Portside

A grassroots organizing effort may bring out between 10,000 and 20,000 Latinos to caucus in Iowa on Monday, and Bernie Sanders may be the beneficiary.

Bernie Sanders' plan would break up the biggest banks. But strong banking reform could do more. Here are three ways he can make his plan a real threat to the finance industry.

The Bernie generation is our political future, joining with groups demanding living wages or $15/hr, Black Lives Matter, the Dreamers, and 350.org. With their roots in the Occupy movement, they are viscerally mad at the rigged economy based on McJobs and the monopoly power of the plutocrats.This is such an important election, the riskiest of my lifetime. If we win, then we can resume our quarrels and patient work for peace and justice.

The Clinton campaign has aggressively sought campaign donations from the biggest financial interests and Clinton has personally taken millions of dollars in speaking fees from Wall Street and the health care industry. Meanwhile, Sanders has generated enough true popular excitement and small donations to be financially competitive at a presidential level.

The Bernie Sanders campaign has reached millions of people for whom it was easier to engage politics through the prism of a presidential campaign. The underlying issue of our time, is how to remake the U.S. political and economic system into something that works for everybody in our country and does more to help than to harm the rest of the world. Bernie is doing everything he can to keep us focused on this big issue, always clear that it cannot be solved by him alone.

Reader Comments: Sanders' Health for All Plan; Deportations; Flint's Water; Richard Levins - Presente!; Add Your Name - End All U.S. Support for the Government of Saudi Arabia; Your Action Needed - A Park for Pete Seeger; Action for Puerto Rico; Ursula K. Le Guin Rips Bundy Militia in 194 words; Making All of the World's Art Accessible to Anyone Online - Ansel Adams photography; and more...

Bernie’s plan will cover the entire continuum of health care, from inpatient to outpatient care; preventive to emergency care; primary care to specialty care, including long-term and palliative care; vision, hearing and oral health care; mental health and substance abuse services; as well as prescription medications, medical equipment, supplies, diagnostics and treatments. As a patient, all you need to do is go to the doctor and show your insurance card-you'll save $$$$$

Perhaps more important than Sanders’s gain in the polls is how it happened: by patiently hammering on his message, regardless of what other candidates said.

The Working Families Party has pushed the political debate to the left in the states where it's already active. Now-in the era of Occupy and Bernie Sanders-it's ready to take that fight nationwide. The WFP's agenda-frankly redistributionist and devoted to social equality-targets a class of Democratic elected officials who, in the view of many liberals, seem to listen more to their moneyed donors than to the left-wing rank and file.