When I was in the eighth grade, Mrs. Weiss assigned us to write an essay on "What Americanism Means to Me". While I included apple pie and sports and Saturday mornings, I turned negative attention toward some things. At 13 years, I was not precociously socially aware, but I had been sensitized to a few things. When I was eleven I walked in to a "colored men and women" bathroom in Louisiana that was located behind the gas station. I had to go badly and I actually looked at my arms and decided they were "colored" so figured it was OK. The bathroom was an outhouse that was poorly kept. When I came out, the men in the gas station were laughing and pointing at me. I physically internalized racism for the first time. The feeling stays with me today, but in my 8th grade paper all I was able to say was that racism was a looming problem for our country.
I had experienced polluted and unusable water when I lived in El Paso, and in making excursions into Juarez, I realized we were leaving the Rio Grande a mess as it trickled into Mexico, so I read about the great rivers of the U.S. The topic of sickened waterways was impossible to avoid. I included in my 8th grade paper, my disappointment at the lack of attention to what we were doing to some of the people and so much of our lands and waterways. For that, and for not giving more on apple pie, I got an A- instead of an A, but my literary merit was praised.
From then until now I have had a growing awareness that large segments of our population work to remain unaware of how our corporate and nationalistic thinking affects the rest of the world. We have remained ignorant not only about our treatment of so many people, but the natural and physical world we are incredibly dependent upon, as well. The machinery of our economic system has seized our thought processes and praised capitalism to the position of God. The machinery has made dirty words of liberal and anything that finds fault with unfettered capitalism. The economic machinery controls morality and even religion is bent to its will.
And today, at a beautiful Burlington park, next to a threatened but hopeful and still beautiful Lake Champlain, Bernie Sanders talked about all of those things and more, in a way no other politician, no other Presidential candidate has ever admitted nor addressed so bluntly. It is time for everyone who has known these things in their guts, as I have, and as so many of you have, to get up and take a stand. It is time. Now is the time. I don't believe there will be another opportunity, if we do not do it now.
