By Lucy Komisar
New York, April 14, 2016.

Bernie Sanders supporters came to my Greenwich Village neighborhood April 13th, filling Washington Square Park for a rally that raised the issues he has made the focus of his campaign – how the super-rich have taken over the country‘s politics in their interests.

In the midst of the campus of New York University, he talked about the need to end a system where getting a college education means massive student debt.

And for a higher minimum wage, for affordable housing, to end the system where “the top 1 percent own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.” That Walmart workers get food stamps because they are paid so little that the taxpayers subsidize them.

“What a rigged economy is about is when working families pay higher taxes to subsidize the wealthiest family in America,” he declared. “So I say to the Walton family, get off of welfare, pay your workers a living wage.”

In my college days I would go to meetings on such issues that would draw a handful of people in an out-of-the-way Village space. This is what slow consciousness-raising looks like.