Sanders Calls Income and Wealth Inequality Issues “We Don’t Talk About”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) were keynote speakers at Progressive Central 2024, which took place on Sunday and Monday just blocks north of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.

Progressive Central 2024 is a conference hosted by Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). Several other progressive organizations partnered with PDA to manage the conference, including The Nation Magazine, The Arab-American Institute, and Operation Rainbow/PUSH. The event featured multiple speakers, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California), former Ohio State Sen. Nina Turner (D), The Nation columnist John Nichols, and many others.

Both Jayapal and Sanders spoke on Monday afternoon. While Jayapal focused primarily on progressive accomplishments over the past few years, including how the Congressional Progressive Caucus (which she chairs) has amassed more members, Sanders discussed how there was still much work to be done — including the need to take on oligarchy in the U.S., which, he noted, has its grip on both major political parties.

Jayapal encouraged attendees not to stop their work now. “We are getting ready to win in November, and when we do, we will accomplish so much more,” she told them.

“We’ve been able, over the last eight years, to build a caucus to almost 100 members strong. That is almost half of the Democratic caucus,” Jayapal said.

There is strength in numbers, the congresswoman added, recognizing that progressives in the House were more able to use their “courage muscle” to press other Democrats to support spending measures to help millions more Americans on several issues, including education, debt, infrastructure, the environment and more.

“Thanks to progressives, we got things done in the last four years a lot of people thought were impossible,” Jayapal said, recognizing that progressives’ “Build Back Better” initiative, while watered down quite a bit, still resulted in a beneficial Inflation Reduction Act.

Added Jayapal:

There wouldn’t have been an Inflation Reduction Act without Build Back Better. And that meant we made the largest investment ever in climate change, finally standing up to Big Pharma, and finally making billionaires and big corporations pay just a little bit more in their fair share in taxes.

But there was more work to be done, Jayapal said, including getting “big money out of politics.”

When it was his turn to speak, Sanders agreed with Jayapal that progress has indeed been made, including on a number of social issues.

“If you think back over the last number of decades, we as a nation have made good progress, significant progress in breaking down racial barriers…in breaking down sexism in this country,” in addressing marriage equality and other LGBTQ issues, “and in creating a much less bigoted society.”

But there was one issue that progressives weren’t only “not gaining ground,” Sanders said, but also “losing, and that is the economic struggle.”

The great “crisis facing our country is that we don’t discuss the great crises facing our country,” Sanders said, adding that “just forcing discussion on certain issues is enormously important.”

For economics, it was harder, because people don’t like to talk about money — but they should, the Vermont senator said.

“Over the last 50 years…there’s been a radical increase in worker productivity. Guess what? Today, the average American worker in inflation adjusted for income is earning less than he or she did years ago. Have you ever heard that discussion on television?” Sanders asked.

“We have more income and wealth inequality today in America than we have ever had. Did you all know that? Not discussed, no one talks about it,” he added.

The media has been largely complicit in helping corporate and oligarchic interests — “Sixty percent of our people, in the richest country in the history of the world, [are] living paycheck to paycheck,” but the media has decided that we’re “not allowed to be outraged” by that fact, Sanders said.

He added:

So that’s what our struggle is. And it’s a big struggle, because you’re taking on the corporate class, you’re taking on the oligarchy, you’re taking on the Democratic establishment, you’re taking on the Republican establishment.

The one positive in the past few years, Sanders said, is that we’re “seeing a rebirth of the trade union movement in America.”

Sanders also briefly discussed the presidential race, reiterating a point about GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in which Sanders suggested that lies about Vice President Kamala Harris’s crowd sizes were election disinformation, laying the groundwork for improperly calling the outcome of the 2024 election into question if it doesn’t go his way.

“The danger is, if you can convince some Americans, not most, that an event in which there is 10, 15,000 people came out, never happened, that it was all artificial intelligence, it was a myth, trust me, in a close election in Wisconsin or Michigan, you can convince those people that [an election] was rigged and fraudulent,” Sanders stated.

But while defeating Trump was the primary goal of progressives this year, they have to keep working beyond November to hold the possible Harris/Walz administration accountable, too.

“Immediately, and it goes without saying, we have to do all that we can to defeat Trump and elect Kamala and Tim Walz. But we also have to understand, once they are elected, we need to continue our efforts to build and strengthen the progressive movement,” Sanders said.

“Both political parties are significantly controlled by big money interests,” he added.