“Are you willing to fight for that person who you don’t even know as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself?” – B. Sanders

I’ve spent a lot of time over this prolonged presidential primary thinking about the concept of hope and why, despite the exterior appearances of a cantankerous New Yorker, I find so much hope in Bernie Sanders and his presidential campaign. 

I believe it stems from becoming a father and experiencing politics with a sense of real consequences far beyond myself. It’s not an original thought to realize that having a child changed how I see the world. It wasn’t until my son was born a little over two years ago that I started to feel the things I believed in emotionally, as opposed to simply believing them intellectually. 

Having a child has shown me the lived value of another human life beyond my own. The persistent fear a parent has for the basic health and welfare of a child that starts helpless and who in time grows to have more and more ability (and at two, still no judgement).  I see this shift in basic stuff – a stronger emotional pull upon hearing of tragedy or a sense of grief at seeing someone experiencing hardship. Other times it’s big picture – a deeper sense of fear as to what looming global problems (climate change, rising right wing nationalism and anti-Semitism) could mean for my son. Through the experience of parenthood, I’ve grounded my politics in a way that is so much stronger, deeper, and more affirming than ever before. 

Life in this country is hard. Economic inequality and insecurity makes it hard. Racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia all make it hard. In the face of these things, not everyone responds to the experience of parenthood by looking outward. People have a tendency to start to build up little walls to protect this new thing that they feel is tenuous or delicate. Parochialism, territorialism and fear set in. Perhaps it’s why we’ve ended up a country so defined by who we fear and what we lack. 

We need hope in the face of these systemic hardships and self-imposed walls. And the thing that is so special about Bernie Sanders’ campaign for President is the way in which he has quietly staked out the most hopeful campaign in my adult lifetime. 

Bernie asks us to look at our neighbors not as others, but as people with the same material, emotional, and familial needs as ourselves. When we do this, we can see our respective hardships. We can see the value and importance of providing care, regardless of cost. Of having good paying jobs with dignity and rights. Of freeing people from the hopelessness of student debt. Of ending military adventurism and investing in solutions to the climate emergency that is already devastating communities across our country. 

“I look around and see so many other people barely holding on,” Ms. Yanos said, choking back tears as her kids did their homework at the kitchen table. “It’s not that I think it will be all rainbows and sunshine if he’s elected, things won’t change overnight. But people younger than me, they are going to demand change in their lifetime.” (NYT)

Politics is fundamentally about how we share our brief time together on this planet. It is about how we care for each other when we are sick and how we protect each other when we are vulnerable. It is about the extent to which we choose as a society to either honor the dignity of our neighbors and other people around the world, or how we distance ourselves from them and deny their humanity through, at best, indifference and, at worst, state sanctioned violence. Through parenthood I’ve felt the difference between these choices like a gut punch. How could we ever choose to not affirm each others’ worth?

Bernie’s platform is one that uniquely puts forward the value of every individual human life. His call to fight for someone you do not know just as hard as you’ll fight for yourself is a bold act of faith in each of us to see the world in the same way. To see that each of us has our own struggles, our own complexity, our own unique value as human beings, worthy of not just protection but societal action on our behalf. From this act of faith comes solidarity and from solidarity comes the power to affect change together.

I don’t particularly care what you call Sanders’ platform – whether it’s democratic socialism or a mere modernization of FDR-style Democratic Party liberalism. What inspires me is Bernie Sanders’ humanism. The belief that the problems any one of us faces merit a president who will fight for them, not because they are big demographic problems that have economic impact, but because, god damn it, it is our friends and neighbors who are dying without care or rationing insulin or having to work three or four gigs to live paycheck to paycheck. That a better world is possible. That this better world can be achieved if we work together in solidarity and with an embrace of our shared humanity.

Sanders has described the effort as a kind of support network for people left out of mainstream politics — an effort to help millions of people, in his words, “feel less alone.” (Buzzfeed)

Bernie is at his best when he gives us not his litany of villains (though knowing the enemies who stand in the way against a better world is important), but when he gives us the space to find hope together. Hope is so important, especially when the economy works for almost no one, when we face a rising global pandemic and a climate catastrophe, when we have been failed by our leaders and it feels as if things are just slipping past the point of salvation. 

We need to have the discipline to find hope, both in each other and in a political movement. I want to be a part of a politics that values each individual life and fights for solutions to the problems we face that are grounded in the goodness of each of us. I want for the audacious hopefulness of Bernie Sanders’ campaign to inspire millions upon millions of people here in America to participate in the political process, demand a better world and build it alongside people they do not know. The urgency of this moment demands it.

I can’t recommend the pathway of having a child to find humanism in your politics. We don’t have time for that. But what I can do is encourage you to listen to what Bernie Sanders is asking of us with an open mind and an open heart, free from cynicism and with a belief that a better world is possible. 

The primary is not over. Biden has not yet won. There is time for us to look around, to look at our country and the need for hope, solidarity and a politics grounded in the value of each and every one of us and still elect Bernie Sanders as President. 

Volunteer. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Donate. Vote.