There are several explanations for why the British government has decided to ease lockdown measures despite our curve barely flattening: that the country is run by of a bunch of incompetent toffs who no longer have any upwards to fail; that they planned a May exit from the beginning and refuse to be put off by the mere detail of how it’s actually going; or that their friends in Capital want to start making money again, and their families want their middle-class lives to return to normal, so working class people get to go back to work regardless of the safety conditions, while they all work from home or on their golf swing. Of course, multiple can be true at the same time.

But in a broader historical context the lockdown hokey-pokey may be understood differently. It may come to be seen as a dry run for how much mass death the State can get away with.

There has been a noticeable cycle these past few weeks in which policies, rather than being formally announced, are merely floated in a press leak; the public react, on some scale between strike threats and conga lines, and then an entirely different policy is actually implemented. It is as if they want to gauge to what extent people will go along with whatever the State says; how far along the authoritarian personality project is. It is not hard to imagine Dominic Cummings conceiving of the State as a giant laboratory for testing his docile population. (The objective conclusion of positivism is not science but administration. It greases the slope from liberalism to fascism.)

Specifically what the State can be pictured as preparing itself for is the second global catastrophe which looms over the 21st century: Climate Breakdown. Capital, as it has in the past, will try to retain power amid economic, political and ecological crises through a massive expansion of State surveillance, a brutalised and atomised workforce, a nostalgic nationalism, racialised scapegoating, and the detention and murder of the millions of migrants the system produces. The ideological groundwork for this is being laid in both the New Right, but also, typically, within liberalism itself.

It is, of course, hardly an insight that the pandemic is in some ways a watered-down version of what is to come: a global natural crisis of mass death and economic wreckage. The people who really run Britain are, sadly, not the buffoons they hand out Cabinet positions to. They know that Climate Breakdown is coming. They fully intend for the Conservative Party to be in charge before, during, and after it. And what their response to the current crisis is producing is a political/cultural compact that anticipates and perhaps even experiments for the one to come. Particularly in the following four ways:

The Interior. The government’s relaxing of lockdown measures has created a sharp division between those who must leave the home in order to work and those who need not. This is of course a class divide. In this way the lockdown policy has returned the Interior to its Benjaminian origin; as a dreamworld exclusively for the bourgeois. We return, not to the 1930s, but the 1830s. Indoors, the middle classes can convince themselves that anything they like is happening outside their window; universally safe working conditions on construction sites, for example. It is, as Benjamin says, ‘a phantasmagoria… in it, the bourgeois assembles the distant in space and time[1].’ The exterior, meanwhile, has become a kind of dreaded purgatory characterised by fear and disconnection. It is the world of the delivery driver and the luxury flat constructor. A world of precarious, unsafe work, and frontline horror: strictly nothing else. Such a division is of course very welcome to the State. The workforce is cowed, and the bourgeois way of life protected. Suffice to say, the revolution will not be videoconferenced. This is what we can expect from Climate Breakdown. The hardening class divide between administrators and workers will be enforced spatially. The exterior will become the scenes of floods, tsunamis, heatwaves. Homelessness will massively increase. The middle and upper classes will retreat to their interiors, protected by surveillance and a police state. At the extreme, the rich will retreat to country mansions and luxury bunkers, as they have during the pandemic. The last human will die not in the street but in the living room.

The Blitz Spirit. The only thing worse than the situation on the ground is the media and online discourse, which has been mind-numbing. But it’s not merely stupid. It is calculated. When Climate Breakdown is too obvious to deny, the government will ask the Nation to pull together to defeat this evil like we did the Nazis. We’re all in it together. We have seen that essentially this allows the State to get away with absolutely anything, because any excess death or deprivation becomes a heroic sacrifice to the cause. We now have the highest death total in Europe, despite having advance warning of the virus compared to, say, Italy. That figure does not even include the devastating loss of life in care homes[2]. And yet it seems to have no consequences for the government’s approval ratings. We are being immunised to mass death. What’s produced is a cult of heroism; only in which the heroic act is to mitigate government failure. And a cult of death in which the death is utterly pointless. Of course, this is barbaric, because what we’ll be fighting is not Nazis but the consequences of government policy. And the solution to the crisis will be mass social provision and system change, not business as usual but with a stiffer upper lip. In the use of Blitz Spirit and World War 2 rhetoric today, the language is honed, instilled, reified. A new generation needs recruiting. A historic defeat of fascism will be used to install it.

Racialised nature. It feels like a long time ago, but the first example of changes in social behaviour in response to the pandemic was that people stopped going to Chinatowns. This phenomenon occurred across the Western world. It was utterly preposterous and racist, of course. Very early on Trump was labelling COVID-19 the ‘Chinese virus,’ and the sentiment has slipped into British discourse as the need to deflect from our own government sharpened[3]. The virus is a natural phenomenon, biologically at least affecting us all equally. Yet the ease and speed with which we racialise a global natural emergency should terrify us. We take an event which affects us as a species and divide us into Us and Them, even as They die. When Climate Breakdown hits, it will surely be blamed on the Chinese and their fossil fuel production. Not to mention the migrants who will be fleeing destruction. They will be contaminated, they will be to blame, they will be threatening our battle against it. This will be of no benefit to actually tackling the devastation, but will precipitate mass violence towards racialised minorities. The Nation of the Blitz Spirit requires an Other.

The Border. The British government announced last week that it would finally be enacting stricter rules around entering the country[4]. Britain has actually been an outlier in how open it’s kept its border. Trump of course needed no excuse. But the British border remains one of the most violent in the world, and our anti-immigration fanatics smell an opportunity[5]. Any tightening now will be used for normalisation in the future. Where Climate Breakdown will differ most from Coronavirus is the migration. Bluntly: the foremost site of politics in the 21st century will be the border; and the future of humanity will be defined by rich countries’ response to mass migration caused by Climate Breakdown (which they themselves caused). Either we radically re-envisage the subjects of community, and open borders to provide sanctuary to all according to need; or we police the border with detention, concentration, and mass death and deprivation. There will not be a third way. It is internationalist socialism or ecofascism.

The four illustrations are obviously not exhaustive. They are intended to contribute towards the preparation of the left. It must picture what the right intends to do. And it must be resolute against liberals who in the name of moderation would accelerate the extreme.

There is no solace or consolation to be found in what is happening in Britain, and around the world, right now. It is dire. But it does give us advance warning of what is to come. Our enemies understand that this is just the beginning; and we must as well.

[1] https://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/benjaminparis.pdf pp. 83

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/13/coronavirus-real-care-home-death-toll-double-official-figure-study-says

[3]https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/29/michael-gove-appears-to-blame-china-over-lack-of-uk-coronavirus-testing

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/01/coronavirus-weaponised-way-to-be-openly-racist

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/09/two-week-coronavirus-quarantine-to-be-announced-for-uk-arrivals

[5] https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1259536484341895169

I write from New York. It is the end.

I have just come from an underground jazz club in the Village, where Rodney Jones was shredding in front of a band all of whom were simultaneously improvising. Rodney told us about how his career began – when Dizzy Gillespie plucked him out of a school band. ‘No you can’t drop out of school to join Dizzy Gillespie’s band,’ his father had said.

Having begun the blog endorsing Adorno, I must end it departing strongly from him. Jazz is radical – is subversive: this jazz, even this old guy, sounds like Right Now. Apologies for sounding like poorly written Ginsburg biopic.

Like most good music, it was both exciting, and extremely anxiety-inducing. To reflect the political moment perhaps.

I have done almost everything in New York. I will not bore you with the details, but there are some pictures. I’ve mostly been taking pictures of the ironic things and putting my camera away when having fun, so it makes my trip look a lot more boring than it actually was – ask me about the other stuff some time.

It felt so good to be back in a real city. None of this San Francisco nonsense. New York was just my speed.

Imagine some vaguely comic and interesting sentences about New York. I haven’t slept in 29 hours tbh. They have good pizza. Some insight there.

We should talk about Super Tuesday, I suppose.

It was, as you probably will have gathered, disappointing.

Joe Biden won the most states and the most delegates, including crucial victories in Texas and Massachusetts. Bernie won in California though!! The largest, most diverse state in America!! By a healthy margin of 8%. We smashed it in SF and Oakland too, so that was very pleasing to see that work come to fruition. I am apparently the Sanders campaign’s lucky charm.

Shoutout to the East Bay DSA who I spent the last couple of days and nights of the campaign with, and who were absolutely lovely, as well as setting a new benchmark in my series of political automobiles.

But there were some very disappointing snippets from the night. Massachusetts was a bitter blow, with the Warren + Bernie vote nearly double Biden’s total. Youth turnout in Texas was down, despite what we thought was a really strong campaign there. Biden massively increased turnout in Virginia and other states, turning out these mostly old people to vote for him.

There has been plenty of liberal sneering about the fact that Bernie has not managed to systematically increase turnout from 2016. But given that the polls continue to have Bernie on 60%+ of young people, surely the relevant counterfactual here is what if Bernie wasn’t running? How low would the turnout be then?! And what kind of politics is responsible for a situation in which young people feel permanently disengaged from the political process and like it offers them absolutely nothing? What kind of outcomes will that produce as the lives of the young get more and more desperate? Not one conducive to liberal sneerers, I’d suggest.

I feel incredibly angry about the prospect of Joe Biden winning. This is your guy? The candidate for whom you would dismantle an enormous and vibrant grassroots movement of your base and demoralise an entire generation? Joe Biden? Really?

Biden is now running a Boris Johnson-style campaign in which he tries to spend as little time actually showing his face as possible. He’s refusing to do Rachel Maddow – remember Andrew Neil. I am absolutely convinced his staff are using GE 2019 as a model. The more people actually see of him, the more they don’t like him, is the logic. No gaffes – no word slurs again, Joe. He spoke for 7 minutes at a rally today. 7 minutes.

It’s not surprising – he actually has very similar politics to Boris Johnson – if anything to the right of him on healthcare and with a longer history of reactionary social positions (if only by virtue of being alive longer). He was selected by Obama, of course, specifically for his conservatism. Ah, Obama ’08. Remember when a Democrat ran an unashamedly progressive campaign that promised material change and won handsomely, the only candidate out of Al Gore, John Kerry and Hilary Clinton to do so this millennium? Nothing to see there.

Joe Biden will lose to Donald Trump in November. Trump will maul him. Turnout will be low. Trump will win a second term, and, probably buoyed by winning the popular vote this time, will press forward towards dictatorship. Expansion of ICE’s operations, border violence, racist rhetoric, and child-caging; more Muslim bans; increase in fossil-fuel dependence; stacking the Supreme Court. Possibly a war with Iran. The ranks of the tired, poor and huddled masses will swell, but their yearning to break free will not be satisfied – quite the opposite.

There is a demographic of people, mostly older people, who have a form of liberalism which has become pathological. They cannot accept a modicum of change, or engage in the least bit of self-reflection. And it is killing people. It is killing young people. It is killing trans people. It is killing migrants. It is going to kill the whole planet. It is like they have a death drive but rather than for them it’s their own grandchildren – often as yet unborn.

The reasons that I have heard for voting Biden over Sanders, honestly. Most can’t actually give a reason – but I’ve heard that ‘Bernie’s supporters are too mean,’ or that ‘Biden can win the centre,’ etc. This is not based on any evidence (the polling shows the opposite), and it seems like absolutely zero lessons have been learned from 2016 – you know, that time something serious happened that we all said we should learn lessons from. It’s so banal. This stumble towards Biden. Divorced from actual politics.

When future generations reflect on the collapse of liberalism in the 21st century, they will mark as a seminal moment when the Democratic Party decided to run ‘woke’ Joe Biden against the incumbent Donald Trump.

In fact, liberalism’s chance to save itself was Bernie Sanders. I believe he is a socialist at heart, but his program over 4 or 8 years would not have amounted to much more than social liberalism. A social liberalism that might have been normalised in American political life. But, as always seems to be the case, the liberals miss the moment.

The race is not by any means over. In many ways, it has always been the goal of the Sanders campaign to get it down to Bernie v Biden, as the case to be made at that point is very clear. But the momentum coming out of Super Tuesday is a challenge to wrestle with. If we don’t win Michigan on Tuesday, then you’d have to say it becomes very unlikely. But I know comrades from Las Vegas working in Michigan and I have every faith in them and the team to fight to the last second. If we can win, we must win – a motto of ours in Nevada.

It has been a wonderful journey in America. I’ve loved every single minute of it, and I mean that about as literally as is humanly possible.

I’ve learned so much, and I feel humbled to have met so many of these amazing people. Thank you.

I am so lucky to have been touched by and contributed to a movement the like of which hasn’t been seen in America for a long time. Whatever happens, it is not going to go away.

And thank you for following this blog. I had some lovely comments which have made me feel warm inside. I plan to write little bits and bobs now and then and post them on here and maybe Medium, so do keep an eye out.

I anticipated, when beginning (and naming) this blog, that I would be entering what amounts to a proto-fascist state. I cannot report that I was mistaken. From Las Vegas to San Francisco to New York, America feels as if it’s in the death throes of an empire, and the means by which it maintains power as the world it created crumbles will be desperate and bloody.

It is decaying, frankly: the language in public space, the political institutions, the cultural fabric within which people lead their lives. In all three cities. The clearer its contradictions are, the more vociferously they must be hidden… the clearer they are. The idea of America, that is. Or capitalism. Alienation just hangs over every interaction. And everywhere they try to compensate with nostalgia, myth and the Nation.

A Nazi flag was briefly waved at a Bernie rally in Arizona this week. Today I was at the Immigration Museum at Ellis Island, where Bernie’s father entered the country at the turn of the 20th century.

We are in a moment of history not dissimilar from that which birthed jazz or Bernie Sanders’ parents. We must be ready, and we must be its equal this time.

There is a limit to what electoral politics can salvage, but there is not a limit to what movement-building like the one I have seen can achieve. Frankly I cannot see any alternative, if we want to have a safe, loving society on anything resembling a habitable planet.

And being part of that just by being one person, doing little things like making calls or knocking doors, as part of something bigger, with millions of people working to the same goal – the joy and collective bond that engenders – I can carry that home, and onward – a little ethic, if you will.

*this blog contains language and images that readers may find disturbing*

It is Sunday night in San Francisco, a full week since I posted in the afterglow of our Nevada victory.

That very night I got on a FlixBus from Las Vegas to SF, a 12 hour drive, which, if not in luxury, passed smoothly enough. Watching through the window as a woman confronted one of the (large, middle-aged) drivers at Fresno was about as bad as it got:

“The worst customer service I’ve ever seen! You can sass all you want…”

I have been put up in a very very nice apartment in a posh district of San Francisco. I feel intensely guilty about this. I was fully ready to be on a sofa in the back of backwater, but this is where they put me. My accent must have come across via email.

I have mostly been working out of the San Francisco office in the Mission. Mission and 18th. It is a very nice office, the largest I’ve come across yet. It even has an upstairs.

I have also been to the Oakland Bernie Sanders office, and spent an afternoon at the East Bay DSA. This was nice as I’d followed them on Facebook for a long time (not quite sure why, possibly because it’s Meagan Day’s chapter), so it was pleasing to actually be present at their operation. There I did data entry, but I’ve also been doing phonebanking (both California and Massachusetts) and of course canvassing.

The first of my canvassing partners was on his first ever shift. He told me he had been inspired to get involved after Nevada.

I have got to know the San Francisco DSA and the San Francisco Berniecrats, largely through my new friend Hae Min. There was a debate watch party at El Rio and Shahid Buttar gave a speech during the ads. Shahid is running to unseat current House Speaker and neoliberal hawk Nancy Pelosi. He probably won’t quite do it, but his campaign (along with the recent election of Chesa Boudin) shows just how powerful the radical movement in Democratic politics is becoming. Shahid performed a little liberation rap at the end of his speech, which was great.

The next day I went out for dinner with Hae Min and a California Democratic official I will leave unnamed. We were discussing ways of ensuring that the Superdelegates did not steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders in the event of him only winning a plurality. The idea was to organise the Superdelegates if they were sympathetic – and to make sure they knew that they would find hell at home if they weren’t. It’s too late to just organise and agitate at the convention in Milwaukee. They need to feel it now, at their workplaces, in the streets. Their way of life needs to be under threat. And if California can show the way today, Bernie supporters in other states can begin the project of organising the Superdelegates, the same way we organise everything else.

The result in South Carolina, while not disastrous, has unfortunately increased the likelihood that we are heading for a contested convention. That means trouble, to put it mildly.

Hae Min gave me a guided car tour of golden gate park, ocean beach and the marina. I have now seen the golden gate bridge, although what they don’t tell you is that it’s actually red.

In the day time, San Francisco certainly has some of the qualities of a nice place. You can get beautiful views of the bay. It’s sunny. There are some hip people and some good food. There are lots of pretty exterior fire escapes on the buildings, as if merely being caught in a fire is not enough, you also have to suffer crippling vertigo.

But my overall impression of San Francisco is not that it’s nice. It’s that it’s an anticipatory dystopia.

The inequality in this town is absolutely staggering. You can be in a completely fancy, Mayfair-style part of town and a 5 minute walk later you’re in a desperately poor, filthy neighbourhood, with maybe 10 homeless people on a street corner and the street then lined with massive tents. San Francisco has an acute housing crisis, resulting in thousands and thousands homeless. It has seen massive gentrification as the tech industry of the Bay expands and swamps the city’s housing. In San Francisco now, a minimum wage worker would have to work approximately 4.7 full-time jobs to be able to rent a two-bedroom apartment. The affordable housing is allocated by lottery – but get this: you have to be over an income threshold to qualify. There just isn’t enough money for anything different, apparently.

These facts in no way significantly distinguish it from e.g. London, of course, but homelessness does appear worse on the street here, partly I think because of the lack of services provision.

The crisis is also intersecting very visibly with opioid, drug, alcohol and mental health crises. Some of the behaviour is extremely disturbing to be around. I saw a man lying in the street just with his pubes out. This is at like 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Not in a back alley – on Mission Street. Others with needles in their arms. Another I saw living amongst his own shit. Loud, incoherent ranting is just a standard soundtrack to the street.

What’s more, the inequality is utterly racialised. I have not seen a single homeless white person. I have seen almost zero non-white people walking around the fancier parts of town.

And it has all become completely matter-of-fact. People just don’t even bat an eyelid. Well, the Bernie canvassers do. But life in the richer parts of town goes on, with this conspicuous upper-class lifestyle tucked under their arms.

The homeless people need compassionate support, shelter, addiction treatment, mental health provision. Instead, my friend reported when out canvassing that he watched two cops in a police car bopping to music and laughing as they ploughed straight into a group of homeless people, literally driving them off a public street. One woman in a wheelchair couldn’t move so they got out the car and booked her. They are being criminalised just for existing.

And of course, these people don’t even have a free health service. There is no free A&E. There is nothing.

And so to walk around this city, particularly at night but really all the time, becomes like being in a science fiction movie. You have this extraordinary wealth, conspicuously displayed – and this desperate poverty, lit up in neon – and then the violence necessary for such outcomes being visibly enforced, not just in the form of police brutality, but in the psychological punishment and trauma from which these people are vocally suffering – which produces a kind of frenzied, apocalyptic atmosphere of a failed society.

Part of the horror of it is that this is all occurring in a city famed around the world for its liberalism. It has always been run by liberals, and the tech bros who move in are liberals. The rich people in the wealthy neighbourhoods almost all vote Democrat, they probably know how to deploy some ‘woke’ language, and I’m sure they all say they love living in such a liberal city. There is a kind of smugness, a self-aggrandisement which feels preparatory for totalitarian rule under dystopia. What’s more, the social life of the city remains rent-starved young people who probably do get it – but they have no political mechanism by which to produce anything but liberalism in power. My point is not that it’s ironic because the outcomes are not liberal. They are liberal. This is liberalism. This is a feature not a bug. This is liberalism’s internal direction.

Meanwhile, some estimates say 40% of young homeless people in the United States identify as LGBT+.

I have never been to a city with so many, and such pronounced, slopes. That in turn makes it feel like you’re in Parasite, which obviously used this visual metaphor very prominently. It’s as if the city is satirising its inhabitants.

San Francisco also has a lot of wires overhead its streets. For trams, probably. This again reminded me of Parasite, as well as Blade Runner. I was trying to work out what makes overhead wires feel dystopian beyond the association with films. My working hypothesis is it’s the precarity of technological connection – the technological is made solid, brought out of the ether and into the world, and it suddenly seems vulnerable, as if what we rely on for communication may be cut at any time and force us to return to the old and the dirt. The rich meanwhile keep their wires hidden.

And speaking of technology, it is the arrival of Big Tech which characterises the Bay Area’s last 20 years. Google, Facebook, Twitter. What has this technology really done for San Francisco? What has it really done for America? The city feels like a microcosm for the failure of the theology of technological advancement; representing in fact the tendency of technology to prove corrupting and violent under runaway capitalism, to the point where its main beneficiary is fascism.

On Wednesday, the mayor of SF declared a state of emergency over Coronavirus. There haven’t been any cases here yet, it’s just in preparation.

Chinatown, one of the most famous Chinatowns in the world, has become empty – no one is visiting. The Chinese people here have had to stage a march to encourage people to come back. This is only one case of what Chinese communities have faced in the past few weeks across the Western World.

Obviously the spread of a global epidemic forged in a smoggy mega-city is somewhat dystopian. But I think equally so is how quick we have been to racialise it. How ready we are to racialise global emergencies. To take an event which affects us as a species and divide us into Us and Them, even as They die.

Because more global emergencies are on their way. All under the umbrella of the single greatest existential threat to the species. And you’d better believe that the Right (and the liberals) will find ways of maintaining power by Othering those at the sharp end of the crises. That is what fascism in the 21st century will look like. Of course, this has already started. Dystopia now.

I enjoyed my Hong Kong Moo Shu at 3am on Thursday, and I’m feeling just fine.

It is, unsurprisingly, the poorer neighbourhoods that we have been canvassing in, rather than the one I am staying in. And in these neighbourhoods, Bernie Sanders is overwhelmingly popular.

My second canvassing buddy told me about his brother, who is a recovering alcoholic. 6 years ago, his family dropped everything to help him turn his life around. But he voted for Trump, and says of the homeless and addicted on the streets: ‘it’s their fault, they should know better.’ My buddy is really upset by it. It’s tragic.

Together we watch a Latinx woman push an Aryan toddler around in a buggy, singing to him in Spanish. Staff.

Yesterday, in my favourite canvassing moment of the entire trip, me and my friend Sophie knocked on the door of a flat in a tenement building in Tenderloin, one of the poorest bits of central San Francisco. In fact the door was open, as several young boys dashed in and out.

The father of a muslim family came to the threshold, and after hearing who we were, immediately invited us in and sat us down on his sofa. This had never happened before.

His English was actually very good, but he invited his daughter (20s) over so that we could talk to her. She was running things, when it came to English documentation. She was, very understandably, a little nervous.

More little children seemed to pop out of every doorway, until eventually what felt like a whole extended family was sat opposite us with our clipboards and Bernie badges.

The daughter said she was completely undecided. Not sure. It was their first time voting. I asked her what the issues important to her were. Housing, and corruption.

The flat was very run-down, almost unfurnished. I don’t believe there could have been more than one bedroom for every three people sat opposite us. It smelt delicious, they’d just been cooking.

I got to explain Bernie’s strength on both housing and corruption, and she nodded at his 40 year record of not taking corporate money and standing up for the little guy. The only candidate still not taking corporate money. Free college for all these lovely kids as well. It was difficult for her to trust me – as she said, that’s what all the politicians say. A fair point. She wasn’t going to be played. But I think she recognised something that, if it were true, would be more than worth her time to vote for.

She said she would do more research, and we gave her some resources for this. We made sure they had a plan to vote. Her dad says there were 5 of them eligible. The daughter was sorting out the ballots. The father seemed very keen on us.

We shook hands with all, and made our way out, after about 10 minutes. I think that they are going to vote for Bernie Sanders.

I’ve been thinking about that young woman a lot – new to a country, carrying the burden of speaking English for her whole family, razor sharp – about my sister’s age I reckon. She’d make an excellent politician I think. She deserves some fucking power.

For what it’s worth, Bernie has by far the most radical housing plan in the race, proposing building 10 million affordable units for 2.5 trillion dollars and enforcing a national rent control standard.

But we need to talk about housing as a human right, not a market good – provided free to all. We have to recognise Dystopia San Francisco as augural of the alternative.

//////////////

I should be able to do some kind of post-Super Tuesday update, not in the same level of depth as Nevada but just some initial takes. I hope you’ll be able to pay attention to Super Tuesday as it’s going to go a very long way to deciding the Democratic nominee. Look out for Texas and North Carolina – if we win Texas and North Carolina, I think we might just do it.

As I hope you will have already seen, yesterday Bernie Sanders won the Nevada caucus. But as we’ve been saying to each other here, he didn’t merely win it – he destroyed it; he smashed it; he ended it; RIP Nevada caucus: you have felt the Bern.

We did it!!! Wooooo!!! I came to Nevada 10 days ago with the thought that I would like to help out knock some doors and secure a victory, however narrow, for Bernie Sanders. What has happened since has been beyond my wildest dreams. I have got to witness and participate in a movement that has, through sheer love, will and organising, delivered a result so overwhelming that it may come to be seen as a decisive turning point in the 2020 presidential elections, and indeed the history of the United States.

Let’s break down the result for a moment. We actually only have 50% of precincts reporting so far, due to yet more phone problems with the State Democratic Party. But let’s take a look at what those 50% are saying.

Bernie Sanders currently holds 46.6% of county delegates (what is traditionally used to measure the result). Biden at 19%, Buttigieg at 15, Warren at 10.

47%!!! In a field of 7 candidates, including the former vice president!! Now, that doesn’t mean he will necessarily be on this percentage when 100% of the results are in – it may be that the precincts left out there are more conservative (I have no idea); but his chances of getting over 40% are very very high, and he will sweep the actual pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention, currently leading 13 to Biden’s 2 on that count. This is a stunning victory: this is a landslide.

40% was what he got in the popular vote on the second round. Turnout is massively up, with 60,000 having voted in the 50% of precincts – 84,000 voted in total in 2016. That is of course not a separate phenomenon to Sanders’ victory.

No candidate in a competitive (no incumbent) presidential primary had ever won the popular vote in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. Bernie Sanders is the first.

At this point all we have are entrance and exit polls to break down the result, so take these with a pinch of salt – but:

By race:

White:
Sanders 31%
Buttigieg 18%
Klobuchar 13%
Warren 13%
Biden 12%

Black:
Biden 36%
Sanders 25%
Steyer 13%
Warren 13%
Klobuchar 3%
Buttigieg 2%

Latinx:
Sanders 51% (!!!)
Biden 13%
Buttigieg 10%
Steyer 9%
Warren 8%
Klobuchar 6%

Other:
Sanders 42%
Buttigieg 12%
Biden 11%
Warren 9%

And in fact, @UCLAlatino, actually analysing the 50% of results so far, puts the Latinx vote at currently 70% for Sanders. Seventy.

By age group:

17-29:
Sanders 66% (!)
Buttigieg 10%
Biden 9%
Warren 6%

30-44:
Sanders 48%
Warren 17%
Buttigieg 15%
Biden 7%

44-64:
Sanders 26%
Buttigieg 17%
Biden 16%
Warren 14%

65+:
Biden 29%
Klobuchar 19%
Buttigieg 15%
Sanders 11%
Warren 10%

By gender:

Women:
Sanders 30%
Biden: 17%
Buttigieg: 15%
Warren 15%

Men:
Sanders 38%
Biden: 17%
Buttigieg: 16%
Warren: 10%

And get this one:

By political persuasion:

Liberals, Bernie obviously smashes it.

Moderate/Conservative:
Sanders 24%
Biden 22%

Electability, huh.

Here’s another to note. 37% of Bernie’s supporters were first-time caucus-goers. This is it. This is how we win. For every 1 white mom in Connecticut who votes Trump over Bernie despite saying #Resistance for four years, we turn out 2 Latinx gen-Zers in Texas, we turn out 2 union workers in Michigan who didn’t show up last time, we turn out 2 black students in Pennsylvania.

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But there’s more to this story than just numbers. Do you remember the Strip Caucus? The caucuses held in the casinos for the service workers, whose union bosses had been lobbying against Sanders? Bernie won 5.5 out of 7 of these. We won at the Rio, we won at Mandalay Bay, we won at the Wynn, we won at Park MGM – hell, we just built some socialism at the Bellagio.

The rank and file of the union members turned out for Bernie. And they did so on their terms, with their power. We gave them a helping hand organising, and we told them the truth about healthcare. But it was them. They talked to their colleagues. They gave up their time. They gave persuasive speeches at the realignment. And it’s because it was them in their workplace and inside the caucus rooms, because their undecided workers could trust them as fellow workers, that we all won.

In the interviews afterwards, the mainstream media struggled to understand why they would defy their union’s instructions. The same answers kept coming up: ‘Yes I have good healthcare – but I want it for my family too. I want it for my husband, my daughter. And I want it if I get fired from my job.’

The last few days the strip caucus team had been organising cab drivers at the hotels. Just walking up to them as they were parked outside waiting and knocking on their window.

At the afterparty, Kyle (the great Kyle: construction worker, first-time political participant, ‘these are my people’ Kyle) told a story about Jamaal, an immigrant taxi driver who had showed up at the caucus Kyle was at. Do you know how much it costs a taxi driver to give up 3 hours work in Las Vegas? Present at this caucus was the billionaire Tom Steyer’s daughter. At the realignment, Jamaal stood up, unprompted, and gave a speech attacking the greed of the billionaire class, and advocating a vision of a more just and equal society free of exploitation. Virtually all of the remaining workers came over and stood with the Sanders crowd. Tom Steyer’s daughter witnessed it all.

The story of the strip caucus is one I find incredibly powerful. It deserves to resonate across the whole world as a demonstration of the power of organised labour to win even within the greatest and most heady totems of capitalist power.

The team of strip caucus organisers, led by the superb Kelvin, deserve great credit. I only helped them out a couple of times, but it was an honour to be anywhere near the operation. Kyle says he’s going straight on to another state, probably Texas. He’d go anywhere, he’d do anything, he says, to keep organising.

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The story of the Latinx community’s organisation is equally extraordinary. At the highest level, it is the work of (my new friend) Chuck Rocha, who has been planning this for many years, and was trusted by the campaign despite having a felony conviction. In his own tweet:

“Just for the record this is NOT even close to what we spent on PAID spanish communications. We started PAID communication to Latinos 8 months ago and had over 76 Latino staffers and 11 offices. The key to our strategy was spending money that folks would not track #sneakattack.”

But it’s not just Chuck. It’s not even especially Chuck. I’ve spent so much time with so many amazing Latinx organisers and the spirit that has been built in this community has been jawdropping. Everyone is united in joy and love and an unflinching pursuit of justice. They really have each other’s back. Of course it can be unhelpful to erase differences within demographics and homogenise them, but the unity around Bernie amongst Latinx makes it basically possible to say that as a demographic they’ve completely transformed the state of the Democratic Primary, and may yet in California and Texas almost literally clinch Tio Bernie the nomination.

Again, this is an exemplarary demonstration of the kind of deep, long-term, community-led organising that we must do (and fund) in the UK if we are to win back power post-2019.

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My caucus day was not quite so dramatic. It began with a clearly well-rehearsed breakfast motivational speech from our host Shaun:

I got stationed as Site Lead (along with my British friends and Lion, our best bud) at a retirement home in Henderson, a suburb of Vegas. There were four precincts on my site, in rooms next to each other. I was welcoming Bernie supporters to the site, making sure they were fed and watered, and liaising with the Democratic Party to make sure everything ran smoothly. I had plenty of chats too with supporters of other candidates. One old Biden woman slapped my arm a little too hard as she said ‘I don’t want young people to have free healthcare; they should have to work for it.’

In fact, there were very few Bernie supporters here. This was an old, white, rich neighbourhood. Not really our territory. It was only in one of the precincts that anyone showed up for Bernie.

But, in that precinct, they showed up. We had the largest numbers in the room, and the largest numbers of early voters. At realignment, Herman, who had run for congress here before dropping out to make Knock Down The House, gave a speech which persuaded all the Warren supporters to come over to Bernie.

I met one of those first-time caucus-goers Bernie had turned out. She was maybe about 19, she’d come on her own, in the rain. How scary! But we looked after her, and she caucused, and she was part of something that will change the future of this planet. In a way I think that precinct, although we lost the other 3, was emblematic of whole Nevada caucus. We won even in an upper-class white neighbourhood, because we turned out everyone on a lower income, and a large section of the black and latinx community there, largely through early voting efforts.

I’m glad I experienced a caucus in all its chaotic 19th century glory. When it was over, I looked at my phone, and it was pretty clear from Twitter: we were going to win Nevada. We had done it.

And I did I mention that it rained? Biblically. At one point on the way in we were on the freeway and everyone was driving at 20mph, so dangerous was it. And then the sun came out just as reports started coming in of the results. It was like washing away the old order, to create a new rainbow nation in America, is what a lesser writer would write.

And then we headed to the afterparty. What a night it was too. It was like living a highlight reel of the trip, as I bumped into everyone I’d met along the way. My soccer tournament teammates, my fellow strip caucusers, my rally detail buddies, my canvass partners, the Las Vegas DSA, Derek and North-West gang, Amy Vilela, Jose, Herman, literally everyone. The vibe was so beautiful and so loving and so victorious. I’d forgotten what it felt like to win an election.

Amy got up and spoke in triumph but also in sadness. ‘Justice for Shalynne,’ we cried: Amy’s daughter. It was clearly difficulty for her to make it through the speech, but she knew that we had her back.

And then guess who came and closed out. The inimitable Nina Turner.

‘It is so decisive that the haters don’t know what to say.’

‘Senator Sanders is the type of leader who is willing to go ham on the system.’

‘VP!’ ‘VP!’ we shouted, and she blushed. I’m fully on board with that. I’ll let her speak for herself:

I’m about to have goodbye dinner with Shaun and then get a bus to San Francisco.

What a journey it’s been in Las Vegas. I’ve loved every minute here. It’s been mostly surreal. Thank you anyone who’s reading this who was involved, really from the bottom of my heart. We’ve felt so welcomed and honoured to be part of your movement. Shoutout especially Shaun and his grandma for letting us stay in their home for free!

And we won. We’re going to take that momentum into South Carolina, into Super Tuesday, into the general election in November. They can’t stop us.

It really has felt like the future of the world is happening right here, right now, in Las Vegas.

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!

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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.’

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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.

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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.’

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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!

Day 5 was eagerly anticipated by the British contingent, because it offered us, massive lads that we were, the opportunity to play football. Or ‘soccer,’ as you’ll be stunned to learn they call it here. This was our chance to show the Americans how it was done. Teach them a lesson. Make up for years of special relationship humiliation. David Beckham’s right foot. David Beckham’s left foot, come to that. It was coming home.

We were off to attend the inaugural Las Vegas Bernie Sanders Soccer Tournament, held in a Latinx neighbourhood to encourage young latinx to come out and learn about Bernie and get to the polls.

It took place at the most beautiful set of football pitches, underneath a mountain.

The event began with an introduction from our passionate socialist Mexican friend Jose, who introduced in spanish the Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, fresh off his Bernie endorsement. De Blasio was extremely tall, as you can see in the picture. That was, as far as I could tell, the only interesting thing about him.

We Brits weren’t actually intending to participate in the tournament when we arrived: just to help run it, and if we could have a kickabout before it got going all the better. I was therefore wearing trousers. But they were slightly light for numbers, and so a fourth team had to be formed from assorted stragglers and staffers to compete with the three dedicated teams who showed up in matching kit and football boots.

The team we were assigned to play first was made up of I would say 12/13 year-olds. Right, we said. Let’s have ’em.

But almost from the first whistle, it was clear that we would not, in fact, be having them. They ran rings around us. Some really nice pass and move football actually, if you’re reading this kids. Keep it up.

I did my usual trick of producing a really nice piece of individual play the first time I received the ball, dribbling past a man (or boy), and feeling extremely good about myself, only to find that when I try and track back after the move breaks down, I have a stitch and can barely reach jogging pace, and must play the rest of the game intermittently bent over gasping for breath.

I did provide a couple of assists. Just call me Trent. But I also ended up in goal and threw the ball into my own net from an inswinging corner.

I suppose there must come a time in every person’s life when they get outplayed by people a lot younger than them. It is a a ritual. I had been hoping to defer it a bit but we none of us choose our fate.

It is certainly tempting to respond by becoming a grumpy old man with an all-consuming hatred of young people. But I gotta take inspiration from Bernie. He is a grumpy old man, but all he wants is for young people to thrive, and he is certainly helping me live my best life.

It was another terrific event, so vibrant and so welcoming, I made lots of friends and got to chat to lots of young people. They served this delicious cinnamon drink, all thick and icy and delicious, as well as Elote – corn on the cob.

But I am afraid I must report that once again, it is not coming home.

Then we got driven to the East Las Vegas office, where Luiz was running the Latinx operation.

Chuck Rocha (national Bernie adviser and sick guy) arrives and basically sits next to me for an hour.

‘We’ve been organising this community for 8 months,’ he tells press over the phone.

Luiz shows him a picture of a packed polling station.

‘Do you have any pictures we can send to Bernie?,’ Chuck asks excitedly. ‘He’d love to see those.’

Then who should turn up but Cori and Amy from the night before. I got to tell Cori about the Democrats Abroad work I’d been doing in England, how I’d been canvassing for Bernie on the streets of London. She seemed genuinely touched.

‘This thing is big, huh?’

It’s big.

Amy and Cori gave speeches again to rouse canvassers before they were sent out. I had assumed Cori would just give the same speech as the night before, but she didn’t, she gave an entirely new one, on the same themes of course. This isn’t scripted. This is coming from the heart, each and every time.

They were joined by Dr Victoria Dooley, who after training as a doctor took up work in Flint, Michigan, where she delivered babies who would grow up without clean water. She’s now a national Bernie surrogate, and just killing it every time she speaks.

Inspired and raring to go, we set out on a canvassing shift. We were driven to our location by Jake, who’d come down from Oregon. He was driving a classic Bernie camper van, that we nicknamed the Not Me Bus.

There were actually several parked outside the offices, so I’ve decided to collect photos of these from the whole trip and put them into a photo series which’ll be up at some point.

One of the jobs of these drivers was to pick up a 96 year old and take them to the polling station and look after them. He was black, had fought in World War 2, and had seen almost every part of the world. He said he didn’t hate anybody. He only loved.

It was a fantastic canvassing session, I really enjoyed it. The evening light was just beautiful and the weather balmy. We got a really good reception on the doorstep – people just like Bernie, as a rule.

My favourite chat by far was with this young Latinx guy who was out front fixing his family’s car with what looked like his father and uncle, while what looked like his mother and sister sat in deck chairs in the front garden. They couldn’t speak English, but they pointed me to the youngest in the family.

‘Hi,’ he smiled at me.

I asked him if he was planning on voting.

He said no… he was more of an Independent. He shuffled a bit.

I told him, you know Bernie was an Independent for 40 years. Stuck to the same issues before it was politically fashionable. Was never a Party Man. And you don’t have to be a Democrat for ever. Just register on the day, vote, and then you can quit the party the same day.

He seemed to relax. We talked about free healthcare, how we had that in the UK. Cancelling student debt as well. Green New Deal. I think Bernie’s platform really spoke to him.

I asked him if he’d be willing to early vote tomorrow. He said maybe. I made sure he knew it was the last day to early vote, and that would be much easier than caucusing. This seemed to resonate. I provided him with his nearest polling station, and he agreed to think about it. I asked him to promise to talk about it with his family, and handed out two spanish leaflets that he could give to them. He liked that idea. He liked that we had them. That his family could be included. He was so friendly and smiley in the evening sun.

I will obviously never know for sure, but I think that guy might have voted. And if he did, there’s a good chance his four family members, who I couldn’t even converse with, did as well. And there’s not a doubt in my mind that if they voted, they voted for Bernie Sanders.

The amount of work that has gone into the Latinx community by the Bernie campaign is staggering. It is an almost textbook lesson in how to do the kind of deep organising in left-behind communities that it’s clear we need to do in the UK after the election. If Bernie does as well with this demographic as we think he might, then the Democratic nomination could be de facto over by the end of Super Tuesday, after Bernie sweeps California and Texas in landslides. But remember: we have to work like we’re 10 points down in the polls.


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In the evening, we went to watch a podcast recorded in the back of this ‘Hawaiian’ pirate-themed bar called ‘Golden Tiki.’ I am not convinced that any Hawaiian was involved at any stage in the process.

Amy and Victoria were the guests on the podcast, so we got to hang out with them some more. Amy, like my cocktail, was on fire.

In the toilets, the sound of inmates’ chatter comes over a speaker. Then, a raspy voice –

‘Are you ever gonna get that wart removed? Oh shit, that’s your dick.’

This is the hospitality we deserve.

This town increasingly feels like it is being taken over by socialists. One bar to the next. We’re about to get buses of volunteers in from California. It won’t be football, but something might just be coming home.

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.

The strip caucus shift was to begin at 8am, when the housekeepers enter the casinos. That meant a debrief at the SW office at 6:30am, which meant waking up at 5:30. I was obviously pretty groggy when I stepped out of Shaun’s house to catch my ride, but I was woken up instantly.

I was greeted by I think the most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen. The sky was streaked with the pink of light reflected off red rocks, warmed by an orange glow from the horizon. I mean, look at it:

That last one looks like the rings of Saturn or suchlike.

And yes, the sky says Trans Fucking Rights Now.

At TitleMax, you hand over the title of your car in exchange for some cash. You come back within a small time period to get your title back. You don’t want to know what happens in between.

Back to strip caucusing, and this time it was on, we had our locations, we had our teams of 3 including one Spanish speaker, we were ready.

That is Excalibur Hotel & Casino. We were there to organise its immigrant workers literally behind its back.

We found our spot, a hundred metre strip between the employee’s parking and the employee’s entrance.

This meant you could walk and talk with the workers for about a hundred metres. Most of them were very friendly and willing to chat. A few just wanted to get to work, and we understood that and left them – we’re not trying to make their lives harder. I had some really good chats. A lot of them just weren’t aware of the satellite caucus, and there is something so satisfying about telling someone who doesn’t know that they can participate that they can participate. And of course, we had plenty of people who did know about it, and didn’t need our help, although we encouraged them in comradely fashion to speak to as many of their colleagues as possible!

This lasted for about 15 minutes, until a large white security guard rolled up to me on his bicycle, in a rather fetching tight yellow uniform.

“What are you doing?”

“Hi there! Oh, we’re just talking to people about the election, we’re not trying to do anything wrong, not disturbing anyone.”

“You can’t do that here. This is private property. You need to move.”

Long pause. Our strategy for dealing with the security was to waste as much of their time as possible, allowing the 2 other members of our team to keep canvassing.

“Oh.”

Pause.

“So, personally speaking, do you like Bernie Sanders?”

“No. Not at all.”

Trump voter. I think Trump probably has the security guard vote locked down.

Eventually I slouched off, leaving the guard to cycle gingerly over to my friends. We were done with Excalibur. No matter; on to the next one.

We took some more workers’ phone numbers at the next casino. I sent some nice little follow-up texts. A good way to see the morning in. I’d be back to strip caucus in the afternoon, but in the meantime I had something even better: a Bernie rally.

The rally was to take place in a high school. A high school! It was like being in every American movie/TV show ever! They really do seem to conceive of themselves as sports franchises doing some education on the side.

I particularly enjoyed the class of 2001’s claim that they were not merely the first and the best but also the only class.

Instantly the event just felt so vibrant and powerful. It was in connjunction with Make The Road Nevada, a group which organises immigrants for justice and dignity, and it felt like this genuinely Latinx space which we were being invited graciously into.

I got to meet Chuck Rocha, National Bernie Senior Adviser and veteran organiser of the South as a socialist redneck. There’s more to an accent than we might think.

Bernie was introduced by a speaker who told the story of her life, beginning with crossing the desert with her pregnant mother. She had worked super hard on her education, got a scholarship, then had that scholarship taken away because she couldn’t provide a social security number. She was undocumented. She worked terrible jobs in Vegas until through DACA she got work with better prospects. She now lives a good life with her husband and her child who was on stage with her. Trump, however, is ending DACA applications. He is separating families and putting children in cages. She is still undocumented. She is not eligible to vote or caucus. Instead, she canvasses, phone banks, and introduces the next President of the United States.

I thought I had been clever and spotted where Bernie was going to make his entrance, and be the first one there to snap him, so I completely missed him getting up on stage from the other side of the hall.

But here he was! Bernie Sanders! I’d come all the way to America, and on day 3 he was 5 metres in front of me!

I thought it was extraordinary how old he looked. He looked frail. His back is hunched. He nearly tripped on the stairs down from the podium. It was scary – I wasn’t sure what impact those bones could survive. I kept looking at his legs. They reminded me of my grandma’s legs. Thin, much thinner than the trouser, so that it hung loose, seemed to fill with air rather than flesh.

And yet he looked entirely full of life. More full of life than I am. Boundless energy. Just go, go, go, one rally to the next. He really does gesture with that single finger, and the wingspan, and the almost-shouty voice. I absolutely loved the finger. Mesmerising. He just is, totally, himself. He doesn’t try and hide the fact that he’s old. He doesn’t feel any shame for it. Why should he? And he is angry. He’s right to be. And people feel that.

His speech was stunningly good. It was so clean, and so simple. You state the issue which everyone recognises as bad. And then you say that you’re unequivocally going to eliminate the issue. 60,000 people die each year because they don’t have healthcare? Free universal healthcare. Massive student debt? Eliminate all student debt. Immigration injustice? Restore 1.8 million people to DACA and end detention centres and ICE (this got the biggest cheer). No complicated jargon. No technocratic half-measures that take a law degree to untangle. The centrists just cannot understand the power of this politics. Or at least, it would require them to admit that those policies which they claimed a unique insight into the necessity of, were in fact not the limit of political possibility. The speech brought the house down.

And then, from the rally, to a march, down through a Latinx neighbourhood to the Early Vote polling station. I didn’t even know this was going to happen, I just got swept up into it.

It was an intoxicating combination of joy and anger. Big Latin drums pounded out a rhythm you could dance to, but the chants were serious – about life and death. But also there was something so celebratory about the whole community out there, waving to the neighbours as they came out of their houses, people totally united in solidarity, with an unflinching hope for real change this time. It felt so organic and genuinely community-led, like Bernie was really there only with their permission, and equally Bernie just totally centred them and their voices. Incredibly moving and humbling, really.

(I also learnt on this march that latinx is pronounced latin ex, not latincks, for which I deserve to be laughed at.)

And there was Bernie. Leading the march in the burning midday sun. Not so frail huh? He barked instructions to the cameramen to make sure they were staying safe walking backwards. Here he was, standing with this group of poor immigrants, many of whom weren’t even eligible to vote for him. He doesn’t care. This old Jew from Brooklyn, polling at 60% of Latinx in Southwest Nevada. Genuinely beloved. The great hope. Tio Bernie. But that’s just the thing. It’s not about him. It’s them. It’s us.

We passed a drab Warren billboard, in which she boasted that Obama had said some nice things about her one time. Meanwhile, the actual community she was trying to appeal to was marching past exuberantly, protesting explicitly the infrastructure of deportations which Obama massively expanded. It felt emblematic.

After they’d voted, the people could come to a community street party that had been set up waiting for them. A totally stunning two hours. The best of the trip so far.

We later had reports of queues for three hours at Early Vote polling stations. Something is happening here in Nevada. It feels like it has the future of the world in its hands.

We’d spent a lot of time in the sun, so we headed to a really cool bar in downtown with Jacqueline and some of the other Latinx organisers who we’d got to know. Watched a bit of baseball on the big screen. Honestly indistinguishable from rounders. With, if anything, a lower bat on ball hit-rate than year 7.

Some posh men took a seat next to us. It would turn out they were Buttigieg voters, possibly staffers. They shook their heads solemnly when I asked them if they were Bernie supporters, as if they knew that they were in the wrong.

Then, back for some more strip caucus-ing. We got about an hour in round the back of the MGM Grand, until this time security called the cops on us and we had to deliberately walk past them as they watched us exit back onto the strip.

My anecdotal analysis of how the strip caucus is shaping up is that race is playing a key role. The latinx and black workers were receptive towards Bernie, were often already supporters – and were certainly always friendly. The white workers were not interested in Bernie, and were often aggressively dismissive and intimidating. One merely raised his fist and cried ‘Make America great again!’, like brandishing a cross at a vampire.

It’s all worth it for the occasional voter whose work-tired eyes start to light up. People want to be told they matter. Particularly here.

From there, Cam and I had to get north to meet the other Brits. This meant travelling through casinos to find the monorail(!). Specifically the Paris casino, which has the worst interior design of any building I’ve ever been in. Look at that ceiling. Look at it!

I’m glad I got to ride the monorail. I think that’s probably an ambition of anyone with even a passing interest in The Simpsons. As soon as it leaves the station, adverts start playing over house music. You cannot not be assaulted for one second.

It mostly provides nice views of hotel parking lots. Each about the size of Westfield. I’m starting to characterise Las Vegas as a series of parking lots with some buildings in between for ease of access.

At one point the monorail stopped halfway between stations.

“The monorail has stopped before reaching the station. Please do not exit the car.”

Well, yeah.

And then, after some drinks and pool at Dino’s, via a gathering at our friend Derek’s volunteer-strewn apartment, we hit Fremont and the casinos.

You’ll never find a clock in a casino, Cam says. And also they pump in oxygen to make you feel giddy.

I just watched Cam gamble, at first, to learn. This was pointless, as the rules of Blackjack table etiquette are completely impenetrable and frankly I would rather simply give my money away than bother to learn them.

Roulette, that’s my kind of game. Just put your token on the thing you think will happen.

The dealers perform these extraordinarily quick hand movements, in complete control of the cards and dice, never making a mistake. They do it with completely dead eyes, expressionless, gazing vaguely into the middle distance. It’s as if the dealer must turn themselves into a machine, to so completely absolve the gambler from human relationships and offer them only a single relationship with money. So all they have to do is pull a lever.

Overall, I put down $20, lost 10 on roulette, made 2 back playing blackjack on a computer screen at the bar, and left some self-respect at the bottom of my gin & tonic.

“The ideal of the shock-engendered experience is the catastrophe. This becomes very clear in gambling; by constantly raising the stakes, in hopes of getting back what is lost, the gambler steers toward absolute ruin.”
– Benjamin, The Arcades Project

I had to be in the Southwest Las Vegas office at 11am to report to the manager. 11am is early in Las Vegas, by all accounts. The office is 20 minutes away in a car, but takes an hour and a half by public transport. An easy choice, I’m sure you’ll agree.

The buses were all perfectly on time, air conditioned, clean, with wide windows for views of the red mountains that surround Las Vegas. The sun was out, the sky was clear – I love this place. The relatively few riders were incredibly diverse – wheelchair users, the elderly, mothers, young people, black, white, latinx. All travelling together in transport paid for publicly. These are Bernie’s people.

Not that the public transport is anything like what we would call a good service, holistically speaking. The buses all run every half hour at best, and they barely run through the city centre, which is dominated by these 6, 8, 12-lane freeways. The car culture is probably the most striking thing about residential life in Vegas. Obviously you know about it in theory but I wasn’t prepared for how alienating it was coming out of London. Nobody walks. If you don’t have a car, you just can’t move.

This has a completely corrosive impact on the rest of the culture. You have these massive food deserts – somebody joked to me that you’d starve to death before you reach food in the suburbs. Buildings are miles away from each other, and masses of land is dedicated to parking. Everything is completely stretched out – really the whole city could be a quarter of the size, like dragging the corners of an image in Photoshop.

And people are just in their cars, all the time. Smoking. Ordering food. Like they have an exoskeleton.

The Bernie office is in a block beside one of Vegas’ bits of massive undeveloped land just outside the city centre. It’s like the desert poking through cracks in civilisation.

The field office was again really lovely, everyone very friendly. I got a quick lesson in using the canvassing app MiniVAN (which felt utterly revolutionary after battling wind and rain to scribble on boards in December), and then I was straight out to knock doors to Get Out The Early Vote.

I went out on a two-person shift with the lovely Justin from Chicago, who had a great story to tell. He had been working a shitty retail job in January when he heard about Neil Peart, the drummer of Rush’s, death. He didn’t bother going into work the next day. That’s when he saw a Facebook post about a Bernie supporters’ house in Iowa. So he said fuck it, and left. While in Iowa, someone came up to his field office from Project Veritas and threatened them all with a mass shooting. It didn’t stop them coming in, and the mass shooting never occurred. While in Iowa, he bought a second hand camper-van, which he, ahem, redesigned. He drove it across America to Las Vegas.

When we reached his car, there were to police cars flanking it. Turned out he’d unknowingly parked it outside some Culinary Union (remember the name) offices, and they had told the police as they’d been receiving death threats from ‘Bernie supporters’ (we’re sceptical this wasn’t Trump trolls).

Canvassing was good fun, although very hot and sweaty. We were in a latinx area, and lots of the people who answered the door couldn’t speak English – equally, I couldn’t speak Spanish. This was a bit frustrating, obviously it’s not the worse thing in the world for me but these people deserved to be talked to, and I couldn’t do it. There was plenty of positive reception though – Bernie is currently polling at 40%+ of latinx in the state, and we think his popularity amongst this demographic could be one of the big stories coming out of Nevada, going into California, and generally for the whole primary.

The houses, even in this relatively poor neighbourhood, are all massively spread apart, with big driveways, bungalows. This is what the whole of Las Vegas’ housing looks like. Virtually nothing is more than two storeys, everything is detached. In the richer areas, almost all the communities are gated, and the houses even further apart. Shaun tells me that people in the suburbs only usually stay for about 6 months before moving. This is prime architecture for fascism. If you neighbour was taken away in the night, you wouldn’t even know their name.

In the late afternoon, I was to join the SW team organising for the Strip Caucus. What is the Strip Caucus? It is not a parlour game for politics nerds. Nor is it where you could find me at 3am last night.

The Strip Caucus is the satellite caucus held for those workers who work on the Las Vegas Strip, who might not be able to make it back home to vote in their precinct, so are given the chance to vote while at work (literally in the casinos). This is a massive deal. The Strip Caucus makes up 2% of the whole of Nevada’s state delegates. Because of reasons, it has disproportionately assigned delegates, so each vote is worth more. We’re feeling confident about North Nevada (which Bernie won last time), confident about the rest of Las Vegas – but the Strip Caucus (which Hilary overwhelming won last time) is complicated.

The Las Vegas Strip is a microcosm of America, in the sense that behind the glitz and size and wealth, the whole thing runs off cheap immigrant labour. And the bosses know it, which is why the union that organises workers on the strip is one of the most powerful unions in the country – the Culinary Union. The Culinary Union does a great job for its 60,000 workers – they have healthcare without deductibles, a hospital just for them (apparently the best one in the state) and contract language shielding immigrants from ICE.

But the Culinary Union leaders, while not endorsing a different candidate, have been distributing flyers to their members criticising Sanders’ Medicare for All plans. ‘They have great union healthcare; they don’t want to lose it.’

This is an odd position to learn of as a Brit. Not having to bargain for healthcare will give unions more leverage to focus on wages et al. In fact, it’s written into Bernie’s bill that firms must reenter federally supervised bargaining to reallocate the savings back to workers. The good doctors and health infrastructure in the area are not going to be liquidated. If a Culinary worker is fired, they will no longer be stripped of their healthcare. Free healthcare across the country will benefit poor, working people the most. But of course this can be argued respectfully, without resorting to what some Sanders supporters have directed at the Culinary leadership over the last week.

The solution, as always with the Sanders campaign, is to talk to people face to face and empower them to talk to the colleagues face to face. So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to talk to the workers as they enter and exit their shifts, making sure they know when the satellite caucus is, and if they support Bernie trying to get them to be a leader in their workplace, organising others to come out and be delegate-rich supervoters!

But we’re also going to try and find out exactly what Culinary have been telling them, and potentially try to dissuade them of the advice of their excellent, trusted union. And, naturally, we were going to be doing it in the employee parking lots at the back of the casinos, trying to keep out the way of the security guards who patrol the area. This is guerrilla canvassing. This is the Strip Caucus.

I was driven from the briefing meeting in SW into the Strip by Kyle. Kyle is every bit the American ‘Kyle.’
Arizona accent. Cap backwards. Muscular. Drives a sports car. His Dad voted Trump. A few years ago he was in danger of going down the libertarian rabbit-hole but was saved by YouTubers like TWT and Kyle Kulinski. Can now analyse Vegas’ sub-economies better than Marx. He’s a top guy, Kyle. Told me a story about how he once had a gun held to his head. He says politicians don’t understand guns, so (although he hates gun culture) he doesn’t trust them to be able to legislate the problem away. For example, if you ban AR-15s, people will just use the other gun they have lying around – and the next most popular gun is the 30 ought 6, which’ll blow through not one metal classroom door, but four. He thinks gun laws as they’re talked about now would just give the police an excuse to go into poor black people’s houses and throw them against the wall.

Kyle also tells me that in the US, British stabbings make the nightly news, and are used to defend current gun policy – the regulated Brits have homicides too, or something. I found this completely stunning – and actually sickening – that along with every thing else, the families of the victims of knife crime in this country, without even knowing it, have their loved one’s memory used to prop up racist, right-wing policies analogous to those that lead to knife crime in the UK. I fucking hate this place.

There had been an error with the scouting of locations, so Kyle and I did not actually manage to find a suitable spot to canvass. You’ll have to wait for the next blog to learn what happened when I Strip Caucus Canvassed the next morning at 8 am! Instead we just drove around the Strip and the back of the Strip looking for spots, which was fascinating enough in itself. The Strip is completely, completely off the charts. I’ll write more about it in another blog, but it’s a bit like Disneyland for adult giants. One hotel/casino is called the Venetian, and has built a cheap Rialto-knockoff bridge over a road. They haven’t even bothered to put a fake canal in. Actual Venice will be underwater in 10 years so this is going to be the closest tourists can get.

Driving home in the dark we nearly ran over a lone Pizza Hut deliverer on a bicycle, in an only nominally high-vis jacket, trying to turn left across 6 lanes.

Not to be all moralising, but this city is in need of some redemption. Next Saturday they have a chance.