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A ‘FOCUS ON SOLIDARITY’ AND PROGRESSIVE SOLUTIONS AT LATEST
SANDERS INSTITUTE GATHERING  
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Jessica Corbett and Julia Conley
June 14, 2024
Common Dreams [[link removed]]

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_ Too often when covering advocacy work, the corporate media focuses
on "the controversy," O'Meara Sanders told Common Dreams. "What's the
controversy as opposed to what's the plan?" The Gathering set out to
offer an antidote to that dynamic. _

Jane O'Meara Sanders (right) speaks with attendees of The Sanders
Institute Gathering on May 31, 2024 in Burlington, Vermont, ((Photo:
Will Allen 2024 / via the Sanders Institute)

 

In preparing for The Sanders Institute Gathering this year, Jane
O'Meara Sanders and Dave Driscoll knew they would have to pry some of
the nation's leading advocates for climate action, labor rights, and
economic justice away from their crucial work for a few days.

But doing so meant that progressive leaders including Third Act
founder Bill McKibben
[[link removed]], One Fair Wage
president Saru Jayaraman, economist Stephanie Kelton, and Sen. Bernie
Sanders [[link removed]] (I-Vt.)
would be able to spend three days collaborating on solutions to some
of the most pressing issues facing communities across the United
States and the globe.

"We are all working so hard in our own areas," O'Meara Sanders
told _Common Dreams_ after the event wrapped up on June 2. "It
allowed people to get out of the silos that too often separate the
policymakers. So to have elected officials and advocates in so many
different areas, having them be able to come together and discuss
different things... it bodes well for the future."

Over three days filled with more than 15 livestreamed panel
discussions, film screenings, and other events, participants in the
Gathering learned about how advocates in California are working to
implement social housing, taking inspiration from countries like
Austria and Spain; the labor rights movement's "25x2" strategy of
pushing living wage legislation and ballot measures in dozens of
states; and a number of reasons to be optimistic about fighting the
climate crisis—even as scientists warn
[[link removed]] the continued
burning of fossil fuels will push global temperatures past 1.5°C of
heating in at least one of the next five years.

CLIMATE

Despite experts' bleak projections, McKibben and Sierra Club
[[link removed]] executive director Ben
Jealous welcomed guests on the first night of the conference by
offering evidence that electric vehicles and solar panels are rapidly
becoming more powerful and more accessible to more U.S. households,
providing hope that the world's largest historic emitter of carbon
dioxide is making strides to cut down on planet-heating pollution from
transportation and electricity.

"Right now, the sea surface temperature in the Atlantic is two to
three degrees higher than we've ever seen it before," said McKibben.
"And at the exact same moment that the planet is physically starting
to disintegrate precisely the way the scientists 30 years ago told us
it would—as if scripted by Hollywood—you'll also see finally the
sudden spike in... the only antidote we have at scale to deal with
this: the application of renewable energy around the world."

"Last summer, just as scientists were telling us that it was the
hottest week in the last 125,000 years, that same week was the week
that the engineers told us that for the first time, human beings were
now installing more than a gigawatt's worth of solar panels every
single day on this planet," he added. "That's a nuclear power plant's
worth of solar panels. So we are right at the moment when one or the
other of these trends is going to cancel out... the other one. Our
job, I think, is to make sure that we figure out how to dramatically
accelerate that second trend so that we have some hope of catching up
with the physics of climate change before it does in everything that
we care about on this planet. So for me, that's the context of the
moment that we're in."

That theme—giving guests at the Gathering an unvarnished accounting
of the very real crises that face communities while providing a
glimpse into campaigners' ongoing efforts and positive results of
their tireless advocacy work, with the crucial help of progressive
lawmakers like Sen. Sanders—continued throughout the weekend.

Joseph Geevarghese of Our Revolution, The Hip Hop Caucus' Rev. Lennox
Yearwood, Jamie Minden of Zero Hour, and Friends of the Earth
[[link removed]] U.S.
president Erich Pica. (Photo: Will Allen 2024 / via the Sanders
Institute)

On the climate front, advocates shared their hopes to seize
[[link removed]] on the
opportunity of Republican plans to extend Trump-era tax cuts if they
regain power in the November elections.

Participants on a Saturday panel at the Gathering—including Joseph
Geevarghese of Our Revolution, the Hip Hop Caucus' Rev. Lennox
Yearwood, Jamie Minden of Zero Hour, and Friends of the Earth U.S.
president Erich Pica—argued that ending federal handouts to Big Oil
is part of the broader effort to ultimately "kill the fossil fuel
industry" that's cooking the planet while blocking the worker-led
demand for a green energy transition.

Too often when covering advocacy work, the corporate media focuses on
"the controversy," O'Meara Sanders told _Common Dreams_. "What's the
controversy as opposed to what's the plan?"

The Gathering set out to offer an antidote to that dynamic and many
participants—including Dr. Deborah Richter, board president of
Vermont Health Care for All—said the effort was a success.

"Sometimes when you're trying to get some sort of major social change,
it can get really, really strenuous and make you sad," Richter
told _Common Dreams_. "I felt incredibly rejuvenated after this
weekend."

"You tend to get single-focused when you're working on one issue," she
added. "And I actually really appreciated the updates, the good and
the bad on climate change... I came away thinking, I have to learn
more about climate change. I'm going to learn more about this. I'm
going to learn more about that."

HEALTHCARE

Richter spoke to attendees about her group's efforts to bring
government-funded healthcare to Vermont, noting that she has spent
years advocating to expand
[[link removed]] Medicare
to the entire population while also witnessing her own patients'
struggles with the for-profit system as a primary care doctor and
addiction medicine specialist.

Joining Richter for the panel discussion was Dr. Jehan "Gigi"
El-Bayoumi, a Georgetown University School of Medicine professor who
founded the Rodham Institute
[[link removed]],
which works to achieve health equity in communities across Washington,
D.C.

"Many people think that what determines how long you live and how
healthy you are is access to healthcare," El-Bayoumi told _Common
Dreams_. While crucial, "that only accounts for 20%." The remaining
80% is other "social determinants of health
[[link removed]],"
such as whether people live in a neighborhood with access to
affordable, nutritious food and clean air or a fenceline community
next to a chemical plant or oil refinery, raising their chance of
developing respiratory problems or other health issues.

"Health is the air that we breathe. Health is what we eat and where we
live," El-Bayoumi said, noting that the same factors are also "the
social determinants of education and the social determinants of
employment."

"If you don't have those things in place," the physician continued,
"then how are you going to have better health?"

In Burlington, El-Bayoumi spoke about efforts to ensure people of
color in Washington, D.C. had access to Covid-19 vaccines when they
were first introduced. Working with the Black Coalition Against Covid,
she partnered
[[link removed]] with
medical schools at historically Black universities, Black fraternities
and sororities, the hip-hop community, and others to hold a mass
vaccination event in Ward 8.

"Community needs to be at the table," she told the audience. "The
people that are closest to the problem know the solutions."

El-Bayoumi stressed to _Common Dreams_ the importance of not only
engaging with impacted community members but also following the lead
of success stories around the world. While progressives often cite
European examples, she pointed to models such as the International
Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease's Project Axshya,
which set up
[[link removed]] nearly
100 tuberculosis treatment and information kiosks in 40 cities across
India.

She also cited models from Egypt, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, where the
Friendship Bench project trained
[[link removed]] elder
volunteers without any formal medical credentials to discreetly
counsel patients on wooden benches on the grounds of clinics, aiming
to address "kufungisisa," the local word closest to depression.

When it comes to providing healthcare, "we're all spokes on a wheel,"
El-Bayoumi said. "The nurses and the physicians and the custodians...
we're all spokes. We could not function without each other."

"But then similarly, health, environment, food, political,
education—all spokes on a wheel," she added. "There is not one thing
that's more important."

HOUSING

The latest Gathering built on the institute's April conference
[[link removed]] on
housing justice—an event that brought together
[[link removed]] leaders
in Los Angeles, including the city's Mayor Karen Bass, California
Assemblyman Alex Lee (D-25), and U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal
[[link removed]] (D-Wash.) and Ro
Khanna [[link removed]] (D-Calif.).

Lee also attended the Burlington conference, where he spoke on a panel
with Michael Monte of Vermont's Champlain Housing Trust and AIDS
Healthcare Foundation president Michael Weinstein, who argued that
"housing is not high enough on the progressive agenda."

"Our job as progressives is to do everything we can every day to make
people's lives materially better, and this is an area that we have to
focus on," Weinstein said, echoing his remarks during the 2018
[[link removed]] Gathering,
the very first such event hosted by the institute.

In terms of actually getting people into affordable homes, "we could
do a lot to make it less bureaucratic," he said—touching on a topic
that dominated a second housing crisis panel.

For that discussion, O'Meara Sanders was joined by Brian McCabe,
deputy assistant secretary for policy development at the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Nika Soon-Shiong of
the Fund for Guaranteed Income (F4GI), which provides "cash transfers
that support those who have been locked out of welfare programs and
economic systems."

F4GI is also working on a pilot program to provide a "cash on-ramp" to
help people who are participating in the federal Housing Choice
Voucher Program, commonly called Section 8, while they search for
rental units, Soon-Shiong explained.

She stressed the importance of including community members in the
development and implementation of the programs designed to help them,
and pushed back against common messages about financial and logical
hurdles.

"Part of addressing the root cause of the housing crisis is actually
removing that false frame," she said, "and demonstrating that it's
possible to collaborate, to move quickly, and to design things that
are new and actually relatively inexpensive."

WORKERS' RIGHTS

During one of the labor panels, Jayaraman of One Fair Wage spoke about
the nationwide fight for better pay and working conditions—and how
the movement's wins had provoked threats to her and her family.

El-Bayoumi said that before Jayaraman's remarks, she knew a bit about
restaurant workers' fight for higher pay due to experiences living and
working in Washington, D.C.—where residents passed
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measures to raise the minimum wage for tipped employees in 2018 and
2022.

"What did I not know? Always scale," the physician continued. She was
struck by the specifics that the labor leader shared, as well as her
perseverance while being attacked for being successful.

"She was so inspiring and invigorating… She was raw. She was real.
I'm just a great admirer now, and I learned a lot from her,"
El-Bayoumi said. "Her energy was amazing... It was the information,
but also her commitment."

One Fair Wage co-founder and president Saru Jayaraman during a speech
at The Gathering. (Photo: Will Allen 2024 / via the Sanders Institute)

During her speech at the Gathering, Jayaraman said the fight being
fought by the millions of low-wage workers her group represents, many
of whom work two or even three jobs just to stay afloat, are crucial
if the progressive movement more broadly wants to win the battles on
climate, healthcare justice, and housing.

"It's not a competition with all of our issues," Jayaraman said,
"because if these folks could work one job instead of two or three,
they would have the capacity to work on healthcare and climate change
and everything else. I asked them, 'What would you work on if you
could only work one job?' They've said climate. They've said public
education. They've said, 'I would do so much, but I have time to
survive right now. I just have to get from job to job.'"

So if the question is what's the problem and what's the opportunity,
Jayaraman said, "The opportunity is this November—we have 3.5
million workers get a raise and then turn around and work on all of
the issues everybody else cares about in this room."

MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY

At a panel on progressive news media, _The Nation_ national affairs
correspondent John Nichols spotlighted another labor struggle that has
national and global implications, as U.S. newsrooms lose thousands of
working journalists to layoffs and budget cuts—frequently stemming
from private equity firms purchasing
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and then looking to raise revenues at the expense of the reporters
whose work the outlets rely on to operate.

"Since 2005, we have lost 45,000 working journalists in this country,"
said Nichols. "So we have a collapse of journalism. We have no filling
of the void, and the institutions themselves are collapsing. Since
2005, roughly 20 years, we have lost a third of all print and online
publications that existed at that time."

Nichols, who edited Sanders' book, _It's OK to Be Angry About
Capitalism
[[link removed]]_,
and spoke [[link removed]] on the
senator's podcast in April about the current crisis in media, was
joined by _The Lever_ founder David Sirota and _Common
Dreams_ managing editor Jon Queally.

"We are in a period where our media in this country is in such crisis
and such collapse and such dysfunction that it is no longer sufficient
to sustain democracy itself," Nichols told the audience.

As traditional newsrooms across the country struggle to survive in an
industry increasingly dominated by private equity firms and hedge
funds, Sirota spoke about starting an online investigative news outlet
with the aim of breaking news stories that might otherwise go
uncovered by large publications—or that might be reported on
briefly, with the stories of the people affected forgotten within a
few days.

After a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed
[[link removed]] in
the town of East Palestine
[[link removed]], Ohio, Sirota said, _The
Lever_ "broke open a story that looked back at what were the
decisions on specific policies that were made to create an environment
for a disaster like that to happen, and which politicians took money
at the time while they were making those decisions."

_The Lever_reported
[[link removed]] on how Norfolk
Southern lobbied lawmakers to repeal a rule requiring widespread use
of electronic braking systems, which were meant to help avoid
accidents, and how the Trump administration rescinded the rule in 2017
after the rail industry donated more than $6 million to GOP
candidates.

"Ultimately, our reporting ended up playing a big role in getting the
Senate and the House to introduce major rail safety legislation that
had specific provisions in it that dealt with exactly what we were
reporting on," said Sirota. "_T__he New York Times_ asked us to do a
full page op-ed
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our reporting... That's how elevated it became."

"The reason to do that is not for our own glory," he added. "It's
ultimately to shape what actually happens moving forward. So our goal
is to hold accountable those who are making these decisions with the
hope that if they are held accountable, they will be deterred from
making such bad decisions in the future."

In addition to the media, the Gathering featured panels on civil
discourse and technology. During the latter discussion, which
addressed topics including artificial intelligence and data
collection, journalist Sue Halpern pointed out that in Congress,
"there's a tension between... wanting to protect
us—theoretically—and commerce."

She suggested that corporate pressure is blocking bipartisan efforts
to pass federal privacy legislation, explaining that "the lobbyists
for the Big Tech companies are constantly saying to lawmakers... if
you regulate this, if you pull back on this, you will harm the
American economy and you will limit innovation. And I have to say that
most congresspeople are terrified of being accused of limiting
innovation."

"Congress can't get it together to make national legislation. And so
we see kind of a piecemeal thing going on, at least with privacy,"
Halpern said, highlighting laws passed by California
[[link removed]], Illinois
[[link removed]],
and recently, Vermont
[[link removed]],
that serve as models for other states, in the absence of federal
action [[link removed]].

SCREENINGS

Along with panel discussions, the Sanders Institute incorporated film
screenings and music into the Gathering to offer attendees another
avenue into some of the issues discussed.

Kelton, an economist at Stony Brook University, presented a film
spotlighting efforts by her and several colleagues to prompt a
"paradigm shift" in Americans' understanding of the national deficit
by introducing the public to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

Directed by Maren Poitras, _Finding the Money_
[[link removed]]follows Kelton and economists including
Randall Wray as they explain their vision for how the national debt
could be viewed not as a burden that American taxpayers must pay back
through cuts to government programs, but "as simply a historical
record of the number of dollars created by the U.S. federal government
currently being held in pockets, as assets, by the rest of us."

Kelton questioned how the Republican Party can, year after year, name
reducing the federal deficit as one of their top priorities when the
tax cuts introduced by the GOP under the George W. Bush and Trump
administrations have been the primary drivers 
[[link removed]]of
the increasing debt ratio in recent years.

"They don't care about the fiscal or budgetary impacts. They want to
pass their agenda. So we get sweeping tax cuts," Kelton said. "[The
Congressional Budget Office] says 
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tax cuts will add $1.9 trillion to the deficit. Republicans shrug and
say, who cares? On the other side of the government deficit lies a
financial windfall for somebody else. Every deficit is good for
someone. The question is for whom and for what."

In the film, Kelton argues that as the issuer of U.S. currency, the
federal government does not need to "find the money" to spend on
public programs, but instead needs only to ensure that real resources
like workers and construction supplies are available when it comes to
spending. The government can avoid a surge in inflation through policy
decisions, the economists in the film argue, but greater deficits in a
large country like the U.S. are far more sustainable than Americans
have been led to believe.

Along with the Bush and Trump tax cuts, Kelton used the relief
packages passed by Congress when the coronavirus pandemic began in
2020. A total of $5 trillion 
[[link removed]]in
relief was passed through several laws, raising people's unemployment
benefits and helping small businesses to stay afloat.

"We cut child poverty by roughly 40%
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and you can talk on and on about the benefits, because every deficit
is good for someone," Kelton said. "The question is for whom and where
does the windfall on the other side of the government deficit go? In
March of 2021, it went to the bottom... That's who it helped. The
Republicans did $1.9 trillion with their tax cuts. Where did it
go? Eighty-three percent
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the benefits went to people in top 1% of the income distribution."

Now, said Kelton, the deficit should be seen as a way for the
government to pass more far-reaching legislation to fight the climate
emergency.

The weekend also featured screenings of trailers for filmmaker Josh
Fox's _The Welcome Table
[[link removed]]_—which is about the climate
emergency causing displacement and is set to be released on
HBO—and _The Edge of Nature_, an evolving documentary project
that connects [[link removed]] the crises of
Covid, climate, and healthcare.

Fox, known for the award-winning anti-fracking film _Gasland_,
brought his banjo—signed by Sen. Sanders—to Burlington to preview
a musical performance that accompanies _The Edge of Nature_, which he
is bringing
[[link removed]] to New York
City with a 12-person ensemble from June 14-30.

"I thought that his telling of his own experience with Covid and the
healing power of nature is just so true," El-Bayoumi said of the
performance. "I have patients who are just struggling with life, with
mental health issues. I will tell them, go outside, take off your
shoes, feel the ground under your feet, because nature is healing."

_The Edge of Nature_ "actually gave me hope... which I think is one
of the things that was brought up over and over again at the Sanders
Institute Gathering," she added. "How do you present that, the issues
and solutions, if you will. And I thought that he did that very well."

There was also a screening of a video produced by the Power to the
Patients campaign, which has worked to educate the public about
healthcare transparency requirements through murals painted in cities
across the United States. While the auditorium was waiting for that
video to start amid technical difficulties, the audience broke out in
song, singing "Solidarity Forever."

"It was so beautiful. And that was an amazing moment to me," Fox
told _Common Dreams_. "And it said to me, go ahead and sing your song
in your presentation, because this is a room where you can sing."

"My takeaway was, we have our differences, and we definitely have our
identities, and we have our priorities, and we have... teachable
moments where we have to instruct each other as to how we're messing
up," he said. "But also, we really need to focus on solidarity."

Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous, filmmaker Josh Fox, and
The Sanders Institute's Dave Driscoll listen to a presentation during
the Gathering in Burlington, Vermont on Saturday, June 1, 2024.
(Photo: Will Allen 2024 / via the Sanders Institute)

Fox noted that when he used to introduce Sen. Sanders during his 2016
presidential campaign, the filmmaker would say, "All the movements are
in this room."

As he prepared for the NYC performances, Fox said that in the current
"moment of division… the more we can come together in physical
space—and that's what we're offering here with this show, a chance
to be in an audience, a chance to be together, a chance to be in
reality with each other—the better we can break those boundaries
down."

"My takeaway from the Gathering is, I wish this was happening all the
time and at the White House," he added, "but if it's not, we can
recreate this in our small ways throughout this [election] cycle."

WHAT'S NEXT

O'Meara Sanders said the Sanders Institute intends to have one large
Gathering each year and will continue to hold smaller events focused
on specific issues, as it did in April with housing.

International Gatherings are one possibility, said O'Meara Sanders,
expressing hope that some of the policymakers and advocates who shared
their aspirations and plans for the United States in Burlington could
convene with lawmakers in other countries who have been successful at
implementing social housing, far-reaching climate action, and
government-funded healthcare.

The institute aims to bring "members of Parliament together with
members of Congress, to bring together diplomats from different
countries," said O'Meara Sanders, "to talk about specific issues.
Who's doing it best? How can we learn from them?"

"We're going to be bringing people together from all the different
countries to explore what they're doing best and how we can do it
better together," she added. "And then what's the political will
necessary to accomplish these things?"

_Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common
Dreams._

_Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams._

_Common Dreams is a reader-supported independent news outlet created
in 1997 as a new media model. Our nonprofit newsroom covers the most
important news stories of the moment. Common Dreams free online
journalism keeps our millions of readers well-informed, inspired, and
engaged. We are optimists. We believe real change is possible. But
only if enough well-informed, well-intentioned—and just plain fed up
and fired-up—people demand it. We believe that together we can
attain our common dreams._

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