Editor,

Regarding Sen. Bernie Sanders, a call for revolution demands a plan, a leader, and a ground game. Think of the Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the organizations that rose to support him. Think of the United Farm Workers and the efforts of Caesar Chavez. Think of Women’s Suffrage and Emmeline Pankhurst, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Think of Women’s Rights and Gloria Steinem. Think of LGBT [lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender] rights and the leaders of that movement who have stepped forward every decade, including in the person of Grethe Cammermeyer here in Langley.

In every case where there has been change, there has been a leader. Along with associates, that leader organized a ground game that included everything from marches on Washington and sit-ins to parades. But unless I’m mistaken, there is no leader of Sen. Sanders’s revolution, and if there is a ground game in place, I do not know what it is.

You might wish to argue that Sen. Sanders himself will be that leader, but the president doesn’t have the luxury of organizing a revolution while being the president, and certainly not in the poisonous political climate in which we have found ourselves for the past eight years. The reality is that the world and the country are not going to stand still while the president organizes and leads a one million person march up Pennsylvania Avenue to demand a free education for all or an increase in the minimum wage. The president faces 101 different issues every day, and he cannot deal with those issues while simultaneously laying a foundation for social revolution.

As for change coming through the ballot box, one has to ask if Bernie’s adherents have slept through the gerrymandering that has gone on to keep the Republican Congress exactly that: Republican.

The senator is a man of good ideas. But because he will not state a plan of action, because he does not have a plan of action, and because no ground level leader has stepped forward to lead his social and political revolution, Sanders might as well be living inside a John Lennon song. Most of us know which song that is.

ELIZABETH GEORGE

Langley