On 2 June, 1964, Robert Penn Warren sat down to talk with Malcolm X about Black Muslims leader’s thoughts on the civil rights movement and the oppression and racism imposed on blacks by the white race for his book: Who Speaks For The Negro?

For the boy who grew up in semi-rural southeastern Ohio in a culture about as white as white could get, discovering a window to what being a negro meant in the words of Malcolm X as recorded by Alex Haley in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, was formative. I have always viewed that alien experience through what I read there on the cusp of my adolescence.

Another Black writer who I greatly admire is Ta-Nehisi Coates(who was also greatly shaped by Malcolm’s words). He too makes me think and this morning I find myself pondering what being guiltless means through a portion of that conversation more than 50 years ago.

Warren: Can a person, an American of white blood, be guiltless?

Malcolm: Guiltless?

Warren: Yes.

Malcolm: Well, you can only answer it this way, by turning it around. Can the Negro who is the victim of the system escape the collective stigma that is placed upon all Negroes in this country?

And the answer is “no.” Because Ralph Bunch is an internationally recognized and respected diplomat can’t stay in a hotel in Georgia, which means that no matter what the accomplishment, the intellectual, the academic or professional level of the Negro is, collectively he stands condemned. Well, the white race in America is the same way. As individuals it is impossible for them to escape the collective crime committed against the Negroes in this country collectively.

Warren pushes harder:

Warren: Let us say a white child of three or four, something like that, who is outside of conscious decisions or valuations … Is the reaction to that child the same?

Malcolm: The white child, although he has not committed any of … the deeds that have produced the plight that the Negro finds himself in? Is he guiltless? The only way you can determine that is to take the Negro child who is only four years old—Can he escape though he’s only four years old? Can he escape the stigma of discrimination and segregation? He’s only four years old.

There are very few people who would make this argument, and the reason isn’t because it’s a bad argument. In fact it’s a beautiful argument—an argument against “that country” of thin and disposable innocence. In this country, our country, where black four-year-olds are demonstrably not innocent, it is impossible for white four-year-olds to be innocent. Racism condemns that black child to toil as surely as it condemns that white child to the unearned fruits of that same toil. In this, Malcolm recognizes the true monstrosity of racism. The point is not that the white four-year-old is a bad person, immoral, or even personally corrupted. The point is that the system of racism, one way or another, eats its young—all of its young.

To live in a society, to be part of a village, is to assume the mantel of that society’s guilt. We can live with that guilt, we can run away or we can fight for justice. No one is an innocent free of the sins of the parents.

Gawker’s lede for last night’s Bernie Sanders appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert goes like this:

While tonight’s Late Show interview with Bernie Sanders was absent any of the respective tears or deep, deep discomfort that characterized Colbert’s two biggest moments so far (and at least compared to every other candidate interview we’ve seen), Sanders’ still manages to leave you with the impression that the man is just so goddamn human.

Especially as we recover from this week’s GOP debate (where even Trump fell into the rote, low-energy motions he’s usually so quick chastise), Sanders’ not-at-all-youthful vitality is positively jarring. He may be hunched in his chair. He’s swimming in a coat several sizes too big. And he never glances at the camera even once. But as soon as Colbert pushes him on his distaste for capitalism—Sanders’ favorite topic of all—the unscripted, bubbling rage in his voice is impossible to miss.

Also, here is the tease for Bernie’s segment…

Jessica Glenza and Nicky Woolf writing for The Guardian in Texas schoolboy arrested over clock to visit Obama as authorities defend action lede:

A 14-year-old Texas boy who was arrested after bringing a homemade clock to school has accepted an invitation to visit the White House as school and city officials insisted they made the right decision when they handcuffed, interrogated and arrested him this week.

Ahmed Mohamed, an engineering enthusiast, brought the clock to MacArthur high school in Irving, Texas, on Monday to show one of his teachers. Hours later, he was handcuffed and arrested by school resource officers as part of “standard procedure” after being summoned to a school office to explain the device.

After his story swept across the internet and drew messages of support from tech companies and the US president, Ahmed told reporters outside his home on Wednesday: “I built the clock to impress my teacher, but when I showed it to her she thought it was a threat to her. It was really sad that she took a wrong impression of it.”

He said he was still suspended until Thursday and was thinking of transferring to a different school.

Wearing a Nasa T-shirt, Ahmed thanked his supporters on social media, as well as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. There was a cheer when he announced that he would be visiting the White House. Ahmed received this tweet:

— President Obama (@POTUS)
September 16, 2015

Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.

Then there is this from Down Under…

On 8 December 2004, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) slipped Section 111 of Title I, Division J, of the Fiscal Year 2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act (Pub. L. 108-447) and a new national holiday into our collective consciousness: Constitution Day. Our Constitution is the single most important document in Human History; read it all.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Please keep reading…

I never leave home without my pocket-sized copy of our Constitution.
Celebrate Constitution And Citizenship Day.
A Day Set Aside for the Constitution.

Give Bernie credit for accepting and showing up to speak to the weekly convocation at Liberty University where he attempted to make the case that there could be common ground between his agenda of broadening economic equality and seeking social justice and the political desires of the students at the school founded by Jerry Falwell. Writing in Bernie Sanders’ appeal to Christian students met with polite scepticism for The Guardian, Dan Robert tell us that the outcome wasn’t, well, too horrible.

On Monday, Bernie Sanders sought to reach across the political chasm that divides liberal America from evangelical conservatives. At Liberty University in southern Virginia, the Vermont senator spoke to Christian students, urging them to find common ground with him on issues of poverty and social injustice.

Quoting from the Bible in front of a crowd of 12,000, the closest challenger to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination claimed soaring income inequality was a moral issue that should transcend traditional political divides.

“When we talk about morality and when we talk about justice, we have to understand that there is no justice when so few have so much and so many have so little,” he said. “I want you to go into your hearts: how can we talk about justice when we turn our backs on the children of our country?”

The speech was received politely, but other than among a small group of vocal supporters from other local colleges, it was met with almost total silence by the majority of students who had packed into the campus arena for their weekly “convocation”.

I can imagine that the majority of the students who heard Bernie ask: how can we talk about justice when we turn our backs on the children of our country? immediately thought to themselves: what about all the unborn children slaughtered?

“I understand that issues such as abortion and gay marriage are very important to you and that we disagree on those issues,” he began.

“I get that. But let me respectfully suggest that there are other issues out there that are of enormous consequence to our country and the world and that maybe, just maybe, we don’t disagree on them. And maybe, just maybe, we can work together in trying to resolve them.”

Nevertheless, a question on abortion came up immediately after the speech and some in the crowd said it was a point of difference they could not overlook.

“I did not personally agree with the views that he had but that’s because I am a Christian Republican,” said Karis Hicks, a 19-year-old sophomore. “I am pro-life. I believe children in the womb should be protected.”

This is a difference between Bernie and the likes of Mitt Romney who famously dismissed the 47 percent of voters who would never vote for him. Bernie is willing to work to make the case, to perhaps tilt at that windmill.

Bernie wants to be the President of the United States of America, not the leader of the sycophants of the 1 percent.

Bernie Sanders emails:

Dear Jeff,

It’s time to break up the banks.

The greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street drove this country into the worst recession since the Great Depression. Their casino-style gambling has helped divert 99 percent of all new income to the top one percent. And it has contributed to the most unequal level of wealth and income distribution of any major country on earth.

In the midst of all of this grotesque inequality sits a handful of financial institutions that are still so large, the failure of any one would cause catastrophic risk to millions of Americans and send the world economy into crisis.

If it’s too big to fail, it’s too big to exist. That’s the bottom line.

I introduced legislation in Congress that would break up banks that are too big to fail. Can you sign on as a citizen co-sponsor of my bill to show your support?

Click here to add your name as a citizen co-sponsor of my bill to break up the banks.

Banking should be boring. It shouldn’t be about making as much profit as possible by gambling on esoteric financial products. The goal of banking should be to provide affordable loans to small and medium-sized businesses in the productive economy, and to Americans who need to purchase homes and cars.

That is not what these financial institutions are doing. They’re instead creating an economy which is not sustainable from a moral, economic, or political perspective. It’s a rigged economy that must be changed in fundamental ways.

Let’s be clear who we’re talking about: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and other institutions; they’re all too big to fail. So they must be broken up.

Wall Street can’t be an island unto itself separate from the rest of the productive economy whose only goal is to make as much money as possible. I fear very much that the financial system is even more fragile than many people may perceive.

Millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, while virtually all new income goes to the people who need it the least. In fact, the top 14 wealthiest people saw their wealth grow more last year than the bottom 130 million have in total.

We must break this cycle to save the middle class in America. Can you show your support for my bill to break up the banks?

I’m running for President of the United States because I believe that it is incumbent on us to try to take back our country from the billionaires and make it thrive again for the working and middle class. Breaking up the banks is a critical part to making that a reality.

Thank you for all of your support.

Senator Bernie Sanders

Not since President Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, has there been such talk.

Bully for you Bernie!

Bernie emails:

Dear Jeff,

Earlier this week I spoke at Liberty University. For those of you who do not know, Liberty University is a deeply religious institution. It is a school which tries to understand the meaning of morality and the words of the Bible, within the context of a very complicated modern world. It was founded by the Reverend Jerry Falwell, and the vast majority of people at Liberty strongly disagree with me, and perhaps you, about abortion, marriage equality, and other issues.

You might be asking yourself, “Why on earth would Bernie Sanders go there?” It is a fair question within the context of our modern politics.

I spoke at Liberty University because I believe that it is important for those with different views in our country to engage in civil discourse—not just Continue Reading »

I already had Matthew Teague’s Bernie Sanders, who? Winning over southern black voters the next hurdle tabbed for reading when Mano Singham pointed me to Terrell Jermaine Starr’s Why Aren’t More Black Voters Feeling the Bern? Mano wrote:

The glaring weakness in the early stages of the campaign of Bernie Sanders had been his inability to connect with and gain the support of a significant chunk of the black community. The early stages of his campaign was focused almost exclusively on economic issues, seemingly with the belief that people would understand that economic injustices were at the root of many of the difficulties faced by the African American community and that his long-standing record of strong support for civil rights would speak for itself.

This high-level view of social problems is a common attitude among old-style lefties that I recall from my own experience in Sri Lanka back in the day. They acknowledged the injustices experienced by minority groups but felt that they were a consequence of the capitalist class exploiting divisions among people for its own gain and that the main task was to break the power of that class, institute economic justice, and then everything else would follow. But the minority groups did not like their immediate problems being treated as a secondary effect to be addressed somewhere down the road, and were demanding more immediate actions to redress them.

To his credit, Sanders seems to have realized his error and is now speaking out more forcefully about the issues that concern the black community. Terrell Jermaine Starr has an excellent article that critiques Sanders’s missteps but also gives suggestions for what he can do about it.

I agree. Mano, as always, does his own excellent job of pulling the meat from Starr’s article (though I suggest that reading the whole piece is more than worth the time investment.) I won’t attempt to better either Starr’s essay or Mano’s take, but I will add my own thoughts on Teague’s piece. Having just finished Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between The World And Me, I agree that Bernie missed an opportunity when he spoke at the university that Coates characterized as my Mecca.

Daryl Harris, chair of the political science department at Howard University, remembers feeling puzzled by a visit Sanders made to speak on 28 April. At the time, the senator had promised to announce before the end of the month whether he would run for president.

“There was just a buzz in the air. Everyone knew he would announce,” Harris said.

Howard—a traditionally black university—seemed like the ideal setting for such an announcement.

“But he didn’t,” Harris said. Instead, he said, Sanders gave a boilerplate talk about labor issues and other standard democratic socialist points that fell flat with his audience. Listeners wanted solutions on a more immediate matter: a recent wave of deaths among black men in confrontations with police.

“He didn’t address racial issues at all, until someone prompted him with a question at the end,” Harris said. “It seemed like an afterthought.”

I also, however, get the importance of what Mano called a high-level view of social problems [that] is a common attitude among old-style lefties. Adali Stevenson suffered from this, from being pigeonholed as an intellectual, in the ’50s. The opposite was true of President Bill Clinton. His playing of the saxophone on television, his ability to feel others pain placed him on the ground and not in the clouds.

Bernie has been on the ground—his credentials are solid but not, perhaps known well enough and are also open to a what have you done for me lately interpretation.

Naomi Klein broader message in This Changes Everything resonates for me here. Climate change can seem too big, too removed, too impossible in light of young black men being shot down in the street or Syrian refugees pouring across boarders in Southeast Europe, but, as Klein makes the case, the root of Climate Change, rampant and unapologetic greed in the hands of, in Robert Reich’s term, supercapitalism, is also at the root of nearly all other social injustices. Dig out the root and you kill the weed.

Making that case will not be easy, but the onus is on Bernie (and the rest of us old lefties) to do so in clear language to communicate that we can’t defeat the jungle by hacking at the branches.

Previously…

Bernie Sanders does not exist in a vacuum. Peoples are tired of living in a constant state of fear engendered by years of Neo-Conservative shock-doctrine war and tales of boogiemen out to get us. Gary Younge, writing in Corbyn victory energises the alienated and alienates the establishment for The Guardian opines:

Ascetic and unassuming, slight of stature and soft of timbre, Corbyn was always as unlikely a recipient of his own “mania” as the diffident tennis player Tim Henman. He’s a man of conviction but little charisma.

But then little of this is really about Corbyn. He is less the product of a movement than the conduit for a moment that has parallels across the western world. After almost a decade and a half of war, crisis and austerity, leftwing social democrats in all their various national guises are enjoying a revival as they seek to challenge the neo-liberal consensus. In the US, the self-described “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders is outpolling Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in key states. Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece and Die Linke in Germany are all posing significant challenges to mainstream centre-left parties.

The evidence suggests that yes, people are finally revolted enough, and clarity, a more lucid word than transparency, is a driver.

Corbyn’s ability to answer questions in a clear and straightforward manner amounts to a rebuke to the political class in general. In this and many other respects, his strengths were accentuated by the weakness of his leadership opponents. With their varying degrees of milquetoast managerialism, they were not only barely distinguishable from each other but had platforms that were forgettable even when they were decipherable. Short of perhaps a speeding ticket, they didn’t appear to have a single conviction between them. There is nothing to suggest any of them were more electable than Corbyn.

So for Labour members seeking a leader who stood for more than office, Corbyn was the obvious choice. Nobody, least of all Corbyn, saw this coming.

His trajectory these last few months has conformed to that dictum for radical reformers generally attributed to Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

This is a long game. Platitudes are great, but we must not be mollified by them.

Younge concludes: Not only is Corbyn not being granted a honeymoon, relatives are determined to have a brawl at the wedding.

That presages our own convention next July in Philadelphia.

In her masterwork This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate, Naomi Klein makes the very strong case that indigenous people, and their standing as first stewards for much of the colonized lands around the globe, are key to subverting the destruction of Big Carbon.

Recognizing the basic rights of people whose lands have been stolen at gunpoint and fully supporting their claims is central to this effort.

Years ago, in formulating my own position on the question of Israel and Palestine, I began to make the argument that Israel was the last great act of colonization and that the people of Palestine were, in general, the equivalent of all indigenous people everywhere and, in particular, American Indians. How, I asked, might my family feel if the United Nations were to declare my home state of Ohio to be the homeland of the descendants of the peoples who lived here in the 18th century and that these lands were to be returned under a United Nations mandate?

That thought experiment has moved closer to reality.

Chris McGreal, reporting for The Guardian in US should return stolen land to Indian tribes, says United Nations writes:

A United Nations investigator probing discrimination against Native Americans has called on the US government to return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes as a step toward combatting continuing and systemic racial discrimination.

James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said no member of the US Congress would meet him as he investigated the part played by the government in the considerable difficulties faced by Indian tribes.

Anaya said that in nearly two weeks of visiting Indian reservations, indigenous communities in Alaska and Hawaii, and Native Americans now living in cities, he encountered people who suffered a history of dispossession of their lands and resources, the breakdown of their societies and “numerous instances of outright brutality, all grounded on racial discrimination”.

“It’s a racial discrimination that they feel is both systemic and also specific instances of ongoing discrimination that is felt at the individual level,” he said.

Anaya said racism extended from the broad relationship between federal or state governments and tribes down to local issues such as education.

We are a nation, for all our sentiments of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, founded on the idea that might makes right and that that might belongs to white male landowners, property thieves.

We have done much to make that position more inclusive, but we still have far to go.

Bernie emails…

Dear Jeff,

Back when I was in the U.S. House, I was the first member of Congress to take constituents across the border to Canada to highlight the huge disparity between the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. and other nations.

On that first trip were a number of women struggling with breast cancer.

I will never forget the tears in the eyes of women who were able to buy the breast cancer drug tamoxifen in Canada at one tenth of the price they were paying for that drug in the U.S.
In 2014, the pharmaceutical industry spent over $250 million on lobbying and campaign
contributions—far more than any other industry in America. This grotesque spending results in Americans paying more money for medication than anyone else in the world.

The time has come to say very loudly and very clearly that enough is enough. The greed of the pharmaceutical industry is killing Americans. It has got to stop.

Last year, 35 million Americans could not get their prescriptions filled because they could not afford it.

People should not have to go without the medication they need just because their elected officials aren’t willing to challenge the drug and health care industry lobby. Yet that is exactly what is happening.

I have a plan to change this. Last week I introduced a bill in the Senate—and when I am president, I will work to make it law—that will stop the soaring costs of prescription drug prices.

Add your name to support my plan to reduce drug prices and send a message to Congress and the prescription drug lobbyists that Americans should not die because they can’t afford drugs.

My plan to reduce prescription drug prices is based around getting a better deal for the American people, and keeping drug companies in check over Continue Reading »

OK, so a tank that gets three gallons to the mile is probably not the best image for fighting fracking, but I get Vivienne Westwood’s message that politicians who permit, or even encourage fracking in their countries are committing acts of chemical warfare no less heinous than those of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar Assad.

Haroon Siddique, reporting in Vivienne Westwood drives tank to Cameron’s home in fracking protest for The Guardian writes:

Used to sticking two fingers up at the establishment, Vivienne Westwood has driven a tank to David Cameron’s constituency home in a protest against fracking.

The fashion designer took up the position usually reserved for the tank’s gunner on top of the vehicle’s turret as it made its way through Witney to the prime minister’s home in Chadlington, Oxfordshire, to carry out a fake “chemical attack” on Friday.

She said: “Cameron accuses foreign leaders such as President Gaddafi and President Assad of supposedly using chemicals on their own people as a justification for regime change.

“But he is doing precisely that here in Britain by forcing toxic, life-threatening fracking chemicals on his own people against the advice of his own chief scientist.

“It’s time for regime change in Britain. Cameron plans to force householders to surrender their land and endure fracking underneath their homes. Britons no longer have any choice but to fight back.”

The protest was in response to last month’s announcement by the government that it would offer licences for fracking in 27 locations in Yorkshire, the north-west and the east Midlands. Westwood condemned the decision as undemocratic and said that Cameron was guilty of nimbyism for exempting his own constituency from the controversial method of extracting gas from deep beneath the ground.

So, poisoned air and water is less dramatic than mustard gas, but chemical warfare is chemical warfare.

Bill Clinton had Tony Blair. Bernie Sanders has Jeremy Corbyn.

This is a good outcome.

Rowena Mason, reporting in Labour leadership: Jeremy Corbyn elected with huge mandate for The Guardian writes:

Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the British Labour party, in a stunning first-round victory that dwarfed even the mandate for Tony Blair in 1994.

Rolling coverage of the Labour special conference where the results of the leadership election and the deputy leadership election are announced, with reaction and analysis

Corbyn won with nearly 59.5% of first-preference votes, beating rivals Andy Burnham, who trailed on 19%, and Yvette Cooper who received 17%. The “Blairite” candidate Liz Kendall came last on 4.5%.

Minutes after his victory, Corbyn said the message is that people are “fed up with the injustice and the inequality” of Britain.

Now that, sounds like a familiar message.

“The media and many of us, simply didn’t understand the views of young people in our country. They were turned off by the way politics was being conducted. We have to and must change that. The fightback gathers speed and gathers pace,” he said.

The north London MP is one of the most unexpected winners of the party leadership in its history, after persuading Labour members and supporters that the party needed to draw a line under the New Labour era of Blair and Gordon Brown.

Or, in the case of the United States and our Democratic Party, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Dan Roberts, writing in The outsider: how Bernie Sanders is winning over Democratic voters for The Guardian reports:

“Press 1 for revolution,” urge the hosts of a teleconference call for 17,000 union activists as they seek to sign up more volunteers for a leftwing insurgency.

Pundits scoff at their naivety, but opinion polls show the leader of this revolution – a grouchy socialist with unkempt white hair and a disdain for media niceties – pulling ahead of more-polished establishment rivals in the race to lead his party.

This grizzled veteran is proving a surprise hit on university campuses and social media, blending old-fashioned rallies with an online buzz that compensates for his lack of support from the party machinery.

Such a scenario might seem little more than a fantasy in an era of focus groups and political triangulation, but the remarkable fact is that this is the situation currently faced by parties on both sides of the Atlantic, in two countries with the most avowedly capitalist economies on the planet.

President Thomas Jefferson wrote: I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. After decades of voting for the lesser of two evils, I’m ready for a bit of rebellion.

“This is an incredible moment in history,” says RoseAnn DeMoro, director of National Nurses United, the first big labour union to endorse Sanders. “The self-organising is off the charts. It is hard for Bernie’s staff to keep up, but that is how political revolutions happen. This is what a revolution looks like,” she says.

Take a good hard look America. See what DeMoro and I see.

Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver emails:

Jeff,

When we entered this race, people thought there was no way we could compete in New Hampshire.
Now we’re ahead in New Hampshire: Bernie Sanders has 41%, while Hillary Clinton has 32%.

Then people said there was no way we could win Iowa. Now we’re ahead there, too, according to a new poll released just this morning:

Iowa Democratic Caucus Poll

Bernie Sanders: 41%
Hillary Clinton: 40%

Now our opponents claim to be building an “electoral firewall” in other states across the country. Let’s show them the prairie fire we are starting in Iowa can’t be stopped.

Our successes in these polls are a clear indication that Bernie’s message is resonating with voters. And the more people hear about Bernie’s vision of economic, racial and social justice, the more our support grows. But we need your help to keep spreading the word.

We don’t have any Super PACs or billionaires. This campaign is being funded by hundreds of thousands of Americans. Your support is not only appreciated, it is essential to the success of this campaign.

Your contribution will allow us to invest in people, helping them organize their communities, and build an organization of people who are empowered to create change all across the country.

The organization we’re building will win Iowa, will win New Hampshire, will win the Democratic nomination for president, will win the White House, and that, most importantly, will usher in the political revolution that our country so desperately needs.

Is a level playing field too much to ask? That depends, of course, on whether or not the extreme tilt puts you on the high ground, above the rising flood, or not.

Emma Howard, writing for The Guardian’s Keep Carbon In The Ground campaign emails:

Dear Jeff,

On the wall of the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation visitor centre in Seattle are eleven words: “Every person deserves the chance to live a healthy, productive life”.

Under these words yesterday, a group of 24 environment, religious, student and parenting groups launched a campaign calling on the world’s richest man to put his money where his mouth is and divest the $1.4bn his charity has invested in the fossil fuels companies polluting the planet. They plan to return every day until he divests.

Seattle’s former mayor, Mike McGinn is at the campaign’s helm. As he told us, if Gates wants to tackle climate change, he can’t “hit the brake and the accelerator at the same time.”

The campaign – organised by 350.org’s Seattle branch—has been animated by the support from people around the world for the Keep it in the Ground campaign. That means you. The Seattle campaigners say that want to build on that momentum and apply more pressure right in Gates’s back yard.

The people of Seattle have led the fight against climate change before—they were the first city in the world to back divestment back in 2011 when the city divested its operating funds from fossil fuels. In doing so, it became the launchpad for the global divestment movement.

As near as I can tell so far, the nearest chapter of 350.org is in Ann Arbor, Michigan for fuck’s sake and a 350-sponsored event here in Cleveland has been canceled. I’m working on fixing that.

So, New Hampshire is next door to Bernie Sander’s state of Vermont and he might be seen as something of a favorite son there, but I don’t think so. The voters of New Hampshire are not prone to jumping on band wagons. This news is very good.

From the agency’s Washington bureau Reuters, in Sanders takes nine-point lead over Clinton in New Hampshire: poll, reports:

Senator Bernie Sanders has opened a nine-point lead over fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton among party supporters in New Hampshire, according to an NBC News/Marist Poll released on Sunday.

The survey showed that 41 percent of Democratic voters would back Sanders while 32 percent would cast a vote for Clinton if the poll were held today and Vice President Joe Biden were on the ballot.

Support for Biden, who has yet to decide whether to run after the death of his son Beau in May, was at 16 percent.

Draft Biden, a group urging him to put his name forward, said the poll showed “a deep desire among Democratic primary voters to have Vice President Biden join the Presidential race.”

In July, Sanders had 32 percent support while Clinton had 42 percent backing in the same poll.

Sanders, from next-door Vermont, has appealed to young and working-class voters as he challenges the former first lady and front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

The news just gets better and better.