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Of course we should. And the truth is, we don't have to spend any more. On health care and we can provide health care for all our people. But it is certainly not going to happen under George Bush it won't happen under a president Obama unless there's a strong grass roots movement, because don't kid yourself, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, they are going to put money into the Democratic party; they don't care what party they put money into as long as they look out for their interests.
And the only antidote to that is a strong grass roots movement that says to members of congress whether they and Rep or Dem hey, stop looking at your campaign contributors, in fact let's move to public funding of elections and stop worrying about it.
Kall: We have an interesting readership at OpEdNews. This month we're going to see about 700 thousand unique visitors; about 38% are Democrats, about 88% are "Lefties". So these are not necessarily supporting democrats. They're people who—you know, universally they love you, I'll tell you that!
Sanders: Well, thank you.
Kall: I have one last question for you 'cause I know you’ve got to go. I have been developing the idea of "Bottom Up. Bottom up is showing up in campaigns, Joe Trippe talks about how it helped Obama beat Hillary with her Top Down campaign—How do you see Bottom Up applying in your work?
Sanders: That's exactly what we've got to do; we've got to re-vitalize American democracy I think members of Congress are intelligent people, decent people are very isolated from the realities of real life. I can tell you when I ran for the senate two years ago, and I suspect that many of you are—you know, the way we ran; I don't take any corporate PACS (political action committees) we had help from tens and tens and tens of thousands of individual contributors—you know, put in 25 bucks, or 50 bucks; we knocked to win the election, you know, we put money on radio and television, but you know what, we hired a ton of people to go out knocking; I think we ended up knocking on something like 17,000 doors in the state of Vermont.
So I think what we really need to do is mobilize people to knock on doors to educate people—don't ever underestimate what people in America DON'T KNOW about the political process. Most people probably don't even know the name of their congressman, whether he or she is a democrat or a republican or how they vote; the media is not going to do it. The media covers what goes on here just terribly. They don't know the difference between a huge bill of 500 billion or a small bill of 10 million. So we need Independent Media and that's what you guys are doing. Which is if there's one very positive thing I think is happening is there are many progressive web sites, including yours, that does a great, great job in bringing an independent perspective to people that you're not going to see on CBS or ABC.
So there is an enormous amount of work to be done, but I happen to agree absolutely with you: Trust me, there will not be change even with a new president, more Democrats unless we see pressure coming from the grass roots who demand that government starts representing everybody rather than the elite.
Kall: Great. Well, I hope we can have you back here periodically.
Sanders: My pleasure. Thanks very much. Take care.
Kall: Keep it up; great work, bye.
Bernie Sanders. This is the Rob Kall radio show, that's Senator Bernie Sanders, WNJC it's 1360 am.
(the transcript for the David Korten interview is being transcribed and will be posted soon.)
