I’m a Sanders’ supporter. His story is inspiring, but it isn’t just the story of one man bucking the system, it’s the story of all of us. Without the groundswell of grassroots support for Bernie, no one would be talking about him, his supporters or his campaign only a few weeks before the Democratic National Convention.

At this moment in time, I'm interested in having the grassroots side of this story told. It’s a story that often gets lost in the hubbub over all the crap the DNC and Hillary pulled to defeat a man who no one considered a threat less than a year ago.
Specifically, the media coverage of grassroots efforts to protest in Philadelphia, the site of the Democratic Convention, has been misleading, at best, when the media has chosen to cover those planned protests at all.

From what I've seen on the major networks, the grassroots protests and the people behind them are always presented in a negative light. Most mainstream media outlets paint these activists and grassroots organizers as “purists,” "loons," “sore losers,” “Trump supporters," or merely a “fringe element on the political left” that should be marginalized and can be dismissed. They promote the view that we are not worthy of serious discussion by the very serious corporate media pundits who seriously know what is best for us. In my opinion, nothing could be farther from truth.

As many of you know, I volunteer for a group holding an event on July 23rd, The People's Convention.

We're preparing a "people's platform" that Sanders' delegates will take to the floor to offer Democrats an alternative to the platform the DNC platform committee is creating.
I've seen the stories, as I'm sure you have as well, of DNC platform committee members appointed by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, reject or water down amendments proposed by Bernie's appointees. Already we've seen them vote down 1) a ban on fracking, 2) Medicare for all/Single Payer health care, and perhaps worst of all, 3) their refusal to include a plank rejecting the TPP.

All of these have the majority support among the American public. However, our needs and desires have been kicked to the curb, so corporate lobbyists and political grafters can serve the interests of their masters, the .001 percent and the multinational corporations they control.

The work I’m doing as a blogger and volunteer is not because I’m some kind of ideological purist. I'm motivated to do all this by very personal reasons.

I turn 60 this year. I want to see the Democrats support policies that benefit my children and my friends and neighbors who are struggling to make ends meet, but I don't see them doing that.

I know of young people loaded down with student debt working at Starbucks because that's the best job they can get.

I've met vets suffering from PTSD and brain injuries from al, the damn wars, which are still continuing under Obama, and likely will increase under President Hillary.

I hear about a low unemployment rate and a great stock market, yet I personally know of people who just lost their jobs because the companies they work for shipped those jobs to Mexico or other foreign countries.

I see a lot of people in their twenties and thirties and older who are working less than 30 hours a week or have simply given up finding a job. My brother with a PhD in stat and an MBA, a man with expertise in managing quality control for a major pharmaceutical firm was laid off five years ago due to a big merger. Now he can get only a hit or miss work as a consultant.

He’s not an outlier, he’s one of many older workers who suddenly became expendable when our politicians allowed the mass consolidation of many industries, from telecommunications to financial services. So, I don't see this "great economic recovery," for which Democrats are constantly patting themselves on the back.

I've also spoken to young Black and Latino youth in the inner cities, many forced to go to privatized charter schools, where the cops are called for discipline issues that land them in juvenile detention for stuff that white kids in the suburbs merely get a slap on the wrist, if that.

Our government funds private armies of mercenaries, private prisons, private schools and coming soon to a community near you, private water resource companies who will own and control access to the one thing we all need to survive – clean, drinkable H2O. If corporations could charge us for the air we breathe, the neo-liberal technocrats that dominate both parties, and are beholden to them, would make it happen.

Unfortunately the Democratic party elites do not seem to have any desire to work for the people who elected them, those whose interests they always promise to represent. Instead the Democratic Party’s own leadership sells them out for lobbyist money from Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Pharma, etc. etc. etc. Hell, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was a big promoter of payday lenders, i.e., legalized loan sharks, who preyed on poor working families.

The Clinton wing of the party, which has deep ties to Wall Street and the current pay to play political system, has no real interest in helping the very people it expects to vote for them. Our issues are not a priority for them or their sycophantic, brain-washed supporters.

Bernie Sanders does care about those issues and has a long record of supporting all people, especially the most vulnerable in our society, even when it was not popular. He railed against the bigots, racists and elected officials who the neglected the needs of their constituents. And for daring to run against Hillary Clinton, and for the crime of actually succeeding against all odds, the Democratic Party contrived to engineer his defeat, and now to punish him for making them expend time and money to do it.

From what I've seen and heard, many Bernie supporters have no intention of voting for Hillary Clinton if she's the Democrats’ nominee. She's just another candidate who will say anything to get elected, but once in office will work for the same pro-big business, anti-worker policies we've seen from both parties over the last four presidential administrations. She may be more venal and corrupt than others, but it’s only a matter of degree.

These people to whom I talk, and it’s not just millennials, but people 30, 40, 50 years of age and older, long-time Democratic voters, will either vote for the Green party in November if they can, or not vote at all.

They witnessed voter suppression in numerous primaries including Arizona, Illinois, New York, California and other states by local Democratic party officials who were in Hillary’s camp. They saw reporters and Democratic leaders brazenly lie about the fictional chair-throwing incident at the Nevada convention to deliberately spread the lie that Bernie supporters are deranged, out of control and prone to violence. Then when an older white Clinton supporter beat a young Bernie supporter with his cane, a young woman of color at that, the same media and Democratic officials either denied it happened or ignored it.

They know all about how Hillary scammed those same state parties to benefit herself by using the Hillary Victory Fund as a money laundering device, all the while claiming falsely that she was helping down ballot candidates.

They know about the many times the DNC obstructed the Sanders campaign while doing everything it could to help Hillary. The recently release of DNC documents by Guccifer 2 only confirmed what everyone already knew: that the DNC was coordinating with Hillary as far back as March, 2015 to ensure Hillary became the Democratic Party's nominee.

To be honest, I'll be casting my vote for Jill Stein because she will be on the ballot in my state. I cannot in good conscience vote for any Democrat after all that I’ve learned about the endemic corruption of that party.

My point is that the goals and ideas of people like Billy Taylor are no longer unthinkable. What is unthinkable is continuing to vote for the very people who abandoned and destroyed the middle class. Politicians who support the incarceration of millions of primarily black and brown people in privately owned and operated prisons. Democrats who support illegal and unnecessary wars in the Middle East, who allowed Wall Street to nearly bring down the global economy and, as we just learned, approved thousands of fracking permits in the Gulf of Mexico, while paying lip service to the threat of Climate Change.

What can I say but enough is enough. I’m not going to take it anymore. Bye-bye Democratic Party.