are telling me we are going to call it quits after a couple of primaries didn’t go our way?

No, that is not what this movement is about. I may be tired and weary, but I am not one to surrender to the likes of the capitalist class, I am not one to bend to their whim nor one to swallow their rhetoric.

They say go away, I say no way!

Bernie has never given up, why the hell would you?

Buck up soldier, this is class war, if we can’t handle a few primary losses, then the boomers are right, we are too soft.

I refuse to validate that fodder. You may be hurt and tired, but I am here today to say you are also strong, and you need to muster up every drop of that strength now.

To quote our dear Brother Cornel West, “Don’t be afraid of despair. Those who have never known despair have never lived!”

Do not fear the despair, use it as fuel, and carry onward like the Class Warrior and Freedom Fighter I know you are!