Hey you,

Just wanted to reach out. We know you must be feeling a bit lonely right now. We bet there’s a lot of loud obnoxious voices telling you that you need to quit. But we’re all still here.

We bet there’s some soft and kind voices telling you to quit, too. They’re the most dangerous. The ones are telling you “for your own good and for the good of the party” that it’s time to give it up, you’re only doing it for your ego now, call it a day, you’ve made your point, you’ll get Trump elected if you go any further, and so on. We all know what they’re saying. They’re saying it to us, too.

We call that concern-trolling, here in the internet. That sickly-sweet lullaby talk that is pitched to depress your energy and slowly suffocate your perfectly healthy anger at a corrupt system that needs to die. It’s a spell the status quo cast to create inertia. We are being shamed for being angry, and people are making fun of our rage and belittling us for fighting for an actual democracy, one that is driven by the will of the people, not one that is just a stage show directed by a few shady suits behind the scenes. The desired effect is confusion, sadness, and a ceasing of action. That’s what they want. We must not give them that.

But you know what, Bernie? We don’t even think we could give them that if we tried anymore. We look around and we have so many options. There are many paths opening up. If we can see some, you must be able to see many. One that really interests us right now is that amazing group of bi-partisan lawyers who, with the help of the FBI, have uncovered vast amounts of evidence of vote tampering going back to 2004, and are about to land that lawsuit on the Democrats right now, along with all the correct tallies from this primary season. We won’t hear about it in the corporate media, which is why they are suing them, for being complicit in the crime. But according to the data they collected, you won already. If there is any kind of justice left, you will not only go to the convention with the moral victory, but you will go there with the most pledged delegates as well.

And of course, California is far from over. When the DNC instructed the poll volunteers to give Sanders’ voters provisional ballots to vote with, we were sure they thought those ballots would end up where all the other provisional ballots in every primary so far have ended up — in the trash. But they overshot the mark a little, and with millions of voters ending up using these previously useless ballots, and with the huge gap between registered voters and votes counted now being way too obvious to ignore, the party is being forced to count them. Turns out you can cheat a bit too much.

And, there’s the small issue of a criminal investigation.

I am running for president because it is too late for establishment politics and too late for establishment economics. We need real change. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 7, 2016

Of course, we’re all being told to come on, you knew it was corrupt but that’s how it is, nothing you can do about it, what did you expect, it’s always been this way, blah blah — the lullaby of inertia sings on, willing us back to sleep.

The thing is, we can’t go back to sleep, Bernie. You woke us up with a fright. We’ve seen things, Bernie! Oh man, have we seen things. Horrible, dark things that have made our heart leap into our throats. Your campaign has been a year-long awakening into the nightmare-reality of just how insanely corrupt this so-called democracy is, and just how bad it’s become. It’s been jaw-dropping at times. There is no way we can un-see that. Every step your campaign took forward revealed more and more evil manipulation.

The other day, you were standing in front of the Californian flag, that big white flag with the brown grizzly bear in the middle. The brown grizzly bear that was hunted to complete annihilation within the state, and now exists there only as a symbol on the flag.

It struck me that that was the perfect metaphor for the Democrats. A party that hunted democracy to extinction and exists now only as a word in the name.

We’ve seen glimpses of that evil from out here, but you have been living inside the monster. How deeply terrifying that must be sometimes. Bernie, we want to know — is there anything worth salvaging from that institution we now ironically call the Democrats? We ask you because you’ve had the grand tour. We know you said you didn’t want to split the party, but that was before you knew what the party really was. Is there any point keeping any of it at all?

You see, the way we see it, you’re calling the shots now. It’s endgame for the elite. They can either bring us into the fold and unite the party with you as leader and we reform the party from within, or they leave us all out in the cold and we destroy them completely in the general election when we vote you in resoundingly. We go with you. That’s our strength and that’s their inevitable defeat.

Either way, it’s the end of the road for Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and co. They’ve played all their cards, and they’ve been forced to do many illegal things in the broad daylight already, with only the mist of a few media-created word spells to protect them. They don’t have any moves left, bar assassination (yeah, okay, so we still worry about you a bit. God bless the Secret Service, am I right?).

Anyway, up to you. We are with you, Bernie, and we are willing to be guided by you wherever you take us next. Whatever your wisdom and the wisdom of the small circle of powerful women surrounding you tells you to do, we will come with you in huge numbers and with booming voices and with love in our hearts and with righteous anger that our spirits were being crushed under a corrupt system for so long. The beast has awoken. The revolution has begun.

In your words:

“Brothers and sisters, this is the nation we can create when we stand together and not let people divide us. “The history of America and the fight for human dignity is a history of struggle. They struggle because they said, ‘I am a human being,’ ‘I have rights,’ ‘You can’t do that to me,’ ‘I need dignity,’ and unions were formed and people fought and people died and people were beaten and people went to jail. “When millions of people stand up, and fight… they win.”

We know now that the days of being crushed by that system are over. It’s impotent now; it’s inert. We’re just shaking our fist at it, as it bolts out the door.

So where to next, Bernie? We need you to guide us into creating our new earth. Let’s make some plans. What do you think we should do with the place?

Love,

The people.

[Photo by David McNew/Getty Images]