Bernie: I am going back on the road

With Trump's election, we live in a pivotal moment in American history. This country will either move in the direction of an authoritarian government where the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer, or we will successfully fight back and build a strong grassroots movement to create a government which represents all of us, not just Donald Trump and others in the billionaire class.

That's the struggle we now face. No one can sit on the sidelines. Not now. The only way we win is when we stand together and fight back. I need your help to do that.

The bad news is that Trump's agenda – huge tax breaks for billionaires, enormous increases in military spending, massive cuts in health care and programs that protect the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor, horrific attacks on environmental protection and scapegoating the immigrant community – constitutes the most reactionary set of policies in the modern history of our country.

The good news is that the resistance to this extremist Trump/Republican agenda is growing rapidly. We saw that as millions participated in the Women's March in January. We saw that as hundreds of thousands attended rallies and town meetings in February and March to successfully defeat the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and throw 24 million Americans off of their health insurance. We are seeing that now as people across the country are mobilizing for Green Day events to take on the fossil fuel industry, combat climate change and transform our energy system to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

When we launched our presidential campaign two years ago, I told you that victory would require the active participation of millions of Americans in every community across the country. That it would require nothing short of a political revolution to combat the demoralization so many feel about the political process. That's what I believed then. That's what I believe now. And that's what I am attempting to do.

During the last several months I have visited a number of states where Donald Trump won. My message: working people must not support a president and a party beholden to powerful special interests and the top 1 percent. We cannot support a party which wants to divide us up by race, gender, religion, national origin or sexual orientation.

I was in Wisconsin where progressives are determined to overcome the Trump victory in that state and elect candidates who, in 2018, will stand with working people and not the 1 percent. I was in Kansas where, in one of the most conservative states in the country, over 5,000 people attended a progressive rally in Topeka. I was in Mississippi, a state today heavily dominated by the Republican Party, where brave workers in the auto industry are fighting for a union. I was in West Virginia, where Trump won a landslide victory, but where many people are beginning to rethink the wisdom of that decision.

And next week I am going back on the road, visiting areas of the country often ignored by Democrats. I will be in Maine, Kentucky, Florida, Nevada, Nebraska, Utah and Arizona. I will be talking about the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that we face and the need for the rich to start paying their fair share of taxes. I will discuss the Medicare-for-all, single-payer legislation that I will soon be introducing. I will urge people to join the Fight for $15 minimum wage struggle to make sure all Americans enjoy a living wage. I will ask people across the country to help us create millions of jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. I will explain the need to aggressively move forward for comprehensive immigration reform and why we must immediately fix our broken criminal justice system.

But I can’t do it alone.

Please make a $58 contribution to my re-election campaign to help fund this national tour.

Please attend the rallies in your area. Please work with me to revitalize American democracy and advance the political revolution.

Like I said from the beginning, our political revolution was never about one candidate. It was about creating a mass movement for real change in this country. That's the struggle we began. That's the struggle we'll continue. No turning back now.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

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Bannon removed from NSC

Victory! Thanks to activism hundreds of thousands of CREDO members and our friends in the progressive movement , we have succeeded in knocking white-supremacist Steve Bannon off the National Security Council (NSC).1 Activism works and it is important we celebrate the good news to let everyone within our social networks know that our resistance to Trump is getting real results. Help us strengthen our movement by spreading the good news across all our social media channels: Click here to spread the news of our victory by sharing this graphic on Facebook. Click here to retweet this news on Twitter. Click here to like the graphic on Instagram. You can also just forward this e-mail to your friends and family. It’s been clear from the beginning that anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, white supremacist, domestic abuser right-wing puppet-master Bannon has been calling the shots in the White House. Now, thanks to the activism of over 327,000 CREDO members and our allies, he has a little less power to enact his hateful agenda. Even though this is a massive victory, our work is not done. Bannon should never have been a member of the NSC to begin with and his ongoing presence in the White House endangers the United States and our allies. We must remain vigilant and watch the actions of the White House closely to see if removing Bannon from the NSC will have any impact on policy, or if he’ll continue pulling the strings from the outside. This is further proof that our campaigns are working and that together we have the power to create change. Thank you for your activism, we are excited to keep fighting beside you. Thank you again for all that you do, Tessa and the CREDO Action team References: Akbar Shahid Ahmed, “Steve Bannon Removed From The National Security Council,” The Huffington Post, April 5, 2017. © 2017 CREDO. All rights reserved. T

Add your name: Time for Medicare-for-all ~ @SenSanders

Last month, we won a very important victory against the Republican health care plan that would have taken away insurance from 24 million Americans, raised premiums for seniors and defunded Planned Parenthood. 

But we must be clear. This is just the beginning of our struggle, not the end. Our true goal is not just stopping Republicans from destroying health care. Our goal is guaranteeing health care as a right for all people. 


Let me be blunt. The Affordable Care Act has done some very important things for our country. Today, 20 million Americans have health care who did not before the law was passed. We ended the obscenity of people being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions and we put a cap on how much people with serious illnesses have to pay out of pocket. Progress was made but we can do better -- much better. 


That is why, within a couple of weeks, I am going to be introducing legislation calling for a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program. 


People who cannot afford health care don't deserve to die. We should not be spending far more, per capita, than any other nation for health care or be paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. 


I believe now more than ever that the American people are ready to end the national disgrace of being the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care as a right for all of its people. Add your name if you agree. 


Add your name as a citizen co-sponsor of my Medicare-for-all, single-payer health care bill that will guarantee health care as a right for all Americans. 


The truth is that the insurance and pharmaceutical companies in this country are bribing the United States Congress. In recent years they have spent billions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions to make sure that we maintain a dysfunctional, but profitable, approach to health care. Enough is enough. Now is the time to take them on and do something about it. 


They will try to make words like "NATIONAL HEALTH CARE" sound scary. 


But the truth is, we already have a very large single-payer system in this country. It's called Medicare and it has succeeded in providing near-universal coverage to Americans over the age 65 and gets high marks from people who are enrolled in the program. I believe we can and should expand it to cover everyone. 


I believe the American people are ready for a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system that guarantees health care as a right for all Americans. But getting there will require nothing short of a political revolution in this country. Add your name to say we're in this together. 


Add your name as a citizen co-sponsor of my Medicare-for-all, single-payer health care bill that will guarantee health care as a right for all Americans. 


Today, 28 million of our sisters and brothers are living without health care, while many others have high deductibles and co-payments. Despite the gains under the Affordable Care Act, there is still a major health care crisis in this country.

Our job, together, is to end that. 


In solidarity, 


Bernie Sanders
U.S. Senator, Vermont

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