I took the daytime of Sunday off, as I had had about 8 hours sleep in the last 72 hours, and I needed to recover from the previous night.
Handily, there was a McDonald’s a 5 minute drive away, which Shaun was able to drop me off at. I bought 3 hash browns (thinking they came in twos and I was buying 6), which I hoped would be sufficiently stodgy to absorb some of the liquids still sloshing about my organs.
At this point in the trip, I was yet to eat a vegetable. I’m struggling to remember what they look like.
I then had to walk back to the house in searing sun and light, clutching my bag of McDonalds close just to feel something in my fingers.
Then I sat in my room and ate the hash browns, but it was not enough. I couldn’t concentrate. I felt sick. But I couldn’t move because I didn’t have a car.
I have to order a second meal on Door Dash, again from McDonald’s.
I anxiously track the car of my delivery driver all the way to my road.
‘You don’t need to come outside,’ she says as I trot down the driveway – ‘I’m supposed to deliver it to your door.’
It is wonderful to be a consumer under capitalism, right up until the moment that you’re not.
Which reminds me, in my previous blog I forgot to put in three pictures from the Paris casino which I had intended to include. I thought they might be appropriate now.
Yes, that is a bar which sells oxygen. This is one of two futures.
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In the evening, we went to a bar where the Las Vegas DSA were having a social. It has basically become their bar now I think. We met lots of really cool people here, but two overwhelmingly stand out.
I had just been chatting to Nathan (one of the Brits), when we realised a crowd was gathering in the corner. We shuffled over and there was a short, young black woman holding what had been moments earlier a group of rowdy bar-goers completely enraptured. She was speaking about the importance of pushing yourself as a volunteer to secure justice:
‘One door knocked, one life saved. And when you save a life, you save a legacy. If that officer had killed me, my first son would not have been born.’
This, it turns out, is Cori Bush, one of the stars of the hit Netflix documentary Knock Down The House, a film about insurgent left-wing candidates who primaried establishment Democrats in the lead up to the 2018 mid-terms. The most famous subject of the documentary is of course Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. For some unbeknownst reason, I actually haven’t seen it, which is just silly really.
Cori’s story she told was that she used to be homeless, she had once been taken to within an inch of her life by the police, and she really started to engage politically after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, which is in her district. Through the Movement for Black Lives, yes she fought the terrible injustices of the United States, but also saw people of all races and backgrounds stand with her in solidarity. There were Hispanics risking deportation if they got arrested. Palestinians came over and told them what to do when being teargassed. A white man stopped a police baton coming down on a black man. This is what she believes the Bernie Sanders campaign is channelling.
‘You know a tree by its fruit. You know a leader by how he duplicates himself. That’s me. That’s you. That’s us.’
By the end of her speech I was ready to go over over the top for her. She is, amongst everything else, a Pastor, and that voice, that rhythm of the Black American church leader is just so distinctive. I don’t mean to romanticise, as I know that can be problematic, but I hope I can say that I found it extraordinarily powerful. It’s like channelling the spirit of the world, so that you kind of swell with power and speak with a thousand voices at once.
And then, who should she be at the bar with, but a second star of the documentary, Amy Vilela, who is now co-chair of Nevada for Bernie Sanders.
Amy’s story is equally heartbreaking. She was a businesswoman, not politically active, when one day she received a call from her daughter whilst she was away in Kansas City.
‘Mum, my leg hurts.’
And it kept hurting. It got worse. Eventually, she went to a hospital. But as she did not have insurance, the hospital pressured her into leaving. She kept calling Amy.
‘Mum, they’re not helping me.’
The next thing Amy knew, she was visiting her daughter in an emergency room.
She had developed a blood clot in her leg. There a number of pre-symptoms which could have been identified with a simple ultrasound. It had been entirely treatable.
Amy climbed into the hospital bed and held her child as she breathed her last breath. ‘You are loved, and you will not have died in vain.’
For the next few months Amy was like a ghost, not really there. But then she came across a video. A video of Bernie Sanders arguing for universal healthcare in 1993. The year her daughter was born.
So she began to get active in the Sanders 2016 campaign. And then, in 2018, it was DSA members who encouraged her to run for office.
Cori and Amy lost their races, of course. But as Amy said to me, they won something far greater. They won the conversation. They won the movement. They won the future.
They were both really funny, had great banter, and were so welcoming to these random white Brits.
Cori is running again for congress, in the same district. And you better believe that this time she’s gonna win.
As you can probably tell, this blog is having to be scaled back a bit in terms of length, and the quality is deteriorating rapidly. It’s all hands to the pump now so you’ll have to forgive me for the sake of the greater project. I still hope to post once a day.
mini moralia 