Ode to Bernie Sanders - DJ Pappy live at HOOCH 071316 - Episode 89

It's another pleasant, drizzly Wednesday night in the tropics. This time we're at HOOCH, the speakeasy famous for its designer cocktails that has recently become the place to go to for decent house music in Salcedo Village.

It's my first time to play at HOOCH, although Ines and I have been to the bar plenty of times. The place is small and dark, with a long bar along its right side and two screens showing Charlie Chaplin movies. Outside, a couple of couches, and wooden cocktail tables facing Leviste Street. The night's organizer Jimmy Electriscoot sets up early on Wednesdays, and makes sure to include his Warfedale sub and the hi-fi monitor speakers for a fuller sound outside. I start at about 10pm when there's already a good number of friends in the crowd. I feel this burning need to play uplifting house music all night long.

***

The day is a particularly glum one for me on a personal level. This morning, Bernie Sanders announced his endorsement of Hillary Clinton, which means the bitter end to the revolution he’s been leading and that we’ve been following so fervently for the last year. For once, I thought there’s a possible solution to many of the problem plaguing the United States and the world. Finally, I thought, there was a guy that couldn't be bought, one with a moral compass that pointed him in the right direction, the compass of justice, compassion, equality, and solidarity.

He proudly called himself a Democratic Socialist and it just didn't matter... this 'assumed' negative did not slow down his popular campaign that swept through the country like a wildfire. His ideas turned out to be right in line with the majority of the country. In less than a year, he was able to close a 60 point gap in the polls versus Hillary, who had the full weight of the establishment behind her: the donors, the Democratic party, the corporate media.

Wherever he went, he filled stadiums. It didn't matter whether it was Milwaukee, Wisconsin--home of some the last standing organized labor movements, deep red Louisiana Baton Rouge, or liberal Portland, Oregon. Crowds were always over eight thousand people, and sometimes over twenty seven thousand people.

And all of this was accomplished with virtually zero coverage on the nightly cable news, no coverage in the papers--unless it was to call him "a socialist" or "old". Everywhere you went, people were buzzing about Bernie Sanders. When he'd visit the late night shows, he’d consistently get standing ovations and break the ratings. Videos of these appearances went viral. Everyone was #feelingtheBern

This is a man that was arrested for fighting for civil rights with Martin Luther King in the 60s, and that invited Noam Chomsky to talk to his constituents the citizens of Burlington, Vermont, in the 80s about the harm that US foreign policy was causing in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and debating what these citizens could do to be part of the solution. He grilled Fed Chairman Allan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin in ‘89 about the deregulation of banks that caused the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, and opposed the 2008 bank bailouts that had no strings attached to speak of. He stood virtually alone against the Iraq war in 2003, and he took delegations of Vermont residents across the border to Canada to see how cheap drugs were and how efficiently their single-payer health care system worked.

He came out strong against fracking, against the TPP, against GMOs, and against the industrial prison complex, even against the police’s brutality versus minorities. He came out strong against the highest levels of income and wealth inequality recorded in modern history and against a disappearing middle class. He strongly supported ending the death penalty, supported gun control, supported immigration reform that allowed 11 million people to come out of the shadows, supported a $15 minimum wage, supported paid family leave, suppor(continued)