First a little background to explain the purpose of this diary.

It’s less in the spirit of a Joe Namath-style guarantee than as a call to arms to ramp up your engagement right now.

The last two weeks in NYC have been astounding. The place has been electrified by Bernie. The thunderous crescendo standing ovation at the end of his closing speech at the debate was the culmination of all this enormous love for Bernie that the MSM has been purposefully missing. The massive rallies in the Village and the S. Bronx are crystal clear confirmation he has won the hearts of New Yorkers and the country. I watched the debate in my neighborhood in Astoria with 100 fully committed Bernie volunteers and supporters. I canvassed the neighborhood yesterday too, with my 4 month old in a harness, and came back to the law group hosting the Bernie campaign with these results for one block: Sanders 3, Clinton 0. There was also a Bernie sign on a window on the previous block, none anywhere for Clinton. I have still yet to see one single, solitary, piece of support anywhere, extended to the Tri-state area, for her.

It’s now up to us, to harness that incredible energy by ramping up our efforts right now.

Part of that requires us to Never Forget. Not in the xenophobic and malicious way misused by the Bush cabal to smooth the road for blind vengeful attacks on countries that had nothing to do with 9/11, which amounted to a bloody mess turned into geopolitical cauldron and distraction having the added consequence of an ongoing enforcement of mass surveillance and the loss of civil rights, all of which the crony capitalist elite took advantage to get even richer. Too many have already disgracefully traded on it for their personal political and financial (i.e. Giuliani) gain.

What we should never forget is that there was another brand of terrorism closer to home, that was far more destructive to many more people living in America. Financial bombs were detonated all over this country by the casino gambling of the Economic Terrorists of Wall St., which blew up inside the homes of struggling middle class Americans ripped apart by home foreclosure, medical, consumer and student debt, and loss of jobs, income and pension. Millions are still torn apart from that still-exploding shrapnel. There’s no actual measure of the collateral damage but you can bet there were way more than 3000 deaths caused in some way by the Economic Terrorism of Wall St.

"The business model of Wall St is fraud."

No candidate in my lifetime has ever come close to speaking with such honesty and temerity about the big banks. Making Money In Politics the central issue of his campaign has been a masterstroke of exposing the how corrupt and rigged the political system is.

So, budding mathematicians and Hills zealots please save your prognostications for your own Free Speech zones.

My purpose today is explicitly to call for the conscription of every available liberal Progressive in this country into the Political Revolution.

But especially to my fellow New Yorkers, who toil in the shadow of the financial ivory towers of Wall St, whose greed has caused such deep and widespread wreckage. This campaign has brilliantly focused on that. This is the movement, campaign and moment we’ve all been waiting for. The reckoning. A showdown at ground zero of the Great Recession, in the hometown of this generation’s Great Progressive, who yesterday visited the gravesite on the grounds of the presidential library of the other Great Progressive, which contains a prominent bust inscribed as “a gift from the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.”

We know Bernie’s done his thing. He’s got that. He’s been barnstorming the State. He’s been laying it down all over the city. Like the true Warrior that he is, from the Bronx to Coney Island, from Greenpoint to Washington Hts. He’s on his way to the Vatican right now and onto the world stage where he has become the rare beloved American because of a profound integrity, compassion and unwavering universal empathy.

It’s up to #Us from here on out:

Phonebank.

Canvass.

Donate.

Get even more active sharing on social media (if you’re here you know there are plenty of resource video, links, and articles that make the case for Bernie).

Massive Bernie Phonebank Action for NY, This Weekend

It bears repeating that Bernie is having astounding success holding rallies in his hometown. From 25K at a park in the Bronx last week, to estimates of up to 40K last night in Washington Sq Park. Both rousing, euphoric displays of support rivaling Obama’s. The city is literally on fire with excitement for him. New York is here for the taking, but only with the committed help of New Yorkers to get every last vote.

I was also born in NYC, and it’s my home.

Perhaps New Yorkers are known for their smarts, sassy and savvy. Though not exactly in the way Obama infamously intoned when he clumsily praised the CEO of one of the chief architects of the economic meltdown.

That’s why hard-working folks caught in the relentless grinder of unbridled capitalism understand quite clearly that the Bankstas have been immunized from the rule of law. Everyday People understand the contrast with the thousands and thousands of black and brown folks are wasting away in Rikers for small scale, non-violent drug possession and the endless fines, fees and fine print corporate culture picking their pockets everyday. Folks riding the subway lines to work and walking the avenues home know corporate criminals robbed the pensions of many millions, forced other millions to lose their homes and pillaged municipal funds for which in twisted dystopian logic we the taxpayers get stuck with the bill of more austerity (see Flint). We’re not all businessmen in NYC. But we are savvy, though in more general ways with respect to striking the balance required to ground oneself in peace and well-being amidst an over-stimulating city rich with endlessly imaginative possibilities and teeming with a gorgeous diaspora of nationalities. We also know when we’ve been punked.

I went to college Upstate NY. People from those necks of the woods are thought to be more measured, reliable and salt of the earth. I love beautiful and scenic Upstate NY, its historical legacy of progressive liberalism and its fine people.

Both places have been devastated by the Economic Terrorism of Wall St and crony capitalism. Where once proud manufacturing and industry resided hollowed out small cities it is now as plain as the blue sky is revealed in the pockmarked Main St’s of shuttered shop windows, abandoned factories and For Sale signs on homes. Its the real life destruction of NAFTA, outsourcing, corporate tax shelters, casino gambling by the banks and Money In Politics buying our politicians who are paid to do nothing to stop the death spiral of this untenable status quo. Fracking is a major issue to folks in the North who have seen the contamination of their water supply. When Bernie was asked in a debate if there were any scenarios in which he would approve fracking, he didn’t hesitate or equivocate like his opponent, but simply and firmly said, “No.” That’ll go a long way there.

But in the Big Apple we’ve sat and watched our city hijacked, though some stood up to fight back. NYC has become a brazen Marie Antoinette playground for the Rich, remade in the vainglorious image of its former three-term(!) billionaire Mayor, with rampant high-rise luxury apartments, boutique shopping and designer hotels catering to the global financial elite. How did he turn the keys of the city over to his country club crony capitalist friends in real estate and finance? The Vanishing City has a few answers. It’s no wonder he was pressured by those elite power brokers to remove those civic patriots to the world, Occupy Wall St, of whom he called up his notorious “private army” of the NYPD to brutishly harass, beat, jail and ultimately viciously wipe out its physical presence with a brutal middle of the night invasion, planned and coordinated by a cartel of government surveillance and law enforcement, along with corporate and banking powers, part of the Orwellian-named Domestic Security Alliance.

The evisceration of available affordable apartments in NYC to a massive explosion of high-end luxury apartments is the epitome of greedy crony capitalism. In a word, they fucked us over, big-time.

This film explains the real estate takeover of NYC:

All of this is to say we New Yorkers don’t forget. We can smell a scam a mile away.

And we don’t like injustice. We like fairness. And underdogs.

The hostile takeover of our city by bankster criminals and real estate plunderers has left a very bitter taste in the vast majority of its dwellers’ mouths. Small local businesses have been sent packing by greedy landlords looking to cash on this urban Gold Rush. The average price of a home in New York now exceeds $1.1 million. New gleaming banks and corporate franchises dominate the prime retail corners of far too many of our city blocks. Cupcakes sell for $7 and $17 lobster rolls are becoming ubiquitous in the new New York.

We watch as month after month an ongoing brazen rapaciousness of erecting more and more high-rise luxury living apartments (urban gated communities) literally take over our skyline. Rent in otherwise modest but livable apartments have skyrocketed as a result. The oligarchy just keeps turning up the heat in this pressure cooker, scurrying away to the Cayman Island, Switzerland and Panama with their profits, while we suffocate it this airless dystopia.

Something is going to pop. I think it will happen in the NY primary.

All we have to do is turn on the faucet. But it’s now up to us to stand up, go over to the faucet, open the tap and GET THOSE VOTES.

People are not being told about what’s going on in the streets, the excitement among its citizens, the widespread and enthusiastic support among its great and varied denizens.

If you’re going by what you heard on tv, read in the papers or saw online you wouldn’t really know it. For us who have been paying attention for a while, we’ve seen quite clearly how craven and complicit the media is in blacking out the historical candidacy of Bernie Sanders. A 74 year old Socialist Jew from Brooklyn, barely a blip on the political polling radar only nine months ago, has risen to a statistical tie in national polling with one of the most well-known candidates who was the former FLOTUS, by outraising his opponents by an incredibly wide margin, consistently attracting enormous crowds for months and doing it all with more than 6 million individual campaign contribution averaging $27.

So, when the guy getting his coffee at the deli in the morning is told, “hey, Hillary got the endorsement of the Daily News yesterday,” he’ll probably shrug. After which his commoner wisdom kicks in, belying stereotypical working class simple-mindedness or apathy, and he gets to the heart of the truth. Media and political insider endorsement don’t leave much of an impression on the common man. He rightfully thinks the whole thing is rigged and a charade. But he wants to believe. Bernie is believable.

Bernie got the “endorsement” of 25,000 people who lined up around 10 blocks of the S. Bronx to see him speak in a park. On that same day his opponent was making a speech at a college in Westchester. “Around” 500 people showed up, 50 of whom were protesters who stood up, chanted “if she wins, we lose”, and left. That’s a ton of a lot more “endorsement” than a few editors writing for a print newspaper in 2016 will ever have.

These kinds of endorsements, like the other dozen or so speeches and events Bernie has done all over New York, amount to not only enthusiasm but much more inclined voters, who are apt to share with their friends the excitement they experienced, and bring them into the booth.

As far as I’m concerned the endorsements of friends who have been following the race closely are worth more than ones by newspapers or politicians who many simply distrust. A word from their peers, their neighbors, family members, their co-workers can go a long way. A public show of support gets them even closer. It’s the truckers honking his horn five times when you’re running down the side of the Grand Central Parkway to quickly jam a Bernie lawn sign onto the small patch of litter-strewn and sickly-colored grass off the shoulder. The shop owner telling you he’s the only honest and good candidate running, then putting up a campaign sign in his window. It’s the guy in the car stopping you in the street to ask for a campaign sign, then telling you he loves you.

A visiting Italian friend who’s been living in London for years tells me the rest of the world is in love with Bernie. I can believe that. It was on abundant display last night in Washington Square. It’s probably on or approaching the level with which Obama had been showered with in those cheery days of symbolism mixed with an overpowering disdain for the previous failed president. But no media coverage. The Democratic establishment machinery is engaged in a full court press to keep Bernie from getting any traction by depriving him of party support and access to its apparatus. Citizens of the World, which is also the unspoken term we New Yorkers give ourselves, know better.

There’s incredible energy out there. Big-time.

It’s up to us right now, during each and every waking hour of every day up through the end of the night Tues, to do something toward achieving a game-changing victory in NY.

If you can donate again, do so. If you can’t, make phone calls; it’s easy (and fun). If you can’t make phone calls, blast out social media.

And if you’re in NYC, well, get yourself out and into the streets and onto the public squares. It’s no time to be shy. Where your progressivism proud.

Stop strangers and get into conversations about Bernie. About the Economic Terrorism of Wall St, visible in a thousand different ways. Talk about the chronic dysfunction of the government, and explain how it’s because our system traps every politician into being beholden to Big Money In Politics. And, it’s the first time you can honestly say your candidate has been funded by over six million individual small donations. Ask them if they knew that corporations get special tax breaks, or if they knew that our gov’t literally gives hundreds of millions of our tax the oil companies through “subsidies,” or if they think it’s fair if the 175,800 kindergarten teachers of America make less money than the top 25 hedge fund managers . Ask ‘em if they’d like that money to be put into healthcare for all and free higher education. Do they know he literally stands with striking workers and protesters demanding fair wages and the right to collective bargaining?

Keep working folks. Every bit counts.

Occupy New York City!

Let’s win New York!