The only presidential candidate, Democratic or Republican, to have ever won the popular vote in the three early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders found himself celebrating his victory at the Nevada polls in Texas last weekend. On Sunday, over 12,000 people flooded the grounds of Vic Mathias Shores, along the river, in Austin to hear him speak.

Supporters started gathering over an hour before seating was supposed to begin, and stood in line patiently, talking to each other about politics, T-shirts and badges, and how they had attended Sanders’ last rally in Austin, in 2016. The weather was great and Austin Bands for Bernie put on a great show featuring Molly Burch’s “love songs for Bernie”, the Black Angels and Jordan Moser, among others, urging action against the Permian Highway Pipeline in Texas, exploitative drug companies, oil companies and climate change. As band after another came on stage to perform and talk about how President Bernie would take away power from thieves, oligarchs and plutocrats and give it back to the people, the audience responded with cheers and waving their Bernie signs, indicating an acceptance and urgency to address problems now being recognized as systemic.

“The powers that be are scared of Bernie, he’s too progressive, he’s too scary, we need a moderate,” author and activist Jim Hightower said at the podium. “He’s running a campaign that’s hotter than high school love.”

Houston’s Marianne Williamson, who dropped out of the presidential race in January, endorsed Bernie at the rally saying: “It is said that Bernie can’t beat Trump, they also said you can’t abolish slavery, or give women voting rights.” The former candidate, who enjoyed massive support among American celebrities and progressives, added: “He [Bernie] has been consistent. He has been convicted, he has been committed. And now it’s time. I’m here and you’re here, because it’s time for us to take a stand with Bernie.”

Austin residents love a good meditation, and that’s exactly what Bernie’s campaign manager Greg Casar asked the audience to do: close their eyes and meditate on a possible future. “Imagine a world where our kids are safe at school. Where the president isn’t calling us rapists and murderers. Imagine a world where the person next to you is not a target. Where every person can live in dignity and freedom…Now open your eyes. This world is within our reach. Can we do this?”

The response was a deafening “yes”.

“Are you ready to fight white supremacy? Are you ready to fight for Medicare for All? Green New Deal? Fight racists and white supremacists?” Yes to all. The audience by now was pumped from imagining the future and then it was time for Bernie to speak.

“The limitations of our imagination are in the form of the crises we face today. The wealthiest nation in the world can’t have half a million people sleeping on the streets,” he said.

“If the drug companies and Wall Street see this crowd, they will really feel nervous… this is their nightmare: when they see all over the country, millions demanding decent wages, quality education and healthcare as a human right not a privilege.”

While Texas being the hub of America’s oil and fracking industry has faced its share of climate-change-related disasters, Bernie announced his plan to create 20 million jobs through a transition from dirty energy to renewable energy. “Climate change is an existential threat, Houston is already familiar with that...We have a moral responsibility.” He said his plan on tackling climate change involved reaching out all over the globe including China, India and Pakistan, where instead of spending trillions of dollars on building and deploying weapons of mass destruction, the US could work with those countries to fight the effects of climate change.

He vowed to repeal Trump’s ‘racist’ immigration executive orders and stop demonising immigrants, and end ICE raids that have terrorised communities across the US.

“We have an odd sense of justice in this country… If you are a Wall Street executive, the government will bail you out [even] if you are a crook, but if you are a kid who gets arrested for marijuana you get arrested. We are going to change that criminal justice system,” he announced. Interestingly, without skipping a beat, several people in the crowd lit up joints (though weed isn’t legal in Texas).

He then promised to cancel all student debt in the country by taxing Wall Street and making them pay for it. This sounds like a dream or an exercise in meditation but instead of asking whether it can be done, people preferred to listen.

“No one from the press asks for Bernie signs,” a campaigner said to me, when I asked for one. “Why, not?” I asked.

“Maybe because they hate us?”

It’s true. The journalists in the press gallery were laughing at the bands asking the crowd to take action against the Permian Pipeline and other issues important to Texans. The political workers argue that it’s because media organisations are owned by corporations and their interests are tied to maintaining the status quo, and for journalists who interpret ‘credible source’ as someone in power, this isn’t surprising. This is also why they got the 2016 election results wrong, they say.

Shan Ali Khan, a lawyer from Dallas, who travelled to Iowa ahead of the caucuses there, talks about what Bernie means when he says they are building a “grassroots movement”. Bernie’s campaign volunteers are connected across states through social media. The focus is on being mobile, visiting door to door, calling up or texting as many people as possible, and making sure the methods and message is consistent across states. It involves reaching out to communities that are otherwise ignored when it comes to campaigning, and that’s being done by thousands of young people from a variety of backgrounds who understand this election as a fight for their own future.

As American voters prepare to head to the polls on Super Tuesday, March 3, when the most US states hold elections and over a third of all delegates are allotted to candidates, Senator Bernie Sanders appears to be dominating the polls. While this has left the establishment democrats scared to the point that the NY Times is reporting the party is willing to sabotage itself rather than allowing him to run, Bernie himself is quite clear: “We are running a campaign for the working class of America, by working class of America, from the working class of America.”

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2020