WOW!WOW! & WOW! An Atlantic Magazine profile of Bernie from 1985 never published until now [View all]

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In 1985, when Bernie Sanders was in his second term as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, a writer named Russell Banks published his breakthrough novel, Continental Drift. It would earn Banks the John Dos Passos Prize, and make him a finalist for the Pulitzer for fiction. Sometime after the book came out, Banks accepted an assignment to profile the self-described socialist mayor. He followed Sanders around the city, watched him interact with constituents, and recorded his candid views. He produced a remarkable and compelling portrait of a distinctive politician, but it never found its way into print. Instead, it was filed away for three decades.


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“Being a non-conformist, that was in me before I had politics,” he says. “But to give you an idea of just how politically naive I was, I remember like it was yesterday my first day at Brooklyn College, during orientation, right? There’s this fair in the gymnasium where all the sororities and fraternities and student organizations have their literature and their people out. There was this table and this group called the Eugene V. Debs Club, and I said, ‘What’s that? I never heard of Eugene V. Debs.’ and they said, ‘Oh, we’re the local socialists,’ and I said, ‘Socialists!’ I was shocked. Not that I was against it, you understand, but I was amazed. Here were real live socialists sitting right in front of me!”


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In the fall of 1961, arming himself with a part-time job and a loan, he transferred to the University of Chicago, and here began Bernie Sanders’s infatuation with radical politics.

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He joined the Congress for Racial Equality and in a short time was being arrested for helping lead sit-in demonstrations against segregated housing owned by the University of Chicago. These were among the first sit-ins in the North. He says now that his confrontations with the Chicago police and university officials over this issue were crucial to the development of his politics. The university administration lied about their racial policies, he says. Until then, he had not realized that respectable people often lie, and the discovery significantly changed his feelings about people in positions of authority.

“One time there was an incident on the streets that resulted in a picture in The Chicago Defender, the black newspaper, of a police officer twisting a young black woman’s arm, and we made a poster with it, and I was working near the university pasting up these things to announce a demonstration against police brutality. Unbeknownst to me, a cop car was following along behind me, and as fast as I put the posters up, the cops were pulling them down. Finally, the cop car pulls up to me, and they get out and accost me. Needless to say, I’m terrified. One of the cops puts his finger in my face and says, ‘It’s outside agitators like you who’re screwing this city up. The races got along fine before you people came here!’ Like this is Alabama or someplace. Anyhow, I was late for my class, a political science class, and I remember the teacher was talking about local government, and when I walked in and sat down, I saw right then and there the difference between real life and the official version of life. And I knew I believed in one and didn’t believe any more in the other.”




http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/bernie-sanders-mayor/407413/