‘Despair Is Not An Option’: Bernie Is Back To Inspire Us (VIDEO)

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the Don Quixote of this generation. He insists on hope, and he insists on a better world.

The progressive spokesman gave an interview with the Guardian on March 10. He began by expressing his horror at the language used by Trump during his big speech to the Congress, in which he said that he and his party wanted to promote clean air and clean water. Sanders, seated in the front row as one of the senior Senators, was aghast.

Bernie Sanders had just seen the President sign an Executive Order to completely eliminate protections for rivers and other waterways. He couldn’t believe it.

Even Bernie was a little bit disillusioned.

But in his conversation with the British newspaper, Bernie took a more hopeful tone. He took on the role that so many of us gave him during the election.

Bernie became the voice of hope and the voice of the resistance.

In his interview with the Guardian’s US edition, Sanders said something that will resonate with every frustrated and anxious liberal. He said,

“Despair is not an option.”

The famously progressive, passionate Senator from Vermont is not afraid to tell it like it is. He is one of the few people who is a watching President Trump from a front row seat who is willing to use the word “lie.” He said:

“These are very scary times for the people of the United States, and … for the whole world. We have a president who is a pathological liar. Trump lies all of the time. He lies in order to undermine the foundations of American democracy.”

In the interview, the Senator talked about the Democratic Party’s failure to address the needs of the shrinking middle class. He said that he does not consider himself a liberal, because of the way that the Democrats have chosen to focus on smaller, more “identity” based politics (ie: support for Blacks, immigrants, LGBTQ) rather than a support for the wider working class.

He believes that true progressive focus on the needs of everyone in the working class, regardless of identity.

Sanders does not want people to give up, though. He has long years of political activism behind him. He knows that when good people join together and ignore the attempts to divide them, a difference really can be made.

Sanders has come out of the presidential race with a new platform. He is often on the Sunday morning network shows now, which was not the case before his strong primary run. He is using that platform, he says, to move the Democratic party to the left, where he hopes that with the force of the grassroots, it will once again address the needs of the people, and not the power elite.

So what advice does the Senator have for his his progressive supporters? He says this:

“My view is that in this critical moment in American history, despair is not an option.”

Bernie tells us that this is not the first scary time in American history. He reminds us that when masses of Americans take to the streets, and tell the power elite that we will not allow them to divide us, that will not accept their actions, then great things happen.

He reminds his followers of the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement. He urges us not to let President Trump divide us. He urges us to take charge and take to the streets.

Watch the video below, and be inspired once again.

Remember: despair is not an option.

Featured image via YouTube Screengrab.

Karen is a retired elementary school teacher with many years of progressive activism behind her. She is the proud mother of three young adults who were all arrested with Occupy Wall Street. To see what she writes about in her spare time, check out her blog at "Empty Nest, Full Life"