As you read this, it will be the day of the Nevada caucus. It seems silly for the result of Nevada to come out and this blog not be able to offer reaction to it, so I am combining all my still-to-be-completed days into one blog. I simply have not had time to literally write this blog every day. Nor do I really have time now, because I have to be up at 6:30am tomorrow for caucus training. So what I offer here is more of a factual list of the things that I’ve been doing, with little embellishment, but at the very least pictures. I hope this gives you a sense of these missing days, and I can tell you the full stories of them in person when I get back to the UK after we win Nevada, California, and all the Super Tuesday states!
////////////
On Tuesday, I began in The Garage™, where the Las Vegas DSA is running its operations.
Next to the College of Southern Nevada (CSN) where I had some really nice chats with college students, most of whom were very pro-Bernie.
And then I got to go to another Bernie rally, this time as a volunteer, in the most beautiful sunshine. I was managing the section of the rally reserved for disabled supporters. The other Brits were patrolling the perimeter as security. For some reason I wasn’t selected for the security detail.
Bernie gave an amazing speech, and then, as I was at the front, he came to shake my hand along with everyone else’s!
‘I’ve come from England for you Bernie!’
‘Thank you!’
I gave him a massive pat on the back, possibly a bit too hard. But he was just beaming.
In hindsight, I was really supposed to thank him, rather than the other way round. It would have been better to say something about how inspiring he was, rather than about myself. Thankfully I would get a chance to make for up this at a later date…
After shaking our hands, Bernie led a march of students from the rally straight to their polling station on-campus. This hadn’t been planned – he’d just had the idea midway through his speech, and he wanted to do it. We turned record numbers of students out that day. The whole campus came to a standstill.
Us Brits were then rushed off to a polling station, where we were to pretend to be Democratic Party volunteers so that we could help try and reduce the waiting times. 3 hours, they were when we arrived at the high school. But there was nothing much we could do. The Democratic Party only had 4 iPads to fill in the data, and one of them they didn’t have a charger for.
We’re not feeling super confident about their ability to run the caucus on Saturday.
That evening, we went and watched a live recording of the podcast Chapo Trap House, which was suitably rabid and debauched, and pretty funny, or at least it was before I fell asleep during the second half. It was the dimmed lights after a long day…
I got to see Kyle and lots of buddies at the bar, as basically everyone was at Chapo. I tweeted about the show and a surreal conversation I had with Virgil Texas in the casino afterwards, and one of the Chapo guys retweeted it, meaning it got 570 likes, roughly 565 more than any of my previous tweets. That was kinda funny.
After several hours at the casino bar, the night degenerated into a long walk for food through the strip. We never actually made it to any food before calling a cab home.
Liam, a fellow Brit who had just arrived, told a story about a friend who went on a stag-do to Vegas. He won 10 grand on his first bet.
‘Wow, he must be minted!’
‘Nah, he wasted 8000 here.’
////////////
Wednesday I needed some recovery time in the morning, and the afternoon was not too eventful, I just knocked some doors, and there was a good dog in the office.
In the evening we went to a delicious taco restaurant, Tacotarian, to watch the debate (by ‘we’ I mean everyone in the campaign). I had a deep-fried guac taco and it was unreal.
The debate, much like the taco, was pretty spicy, as the moderate stragglers made desperate attempts to get the polls to shift, and everyone piled in on Bloomberg. Elizabeth Warren in particular genuinely powerfully excelled at this later, showing how impressive a voice she can be when she takes on the billionaire class and enunciates a feminism explicitly opposed to them. I felt a sense of what might have been – in this campaign she has deserted all the anti-establishment energy that made her renowned, and tried to run a Pete Buttigieg-style centrist campaign. I think she has terrible advisers. But also she has neither the political judgement nor the will of a radical, because ultimately she is not one.
The Bloomberg stuff might have made the best TV, but the most important moment of the debate came right at the end, where the candidates were asked whether in the case of no one winning 50% of the delegates, the one with the most votes, with the plurality, should be the nominee. Bernie said yes. Everyone else said no (including Warren). Bernie is currently comfortably the most likely to win the most delegates, but still odds-against winning 50%. You better believe the party is gearing up to steal the nomination from him.
/////////
Thursday we headed to the office early to a meet a very special guest (details when I return!). Inspired, we headed out and knocked doors in an interesting apartment complex with a swimming pool in the middle. After 2 hours I was very tempted to hop the fence and jump in!
We were planning on doing another session from The Garage, but our new friend and increasingly de facto chauffeur Lion (sic) had his phone stolen at a gas station (whilst we were in the car!). We could track the iPhone in an app, so we ended up chasing this criminal right across Las Vegas. We weren’t quite sure what we’d do when we found him – if he had a gun, de-escalate, we agreed. In fact, we chased him all the way to his house, but it was in an apartment complex and we couldn’t find his car, so we were forced to give up. We bonded as a 5 on this adventure – this was a highly comic silver-lining for us Brits; and also I think for Lion, as he possesses both phone insurance and a good sense of humour.
The night then finished at Bunkhouse Saloon with a concert/mini-rally. First up someone who was a paid organiser of the Muslim and Arab communities here. No other campaign has Muslim and Arab organisers. They’re not considered worth it as they’re ‘low-propensity voters.’
The headline speaker was none other than Nina Turner, Chair of Bernie Sanders 2020, who I was so excited to get to see in my time in America. She is a phenomenon. Listening to her speak is the pinnacle. I feel like once you listen to her, you can never go back – no other speaker seems worth it.
‘Raise one hand for yourself. Raise the other for somebody you don’t know. With these hands we’re gonna get Medicare for All. With these hands… with these hands we’re gonna elect Bernie Sanders President of the United States.’
/////////
An early start the next day, and straight to knocking doors with someone from Minnesota and someone from Manhattan.
I finally had a vegetable for lunch, an absolutely spectacular ‘eggplant’ and tofu lunch deal for 7 dollars.
Then in the afternoon we went to Red Rock, just outside Las Vegas, again driven around by Lion. It was just stunning. A canyon! The Wild West! And the colour of the rock. I’m not sure my camera was really good enough to pick it up. But it was really lovely to leave Las Vegas and see some of the country, and remember that there is a world outside this bizarre city.
Then, we were staffing a rally again. This didn’t actually involve much. There were supposed to be vegan protesters we were looking out for but they never materialised. I have decided to decline the opportunity to write a joke here.
We heard from some survivors of school shootings. Younger than me. One, whose sister was killed, described his ongoing mental health struggles. He loved that mental health services were included free in Medicare for All.
We got to listen to Nina Turner again, and I wasn’t quite sure how Bernie was going to follow that… but he delivered his best speech yet. He ran through all the hits – although these are still unfailingly embellished with lines revolutionary to American politics. Bringing up the rights of Climate migrants as a centrepiece of Climate justice. ‘If landlords don’t stop raising rents, we’ll stop them for you.’ Three people own more wealth than the bottom half of America.
But then at the end he provided something new. He detailed how all the big steps forward in American political history came from people on the streets in social movements, not from the top down. As he listed them, pausing for each – from female suffrage, to the civil rights movement, to the LGBT rights movement – the crowd swelled with energy and the arena reached fever pitch as the people felt themselves in touch with a revolutionary past.
‘This is a campaign for, by, and of the working class. At the end of the day, the 1% is just 1%.’
‘We’re taking on the Republican establishment.’ Cheer. ‘We’re taking on the Democratic establishment.’ Biggest cheer of the day.
‘They’re getting nervous! Well you know what, they ain’t gonna stop us.’
This was a genuinely great speech. I can picture it in a textbook in 30 years: the ‘They’re Not Going To Stop Us’ speech. How America’s first Democratic Socialist President did it. The moment the momentum became too great. How he completely changed the rules of what American presidential candidates can say. What they must say.
Afterwards, the volunteers got to take a picture all together with Bernie, and my height finally paid off as I was able to be at the front, and indeed at the centre, and so Bernie came and stood right next to me. He has such generous and bright smile – right at me it was. They do have better teeth in America.
This time I managed to say ‘thank you,’ and tell him how much it meant. He squeezed my back in half a hug as he posed for a photo (which we’ll get off the campaign in a couple of weeks). It is, of course, a mistake to stan politicians. As the slogan says, this is not about him, it is about the movement. He is just a man. But it felt pretty great, I’m not going to lie.
And so here we are. Tomorrow is the Nevada Caucus. I will be a Site Lead, and I will learn exactly what that entails tomorrow morning. This is what it has all been leading up to. Our vote is there, we just need people to turnout. And what do you know, for the first time on the trip it is scheduled to rain. Traumatic flashbacks to December 12th. But it’s not going to be like that this time… fingers crossed!
mini moralia 