(MSCC) John Mudd, February 15, 2016 — I sent my opinion to the Green Party. My message: Get behind the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, please! If not, you will, as you always have—fail. I am supportive of your platform. I’ve tossed my vote away twice for Green Party candidates some years past. And many times I’ve felt as if I was tossing my vote away in what seemed to be a one party system pretending to be a two party system. So, rather than having your candidate valiantly smile under a veil of spirited hopefulness while destined for defeat, please direct your efforts toward supporting Senator Sanders’ campaign.

In the meantime, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig has me rather confounded. I did like him, his articles, his analytical reviews…but did he give his ill-fated 2016 presidential campaign any analytic review? Perhaps I should have read his book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It. Is that where his well-devised plan was hiding? Was the plan for his presidential run, which was contingent upon raising a million dollars (which he did), with the sole purpose of reforming how we finance campaigns, an excerpt from his book? And he was planning to quit once the mission was accomplished? This idea did not sell well to the populous. It didn’t garner media popularity. I guess there were not enough marketing, PR, and advertising funds to sway the nation? I agree whole-heartedly with this priority. However, I would expect the presidential checklist to be quite a bit longer, and the reformation of our campaign finance laws to consume an entire presidency. By the way, healthcare reform wasn’t built in a day. I’m sure he would have rallied the Republicans to accomplish that feat. What concerns me most was this divisively “clever” dig: “I agree with Bernie [Sanders] about the need to deal with wealth inequality, and there are many in the progressive left who agree with Bernie about that. But what I know is that America is not yet of the view that we should become Sweden.” This is not only inaccurate but it serves the existing establishment by clouding the consciousness of voters. I offer him the same message I gave to the Green Party: “Get behind the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, please!”

The Black Lives Matter movement raises a disdainful hair on the back of my neck with their efforts to coop the limelight. This is where Black Lives [could] Matter, but plays the fool: Ferociously commandeering a mic at a Bernie Sanders rally, not once, but twice, tried to strike a courageous pose to the world with shouts to the choir was a foolish misstep, not to mention self- centered, isolating, and rude; an act without intellectual forethought. Certainly with no understanding of Bernie’s participatory history. We get it; the criminality of our legal system is prejudicially hard on people of color. We haven’t fully faced our shortcomings or owned up to

modern slavery. Inequality is widening. Some of us do believe we are ALL in this together; it is our job to look beyond a racial construct and hold together the fabric that makes us human. And that, my friend, is why Bernie matters. He wants to close the gap of inequality for us all; thus close the racial divide. The same message for the Green Party and Michael Lessig stands for Black Lives Matter.

This could be a defining moment in history, a surge of forward thinking for a country mired in financial, corporate, and political absurdity. We can wrestle this world away from politicians whose objectives have been the destruction of Obama’s presidency, including the waste of time and money on lawsuits and 55 appeals in an attempt to deprive us of healthcare, the encouragement of racism, the enrichment of corporate-hood, the call for war rather than discourse, and the continual disregard for a warming planet.

Divided we fall; united we move mountains. Do not splinter our party with throwaway candidates, nonsensical ideals, and act of antagonism. If there is a moment we can wrangle our government away from the clutches of the oligarchs, it is now with Bernie. He is a viable candidate who speaks our language. We must all usher the corporate politicians out, for their way stifles humanity and furthers inequality, oppression, and destruction. Let us seize this opportunity and defend against corporate rule.