Bernie the Bomber’s Bad Week

1999

by Will Miller

In late April I was among the 25 Vermonters who occupied Congressman

Bernie Sanders’ Burlington office to protest his support of the NATO

bombing of Yugoslavia and the ongoing war against Iraq. Calling ourselves

the “Instant Antiwar Action Group,” we decided to bring our outrage at

Bernie’s escalating hypocrisy directly to his office, an action that resulted

in 15 of us being arrested for trespass.

Many of us worked on Bernie’s campaigns through

1980’s, the years he was–as the local press repeatedly put it–

the “avowed socialist” Mayor of Burlington, Vermont. His descent

into de facto membership the Democratic party has been a major setback

for the task of building a real electoral alternative to the

two factions of the corporate property that monopolize what passes

for political choice in the United States. Bernie’s selling out

says clearly to working people and those unable to find work

that even leftists become mainstream politicians, when and if

they win office.

Sanders presented himself to the left outside of Vermont

as the leader of the third party movement, vanquishing the two major

parties in every Mayoral election from 1981-88.

When he first got elected Mayor of Burlington he was

the only elected U.S. official to attend the anniversary of the Sandinista

Revolution in Managua. The Gannett owned Burlington Free Press

said he had to be removed from office “by any means necessary.”

Now that same Burlington Free Press endorses his Congressional

candidacy.

Bernie became an imperialist to get elected in 1990.

In August, 1990–after the Bush administration enticed Iraq into

invading Kuwait–Sanders said he wasn’t “going to let some damn

war cost him the election,” according to a staff member who was

present at the time. So Sanders backed the buildup in the Persian Gulf

and dumped on the left anti-imperialist peace movement, singling

out his former allies like Dave Dellinger for public criticism.

He lost in 1988 Congressional race, the last time

the Democratic party ran an official candidate against him. In

that election Sanders and the Democrat, Paul Poirer, split the

majority of votes and the election went to the Republican, Peter Smith.

Bernie–out of office for the first time in eight years–

then went to the Kennedy School at Harvard for six months and came

back with a new relationship with the state’s Democrats. The

Vermont Democratic Party leadership has allowed no authorized

candidate to run against Bernie in 1990 (or since) and in return,

Bernie has repeatedly blocked third party building. His closet party,

the Democrats, are very worried about a left 3rd party forming in

Vermont. In the last two elections, Sanders has prevented

Progressives in his machine from running against Howard Dean,

our conservative Democratic Governor who was ahead of Gingrich in

the attack on welfare.

The unauthorized Democratic candidate in 1990, Delores

Sandoval, an African American faculty member at the University of

Vermont, was amazed that the official party treated her as a nonperson

and Bernie kept outflanking her to her right. She opposed the

Gulf build-up, Bernie supported it. She supported decriminalization

of drug use and Bernie defended the war on drugs, and so on…..

After being safely elected in November of 1990, Bernie

continued to support the buildup while seeking membership in the

Democratic Congressional Caucus–with the enthusiastic support of t

he Vermont Democratic Party leadership. But, the national Democratic Party

blew him off, so he finally voted against the war and returned home–and

as the war began–belatedly claimed to be the leader of the anti-war

movement in Vermont.

Since 1991 the Democrats have given Bernie membership

in their Congressional Caucus. Reciprocally, Bernie has become an

ardent imperialist. Sanders endorsed Clinton in 1992 and 1996. In

1992 he described Clinton as the “lesser of evils,” (a justification

he used to denounce when he was what the local press called an

“avowed socialist”). By 1996 he gave Clinton an unqualified

endorsement. He has been a consistent “Friend of Bill’s” from

since 1992. One student I know worked on the Clinton Campaign

in 1996 and all across Vermont, Bernie was on the stage with

the rest of the Vermont Democratic Party Leadership, while the

unauthorized Democratic candidate for his Congressional seat was

kept out in the audience.

Sanders continues to support sanctions even though the

Iraqi body count has now passed 1.5 million. Just as he has supported

every bombing of Iraq since 1992. When Clinton sent military

units to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in October, 1994 because Iraq

moved troops inside Iraq closer to the Kuwait border (apparently

about 100 miles away), Bernie supported this because “we cannot

tolerate aggression.”

As a Congressman in Vermont he has allied himself the

MIA/POW crowd, the American Legion and the VFW, the very groups that

red baited him as Mayor. At the same time he and his staff “forget”

to invite the Green Mountain Veteran’s for Peace–the only anti-

imperialist veterans group in the state–to his sponsored Veterans

events. He sends out mailings to veterans that supports the US

having “the strongest military in the world,” while praising

our sacrifices as veterans “for the freedom of Americans.”

Bernie regularly rides out with the rest of the Vermont

Congressional delegation defending the military contracts in Vermont

against cuts by the Pentagon, while arguing that some moderation in

military spending is possible on the grounds “that the threat of communism

is over” (WCAX interview, 10/94).

Incidentally, Sanders now has a stronger record voting

on the Democratic side in the Congress than either Bonier or Gephardt

–the Congressional Leadership of the Democratic Party. It is

tempting to situate Sanders within the framework of the Congress

as a whole. By that standard he doesn’t look so bad–though that’s

a very low standard to use. But remember, unlike Maxine Waters

or Ron Dellums who moved continuously to their left during their

Congressional careers, Bernie got where he is now by a lurch

to the right. He promises working people, the aged, the poor,

and the “vanishing middle class” that he will defend them while

he repeatedly blocks the building of the anti-capitalist political

movement and party that might actual make such promises legitimate.

Indeed, when challenged publicly about his failure to help build

a left alternative to the major capitalist parties, Sanders claims

he is now too busy with his work in Congress to be

bothered.

Among his other discredits, Sanders supported the

Federal Crime Bill that give the gave the capitalist state more than

50 new pretexts to execute members of the working class–because

those without capital get the punishment. He did this while courting

the Vermont Police Chief’s Assn. Sanders also voted to extradite

Assata Shakur from Cuba in violation of the existing treaties with Cuba.

Recently, Bernie championed in Congress the dumping

of Vermont’s nuclear waste near Sierra Blanca, Texas, a low income

border community with a mostly Latino population that is overwhelmingly

opposed to the dump project. Environmental racism and classism

seem not to bother him.

On a related issue, Bernie was recently asked by the local

press why he was the only member of Vermont’ s three member

Congressional delegation who had no person of color on his staff.

Bernie responded that “we’re hiring the most qualified people

we can.”

For all of these reasons, we are sitting-in at Bernie

Sander’s Office. We call on all Vermonters who shares our concern

and horror at what U.S. Empire is doing in Yugoslavia and Iraq to

make your voices heard.

The response to our occupation of Bernie’s office was, unfortunately,

consistent with his lurch to the mainstream. At 6:30 PM, one half hour

after closing time, Philip Fiermonte of Bernie’s staff had 15 of us

arrested for trespass. Sanders refused a conference call with those in

the occupation, which was carried out nonviolently and with no

disruption to his staff. Fiermonte claimed he could not contact Sanders

for the four hours of the occupation– if true, it still another way Bernie

has gotten out of touch in the Congress.

Ironically, Fiermonte was one of the defendants in the celebrated Winooski

44 case in 1984, where the conservative U.S. Senator Robt. Stafford’s (R-VT)

office was occupied for his support of Reagan’s murderous wars in Central

America. At least Stafford’s staff let the occupation continue for three days

before having anyone arrested.

In the following week, Bernie, doing quick damage control, ducked

responsibility for arresting the “Sanders 15” and got himself included at

the last minute with a Congressional delegation going to Austria to meet with

representatives of the Russian Duna to bring the Russians in to help broker

a settlement in the US/NATO war in Yugoslavia. But, before leaving to see

the Russians, he voted in favor of the continued bombing of Yugoslavia,

a bombing that the Russians had already said would have to stop as a

precondition for any settlement. A general town meeting has already been

scheduled for the following Monday, so he turned it to a “town meeting on Kosovo.”

Apparently, Bernie Sanders has forgotten what a Town Meeting is.

Perhaps he lived in Burlington (too “big” for town meetings) and Washington

(scared to death of town meetings) for so many years he cannot recall how a

democratic town meeting actually works. No one is allowed to appoint themselves

the moderator for the town meeting and persons who are partisans on the issues

before the town are excluded from the moderator’s election in favor of persons

who can moderate fairly and evenhandedly.

Sanders as the self-appointed moderator/boss opened the evening with naked

self-justification. “It is a very complex situation…” followed by the ritual of

demonization of Milosevic–a technique he has perfected over the last eight years on

Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Then he presented the false dilemma that the only alternative

to bombing is doing nothing. Sanders said his situation was the same as that of Joschka

Fischer’s of the Green Party, Germany’s Foreign Minister, who has outraged his Green

Party membership by supporting the bombing his coalition government is carrying

out as part of NATO.

Back in Vermont the assembled citizenry moaned audibly.

He continued by subjecting the packed room of over 200 people to more than

an hour of a panel presentation by people of his own choosing; even then, only one

panelist overtly supported his position–Bogdan Denich, a professor from New York

City and leader of the pro-imperialist wing of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Another panelist, Shirley Gedeon, a UVM Economist whose speciality is the Balkans,

undercut Sander’s historical analysis and a third, Roddy Cleary, a feminist and

religious activist, challenged he support of the bombing directly.

Apparently, with all the college and universities in Vermont, Bernie had to

travel far into flatlander territory to find an academic willing to support his

“bomb now, talk later” position. In fact, Denich went beyond Bernie’s present position

and called for sending in ground troops, immediately.

After allotting the panelists and himself 12 minutes each and now more than an

hour and a half into the meeting, the people finally had a chance to speak. But only for 2

minutes each, dictated the self-appointed moderator Bernie! And this after having

lectured us on how “complex” the issue of the US/NATO War on Yugoslavia really is.

When he was challenged by a few members of the meeting about his undemocratic

restriction of peoples’ speech, he said anyone who didn’t like it could leave. It seems

when Sanders was in college in Chicago, he learned more from Mayor Richard J. Daley

than from his academic studies.

The overwhelming majority of the people present were against Sander’s support for the

bombing. Even with all his attempts to control the meeting, the people had at him for

more than an hour and a half. He was denounced for his selling out to the Empire and

it’s war machine and for his support for the 9 year old war against Iraq and his active

support for every US intervention since he has been in Congress–Iraq, Somalia,

Haiti, Bosnia, Liberia, Zaire (Congo), Albania, Sudan, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia.

He was further criticized for his refusal to ban or even object to the use of depleted

uranium with it’s long term toxicity in both Iraq and Yugoslavia. Sanders even tried

to escape responsibility for arresting 15 of his constituents in his office one week ago

for the crime of wanting to talk to him without an appointment by blaming those arrested

for their arrest, as if they went out and brought the police in to arrest themselves.

Sanders was repeatedly unresponsive to questions put to him. He evasiveness

and arrogance did not serve him well. In the end, only a few people defended him.

Whatever else Sanders gets for his joining the other side in the global struggle for

social justice–he has lost the left and the peace movement here is Vermont.

Maybe in the next election he will finally have to run officially as the Democrat he

has been for the last 9 years! And then the people of Vermont will be free to build t

he anti-capitalist political movement and party that Sanders has worked so hard to

block for more than a decade.

People left the meeting resolving to escalate the antiwar movement before

the US escalates the war with an invasion of ground troops. The latest leaks out of

NATO sources in Europe suggest that the current plan is to invade with troops

by the end of May.

Remember Vietnam!

Never again!