My friend Marie Myung-Ok Lee and I have co-founded Writers for Bernie. We can be found on Twitter, Facebook and Medium, with more info on our website. We are beginning with sixty writers, including Jane Smiley, Laila Lalami, Jamie Quatro and Jonathan Lethem, among others. Here is our endorsement:
We believe that America’s founding ideals, along with the very health of our planet, are being eclipsed by corporate interests and institutionalized inequality.
We believe that in order to restore a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, we need a leader who envisions and demands economic, environmental, and racial justice, and that, in 2016, that leader is Bernie Sanders.
As writers, we have based our lives on the power of words. We are astonished that a person who speaks with such consistent integrity, honesty, and moral authority exists in national politics today. He has been fighting for the same humane causes — raising the minimum wage, getting corporate money out of politics, establishing reliable health care for all, protecting American jobs, saving our planet from climate change — for his entire career.
We believe his ideas are in no way radical or unpragmatic, but instead the course correction we desperately need to save our democracy.
2016 is not a usual political year, but, luckily, Bernie Sanders is not a usual candidate. We endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for President of the United States.