"Something Is Wrong in America": Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor & Michael Eric Dyson Debate Sanders v Biden

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR: Yeah, a couple of things. I came to support Sanders because I think that his politics and his political program actually capture the depths of the problem and crises in the United States right now, even before the coronavirus hit the U.S., the problems with the grotesque amount of economic inequality in this country, the way that that manifests itself particularly in black communities in terms of underemployment, the issues with racial justice, injustice with the criminal justice system in this country, the issues with housing insecurity. The entirety of Bernie Sanders’ program captures the abiding problems of inequality in the United States right now that have disproportionate impact in African-American communities. And so, for me, this was not a difficult decision. I am someone who is deeply cynical about electoral politics, and have been for some time. In many ways, I remain that way. But Sanders’ candidacy in 2016, where someone who identifies as a socialist for the first time in a mainstream election garnered 13 million votes, that I think spoke to the deep problems in this society and the deep desire to do something about them.

But beyond issue of the program, I think that — of Sanders’ program, I think that there are two things that are really important: his commitment to solidarity, that is exemplified by his campaign slogan, “Us, not me,” and the political revolution, which is really just about saying that — is an understanding that in order to pass the kind of dramatic legislation that is necessary to transform the lives of people in this country, that it’s not just going to come from Washington, D.C. It most likely won’t come from Washington, D.C., but that it actually has to be pursued by social movements on the ground. It has to be pursued by organizing on the ground. And Bernie Sanders is clearly, by far and away, the only candidate that understands that. So, when people talk about his political program as pie in the sky, as unrealistic, not only is that betraying their own cynicism — and, for that matter, ignorance — about the way that progress has been achieved in this country, but it dismisses what I think is very different and fundamental about how he sees the enactment of these policies, which is through broad social movements on the ground that have the ability to politically coerce a Congress that is filled with millionaires, that is filled with self-interested politicians who have very little interest — many of whom have very little — who have displayed very little interest in the conditions of the people who are worst off in this country.

And I think, now more than ever, we see the absolute necessity for universal healthcare in this country. That Joe Biden can show his face in public and talk still about affordable healthcare, when we have a convergence of a public healthcare crisis and an economic crisis, and the solution to the public healthcare crisis is what will drive the economic crisis — isolation, quarantining, putting the country on lockdown will exacerbate the economic crisis that is about to be unleashed in this country. So, the notion that healthcare should be affordable, that prescriptions should be affordable, in a time where people’s ability to afford anything, for ordinary working-class people, their ability to afford anything will be thrown into absolute peril, makes no sense. And I think that what Sanders said over the weekend, that we are as safe as the least insured person, has never made more sense than it does in this moment.

And so, I think that the crisis that we are confronted with as a society right now not only highlights the vast inequality that is the underbelly of U.S. society, that is usually and typically hidden — the lives of poor people are almost always papered over and hidden in this country, and in moments of crisis they come bubbling to the surface. And so we have to ask as a society: Are we going to use this opportunity, to use this moment, to actually implement fundamental change, or are we going to continue to kick this can down the road and acting as if there is some normal to get back to? This thing is going to forever alter the way that we interact with each other. It will forever alter probably life as we know it and have understood it to be in the United States.

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https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/16/keeanga_yamahtta_taylor_michael_eric_dyson