Today, the campaign heads to Iowa for the big softball game and tomorrow’s Native American forum, the media is abuzz about the Sanders Justice plan and a recap of the fascist demonstrations from this weekend.

Campaign Tracker

After a weekend in South Carolina, the campaign heads to Iowa for events and the climax of the Bernie vs. the Press saga, when the campaign plays softball against representatives from the press.

Today

The campaign is back in Iowa with three events, then a baseball game. Up first, at Labor Town Hall at the Davenport Library. This event will be streaming here:

Then off to a lunchtime Barnstorm in the Davenport field office. You can stream that Barnstormer here,

And then some desert at the Ice Cream social in West Branch, Iowa. Also streamable here,

And finally, best of all, the long awaited Field of Dreams softball game:

The campaign is releasing these limited-edition trading cards for anyone who sends a donations. Donate any amount to receive a card here.

Last Weekend (8/17&18)

In South Carolina yesterday (8/18), Bernie gave the mic up to criminal justice reform experts. He stressed that no one is asking how America can be the wealthiest country in the world, yet still have more people in jail and entangled in the criminal justice system (on probation, etc.). How can this be? America spends 80 billion dollars to keep its citizens locked up. Sanders asks, can we reinvest this money into our communities?

Philip Agnew speaks on disinvesting in private prisons and the organizing work of giving people with felony convictions the right to vote. Aaron Greene makes clear that this proposal’s release in South Carolina has a historical context: it harkens back to the prison strikes in Attica, and addresses some of those prisoners’ demands—but it looks back even further, to South Carolina’s legacy of slavery, and how that legacy of slavery is still ongoing by allowing prisoners to be slaves as the 13th amendment allows,

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Representative Wendell Gilliard spoke on how prisons for profits affect families throughout the African American community. Bernie opened up the mic to the audience to share stories.

Bernie’s justice plan is massive—it’s meant to redress problems inherent to the American justice system that have existed since the American Civil War.

Senator Sanders also sat with the Working Families Party for a Q&A in anticipation of their endorsement process. WFP is using ranked-choice voting to choose who to endorse (letting voters rank candidates, not just single-choice). Sanders talks about how he cannot accomplish change without a people-powered network; how white nationalism is domestic terrorism; how important it is to bring working people and young people into the political process; how all change takes place when millions of people stand up and demand change and much more. Great interview!

This Week

The Sanders campaign is spending Monday through Wednesday (8/19-21) in Iowa, then headed to Sacramento (8/22) on Thursday for a rally and more events in these crucial early-primary states.

Media Coverage

Justice

Sanders plan for justice and prison reform got written up in many outlets, including CNN, Axios, Huffington Post, Splinter, The Hill, Salon, Mother Jones, New York Daily News, and more. This goes to show the sweeping reform proposed in this plan.

The plan is posted on Bernie’s website here.

Labor

Politico reports how essential organized labor is to Bernie’s election strategy.

They catalog some of the ways the Sanders for President 2020 campaign has been used to help striking workers and progressive campaigns,

Sanders has tapped his email list to push his fans to join picket lines and labor rallies at Veterans Affairs hospitals, University of California campuses, Ralphs grocery stores, Reagan National Airport, a Kaiser Permanente campus, and McDonald’s restaurants in at least 12 places, including the first-in-the-nation caucus state Iowa and delegate-rich California. His efforts haven’t been limited to labor events: Sanders has also used his campaign apparatus to recruit volunteers to get out the vote for Queens District Attorney candidate Tiffany Cabán in New York and to boost turnout at a protest at a proposed migrant detention center in Oklahoma. At times, Sanders' team has utilized the same infrastructure to raise money for labor groups and other progressive organizations, like when it pulled in $100,000 for a strike fund for Los Angeles teachers by emailing its base. Sanders has also sought to portray himself as the country’s “organizer in chief” through public appearances, including when he crashed a Walmart shareholders meeting to push for a $15 hourly minimum wage or brought two buses of reporters and activists to Canada to highlight the exorbitant cost of prescription drugs in the United States.

This is a clear distinction between the Sanders’ campaign and any other—Sanders is organizing his base to stand in solidarity together against the billionaire class. This is “Not Me, Us” in action—and when Sanders wins, this is the real path to a better world.

News Cycle

Kentucky Miner Protests

Sanders focus on labor makes it no surprise that the campaign sent pizzas to the miners protesting company wage theft in Kentucky, today 8/19.

Coal Miners in Kentucky are currently protesting wage theft after Blackjewel shut down the mine they worked in, as reported by the New York Times. Blackjewel filed bankruptcy, notified workers the mine was closing and they were losing their jobs—and then gave out no paychecks or ones that bounced, stealing an entire month’s worth of wages from the loyal workers who stuck around until the final hour. The story quotes a worker, “It’s no different from robbing a bank,” said Jeffrey Willig, a wiry 40-year-old father of six.” and he’s right, except banks steal from workers like us all the time.

Fascism in Portland’s Streets

This weekend, fascists marched in Portland and anti-fascists showed up to oppose them. On the ground, anti-fascism won; in the corporate media, the issue is framed as “antifa” vs. “free speech”, and both sides are to blame? Wrong.

Unicorn Riot offered the best coverage of the protest. They live streamed the entire event and contextualized key players. The fascists wanted the protest to be about their right to “free speech,” but as we see, these groups want the freedom to wearing hate symbols of white supremacy, carry guns and marching in the streets. See below:

Why Portland? Well, as a Williamette Weekly discovered, the event organizer Joey Gibson is in friendly contact with the Portland Police. These groups know the cops will side with the fascists against the “Keep Portland Weird” leftist coalition seen below,

Portland PD welcomed two online-based white pride organizations this weekend: the Proud Boys, a white men’s rights “drinking group” and the American Guard, an old-school white pride group inspired by a book explaining how to lead a government insurrection with mass shootings and domestic terrorism.

These right wing groups are leveraging independent media to get organized and they’re marching in direct support of white supremacy, racial cleansing, and state administered racism. These people are not on the side of free speech, they’re on the side of white power.

“Citizen journalists” go on the ground to shoot misleading, edited footage that presents the people who are going out to protest Nazis in their home town as the bad guys. This is the entire right wing tactic: get corporate media to present that anti-fascism is the same as fascism.

Leftists used a variety of tactics at their direct action in opposition to the right wing groups. First, they warned locals with flyers that there was a fascist rally coming to town that weekend. Leafletting information.

Another tactic that got a lot more attention (as intended) was the Spectacle tactic. If you saw the Banana Bloc online, you might wonder what the point of this is. There’s a few concurrent points—first, it brings a heightened absurdity to the event (there’s a marching band of bananas) that makes it hard for the fascists to resort to violence (it’s bad optics to punch silly banana people). It re-centers the narrative away from “fascists came to march and were met with violence,” to “fascists came to march and were met by bananas,” and three, it brings a much needed levity to a very serious, very deadly problem our country is currently facing. When fascists are openly marching in the streets with guns, tensions are high. Seeing a silly banana helps an non-violent counter-protest stay non-violent.

Pay no mind to anyone critical of the Portland organizers strategy online because for the most part, it seems many commentators on Twitter are starting to see the distinction. Freedom of speech doesn’t cover marching on a town with a rifle and threatening trans people. It means standing up with your fellow citizens against a racist, violent threat.

The Daily Sanders is a volunteer-written, hopefully-daily media recap of Sanders campaign coverage. If you like these posts, go donate a dollar to the Sanders 2020 campaign.