In the preface to Bernie Sanders’ book, Outsider in the White House, he writes (emphasis mine and also editorial break up of one paragraph into several for easier reading):
The majority of Americans today are outsiders, especially in the halls of power where decisions about our economy are being made.
And we will remain outsiders for as long as the political balance is tipped against the great mass of Americans, for as long as the status quo is characterized by inequality and injustice.
It will take all the energy of the new movements of this new time to make the change that is needed. These movements began on the outside, but even now are beginning to be heard on the inside — changing our politics, changing our laws, changing America.
Cities and states are raising wages. They are beginning to address racial disparities in policing practices and the policies that lead to mass incarceration. They are demanding a constitutional amendment that will overturn Citizens United and restore free and fair elections. Something is happening in America, something that feels like a political revolution.
I have been an outsider in the House. I have been an outsider in the Senate. Now I am a candidate for the presidency. I believe that this political revolution might just put an outsider in the White House and that, together, we can remake our politics and our governance so that none of us are outsiders any more.
Imagine that. Being an “insider.”
More and more these days I’m feeling like an insider and realizing that feeling doesn’t come from without but from within.
What Bernie has done for me, as a citizen, is to have helped me trust my own feelings and intelligence on what is going on in this country and not be swayed by the immense power of the status quo which at every turn tries to shake that confidence.
This immense power is rooted in one of the oldest of human needs, to be in the center of the herd.
We have that herd instinct, you know.
The safest place in a herd is in the center. I hear it’s very cozy there.
I’ve been in small cliques of other outsiders where we tried to create our own “center” to huddle in, but the bigger world always ended up crushing that notion.
So it’s not a real place, being in the center of the herd, imo. It’s a state of mind. And it can be very healing to look inside to see our inner citizen (yes, I have just coined that phrase) and feel that as a right of citizenship we are indeed inside, we are in the center, we’re no better or worse than the rest of the herd.
So let’s be insiders, right now. Let’s not wait any longer.
Solidarity.