Bernie & Me - A Coming of Age Tale in Vermont by Anonymous

A post from a guest blogger here, but I will proudly say his views represent mine. In fact, he tilted me towards Senator Sanders in the 2014/15 time frame long before Bernie become the phenomenon that he is today.
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I first met Bernie Sanders in 1987 or thereabouts as a student at Middlebury College in Vermont.  He was the popular incumbent mayor of Burlington, which was then a thriving, mid-sized city just 35 miles to the north, with a great theater and an Indian restaurant.  For this native of Calcutta, with its 10 million plus population, Burlington was a welcome refuge, easier to get to than Montreal. 

Having grown up relatively privileged as a middle/upper middle-class student in Calcutta, India, my transition to the idyllic Vermont town was not always easy.  Having literally arrived with $700 in cash on me, I found myself suddenly visibly brown and poor at Club Midd.  I remember having excitedly bought a lovely cardigan at a thrift store in town only to be acutely self-conscious when a classmate excitedly recognized it as their favorite sweater that they had donated the previous week!  I knew, for the first time in my life, what it meant to be “other” -- and gravitated toward others that seemed to be questioning the mainstream

Among college kids who were friendly with me were a bunch who had protested on campus against apartheid in South Africa and supported disinvestment by the college.  The Central American movement had begun and they started focusing on the excesses in El Salvador with U.S. military support in the mid-to-late 1980s which led to the rapid increase in the movement of refugees from the region. The Soviet empire had not yet collapsed and Middlebury, with its strong language and international programs, was a happy recruiting ground for both the Peace Corps and the CIA.  I also made many friends within the broader Vermont community.  Mid-week jazz at Woody’s became a regular haunt, with many independent thinkers of all political persuasions.  Occasionally Ben or Jerry from the eponymous ice cream company or the founder of Vermont Bicycle Tours joined their friends in the larger community as did members of the Bread & Puppet collective or the Bristol Theater. 

It was during these heady times that I started attending a political awareness club called Armadillos that invited the charismatic mayor of Burlington as a speaker.  I had vaguely heard about him, but the description of him as an independent socialist from Burlington was not much of an attraction. You see, as a privileged young boy in India in the 1980s, socialism had always been associated with long lines, thick unopened files and rent-seeking bureaucrats.  A young Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister and even the young dynast seemed to be challenging the old status quo.  So, I remember the first question I asked Bernie during the Armadillos forum related to my experience and challenging him to defend socialism. To my surprise, he engaged with me, gruff as ever, and explained what socialism meant to him and how he had revived Burlington.  I spoke to Bernie after the session and convinced that he was no Stalinist or Maoist, I stayed in touch.   

A few months later, I heard Bernie was considering a run for the U.S. House of Representatives and I heard him speak again.  He asked me if I wanted to accompany him for a few visits to voters.  I was intrigued and so the curious duo of a white-haired Brooklyn-accented independent socialist and a still fresh-off-the-boat Calcutta crusader with a posh Indian accent started knocking on doors in Addison County and beyond.  While the state had a mix of residents, the majority were not your dyed-in-the-wool hippies who moved from New York state to get away from it, but rather most were “real Vermonters.”  These were those who had lived in Vermont for at least two generations and prided themselves on their Yankee independence and conservatism.  And I watched how they looked suspiciously at Bernie, asking “Aren’t you a socialist or somethin’?”  And Bernie looked them in the eye and said that he believed in the family farm and how he was against corporatization of farming and how he wanted to go to Washington to stop acid rain from destroying the quality of life in Vermont and how the U.S. should leave Central American governments alone.  And they nodded agreeing with every word he said as he closed with “If that makes me a socialist, then sure, I’m a socialist, but vote for me if you agree with my beliefs.”  And there were many similar conversations with decent, conservative Vermonters across the state, from Chittenden County and Rutland and Montpelier to the Northeast Kingdom.

Bernie lost the 1988 election as the vote was split three ways between a weak Democratic candidate and a moderate Republican.  But Bernie was back at it in 1990, when he won convincingly to claim his place as Vermont’s only U.S. Representative.  And he has been consistent in his beliefs since then as he became one of Vermont’s two Senators in 2006 and has been re-elected twice with nearly 2/3 of the vote.  Examine his values – he is against extreme income inequality, supports parental leave, equal rights for all and health care as a human right.  He has marched against racial inequality and mass surveillance of citizens.  He has also teamed up with conservatives to introduce legislation when it was common sense to do so. 

My message to voters unsure of Bernie’s self-affixed socialist tag – look beyond the label and listen to the man, as Vermonters have for decades! There may be reasons you choose not to vote for him, but don’t let it be the label of socialist – the man is a social democrat at most and frankly, a decent public citizen in many of his impulses.  As a disclosure, I have not contributed to Bernie’s 2020 primary bid, because I have decided that I will only contribute in the general election race.