Sanders’ campaign mirrors the grassroots campaigns that barely register in the national media and among policymakers

By | Published: 26th Feb 2020 12:00 am 12:02 am

We need to look beyond the party and elections to mobilisation in a few places to truly understand why Bernie Sanders is winning the race for the Democratic Party leadership.

On any given Saturday and Sunday, driving around the San Francisco Bay Area, one is likely to come across hastily put up signboards prominently displaying the address of the “home for sale.” As you visit the insides of these houses, which are usually immaculately furnished and displayed, you will notice prospective buyers sizing up things such as the kitchen space, number of bathrooms, quality of light and the access to a garden in the backyard. The asking price for a typical three-bedroom house in most areas in and around the Bay ranges from a million to 2 million. Should you choose to buy the house, you will likely “bid” on the house at a price above the “asking” price of the house – 20-50% above depending on whether there is a bidding contest for the place.

The San Francisco Bay Area is now the most expensive region for housing in the United States. Not so paradoxically, it also has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the country. Beyond the metropolitan area, the State of California has one of the highest rates of homelessness (nearly 1,50,000 people living on the streets) in the country. On the other hand, a recent study found that 1 million homes lie vacant as investors buy up houses and hoard them as an investment. It is common to expect to pay 50-80% of one’s income on rent. New homebuyers, who are often investment companies, evict tenants to upgrade and re-rent at a higher rate. The losers are usually the poor and mostly non-white.

Hard Times

No wonder, then, that the evicted and those unable to keep up with the rental prices end up on the streets. By one account, nearly 80% of the homeless in the Bay Area used to be former renters who had fallen on hard times. Lots of homeless people are still employed but unable to afford the high cost of rent. It is common to come across individuals who are homeless and reminisce about their childhood in San Francisco, Berkeley, San Jose and Oakland. It is also quite common to see people emerging out of their cars after a night of sleeping through the cold and discomfort. Local and state governments have begun responding to these crises.

Local universities, including my university, offer food and other services to homeless students who number in several hundreds. Next door to SF State campus, there is a long line of parked RVs or recreational vehicles —vans with a bed and kitchen—being used by students as their homes. In Berkeley and Oakland, the city governments have started actively deliberating about the services they should provide, from portable toilets and solar panels for lighting to trash collection services in homeless encampments. Oakland is exploring public space for overnight parking for the same RVs and for areas to build inexpensive lightly constructed single-room houses.

This is not an isolated instance just in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley area. Scenes of homeless encampments have now become as familiar as those in Indian cities, though the scale is nowhere close. Cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle and many small and medium-sized towns are undergoing this transformation. Homelessness began to rise after the 2008 economic crash, and has continued to rise, despite the many encomiums to the economic recovery.

Wage Worries

Much of the recovery of the American economy under both Obama and Trump has not picked up the bottom half of the US population. Wages have not risen for most workers, and have been especially stagnant for minimum wage workers in this country. So, while wages have kept up in some sectors, in IT, for example, the vast majority of the service workers are increasingly working two or more jobs just to keep up with their financial obligations.

There is no city in the United States where an individual working full time or on minimum wage can afford a two-bedroom apartment. The “housing rate”— the wages required to afford an apartment—is closer to $40/hr in the San Francisco Bay Area but the government mandated minimum wage is $15/hr. In much of the rest of the country, the Federal rate is only $7.25/hr. Not surprisingly, many workers commute two or more hours from distant locations.

Moms 4 Housing

Grassroots political movements have been experimenting with different strategies over the last decade. Recently, in Oakland, a group called Moms 4 Housing took a novel approach to this problem. Starting last November, four mothers took over a vacant home owned and kept empty by a real estate speculator in their neighbourhood. The company took the matter to the courts where the judge declared the occupation by moms illegal. The police, armed with AR-15 rifles, tanks, drones, and other military gear, planned to break into the house and arrest the moms. Over 400 activists came to the aide of the besieged moms. The issue was finally settled when the company agreed to sell the house to a community trust set up by the Oakland City government to help the moms.

The action by Moms 4 Housing quickly gained national attention and is likely to inspire similar strategies elsewhere. The moms who were initially called “thugs” by the real estate company quickly came to be seen as “heroes.” The rapid succession of events over the past three months in Oakland points to the considerable unrest, alienation and the political resolve building up at the grassroots level in California and the US.

Sanders’ Connect

What does all this have to do with Bernie Sanders? When Sanders came to speak here in the Bay Area last week, Carol Fife, one of the members of Moms 4 Housing, introduced him. He has been campaigning on the question of housing as a human right. Fife and others in the group are determined to raise their demands to alter policy and change local, state and national law.

Moms 4 Housing is just one of the many grassroots organisations that have endorsed Sanders’ campaign. Some others include ‘Fight for 15’, a movement to raise the minimum wage, and the Sunrise Movement, a grassroots party dedicated to addressing climate change. Looking at it in a different way, Sanders’ campaign mirrors the many grassroots campaigns that barely register in the national media and among the policymakers. Much of the Democratic Party elite who are accustomed to politics as a series of right moves (loyalty, endorsements, financing etc) fail to notice the very important grassroots movements that are impacting this election for the leadership of the Democratic Party. These grassroots movements are just a few that are the base of Sanders’ campaign. They will have a lasting impact on these elections and the country’s future.

(The author is Associate Professor, Department of History, San Francisco State University, San Francisco)

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