Senator Sanders: What a year it has been!

What a year it has been!

Yes. We all know that we have seen a president take office who is the most dishonest, bigoted, divisive and reactionary president in the modern history of our country.

We have also seen a right-wing extremist Republican Congress attempt to throw up to 32 million Americans off of the health care they have, give hundreds of billions in tax breaks to the richest people in our country and the largest corporations, destroy environmental legislation and work overtime to deny women the right to control their own bodies.

Yes. We have seen all of that and much more. But we are also seeing something else that, from an historical perspective, is far more important. We are seeing the American people come together, fight back and win important victories all across the country.

In 2017 we made progress when millions of people, in every state in the country, took to the streets for the Women's March in opposition to Trump's reactionary agenda. We made progress when an unprecedented grassroots movement elected a young African-American as mayor of Birmingham, Alabama. We made progress when tens of thousands of Americans turned out in rallies and town meetings to successfully oppose the Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and we're making progress when more and more Americans are joining the fight for a Medicare for All single payer program.

We're making progress when governors and local officials in every part of the country announce, in response to student demands, tuition free public colleges and universities. We're making progress when states and communities from coast to coast adopt legislation which provides a minimum wage of $15 an hour.

We're making progress when, on Election Day, November 7, 2017, in local and state elections all across the country, Trumpism suffered a major defeat as hundreds of progressive first time candidates from every conceivable background ran for school board, city council, state legislature and other local offices - and many of them won.

We're making progress when, on December 10, 2017 a strong Democrat was elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama, one of the most conservative states in the country.

The truth is that the American people are far more united than the media allows us to believe. They get it. They know that over the last forty years, despite a huge increase in worker productivity, the middle class has continued to shrink while the very rich have become much richer. They know that, for the first time in the modern history of the United States, our kids will likely have a lower standard of living than their parents.

Our job, in 2018 and beyond, for the sake of our kids and grandchildren, is to bring our people together around a progressive agenda.

https://www.facebook.com/senatorsanders/

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