The Sanders Institute's Gathering Was About Saving the World, But It Was Not About Bernie Sanders

It was a small and relatively intimate event—this small conference described as a “gathering of minds to envision the world we want”—that took place over three days as last month ended and December began in Burlington, Vermont.

No, it wasn’t a “hootenanny.” The serious topics discussed in detail and with passion were poverty, inequality, human rights, the climate crisis, racism, war, peace, refugees, workers, healthcare, housing, civil rights, independent media, corporate power, criminal justice reform, international solidarity, civil rights, voting rights, the rights of women, the LGBTQ community, immigration, democracy, economics, politics, organizing, and ultimately about how all of these issues can never be adequately understood or addressed in isolation.

“What do we need to do to improve the quality of life of our citizens of the world?”
—Jane Sanders, The Sanders Institute“I think it’s important that we realize the intersectionality of the issues,” explained Jane Sanders, who along with executive director David Driscoll founded The Sanders Institute and organized the Gathering. “I mean environmental sanity has to do with income inequality and so many things. And that’s why we intentionally do things more comprehensively because we don’t want to say, ‘We’re having an environmental conference,’ or ‘We’re having a housing conference.'”

The conference, she said in an interview with Common Dreams, was one that wanted to ask: “What do we need to do to improve the quality of life of our citizens of the world?”

And while Jane’s husband, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), was at the conference—delivering the keynote and sitting on several panels—the weekend was distinctly not about him. Throughout the weekend, the senator could be found waving off reporters, sitting quietly in the back row during panel discussions, trying not to be seen, but listening intently to what was being said by the assembled speakers and the engaged attendees.

“I’m a guest here,” Bernie told The Real News Network in an interview on Saturday as he credited his wife and the Institute for putting on the event. “And what Jane understood,” he explained, “is that when we deal with climate change, when we deal with the economy, when we deal with housing, when we deal with criminal justice or immigration issues—we have got to deal with them in a holistic way. We cannot see them as silo-ized, separate issues. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that we live in a nation owned and controlled by a small number of multi-billionaires whose greed—incredible greed, insatiable greed—is having an unbelievably negative impact on our entire country.”

Despite being sandwiched between the just-concluded 2018 midterms and the hugely consequential 2020 race—which is already driving frenzied discussion and speculation—the three-day retreat was devoid of the kind of horse-race, personality-driven noise that tends to dominate the vapid political discourse seen on MSNBC, Fox News, and in the pages of America’s major newspapers.

Aside from the occasional “Bernie 2020?” outburst from an audience member—and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis’ short but forceful demand that Sanders run for president for the good of the world—the Sanders Institute Gathering was predominantly driven by and organized around the issues and crises affecting the everyday lives of ordinary people in the United States and across the globe, from grotesquely unequal healthcare systems to the climate crisis, which threatens to render the planet uninhabitable for future generations if immediate and bold action is not taken.

What’s love got to do with it?

“Only all that we love is on the line,” declared Our Revolution president and Sanders Institute fellow Nina Turner during a panel on the moral necessity of Medicare for All, capturing both the ethos of the retreat and the urgency of the issues at hand.

How We Win Medicare for All