What Ben Jealous Understands

As you know, Blue America's priority is taking back the House and helping to fill it with genuine progressives. This is our main ActBlue page and it's filled with stalwart progressives running for the House, like Randy Bryce (WI), Doug Applegate (CA), Jenny Marshall (NC), Dan Canon (IN), David Gill (IL), etc. But we also help raise funds for Senate candidates, for incumbents, for candidates in districts Trump won, for state legislative candidates... and for candidates for governor. So far we've only endorsed 3 gubernatorial candidates; Tom Wakely in Texas, Daniel Biss in Illinois and Ben Jealous in Maryland. All three are fully-vetted progressives and all three have tough up-hill battles against much better-funded establishment insiders.

But one of them, Ben Jealous, just got a powerful endorsement from the most trusted and popular political leader in the country, Bernie Sanders. Please give it a read and if you agree and want to help elect Ben, consider tapping the brand new Blue America ActBlue gubernatorial thermometer on the right. Ben, like Tom and Dan, is running a grassroots campaign and talking to small dollar contributors, so... if you feel like contributing $10 or $20 isn't manful-- just forget that. These are the candidates who put campaigns together not based on PACs from special interests or from wealthy donors, but from lots of small contributors, like us. Bernie:

These are, to say the least, unusual and unprecedented times for our country. We have a president who is unfit to hold his office, and whose policies are the most anti-working class in the modern history of America.

One of the ways we can most effectively oppose Trump’s right-wing extremism is with strong progressive leadership at the local and state level.

Former NAACP President Ben Jealous is one of the great progressive leaders in the United States of America. He endorsed our campaign when it was difficult. He joined our political revolution at the very moment the political and financial establishment in this country was fighting back hardest against us.

Now he’s running for governor of Maryland and it’s our turn to be there for him.

...Ben has always been a very powerful ally of our movement, and he needs our support. Please help him.

Ben Jealous knows a truth that we don’t see too much of on the television. And that is that there is an enormous amount of pain in this country. He understands that there are millions and millions of people right now who are hurting.

Ben understands that people are not making it on $10 an hour and that we’re going to raise the minimum wage to a living wage-- $15 an hour.

Ben understands that in the year 2017, it is unacceptable that women are making 80 cents on the dollar and that we need pay equity.

Ben understands that in a highly competitive global economy, we need the best educated workforce in the world and that it is insane that people cannot afford to go to college or are leaving school deeply in debt.

Ben understands, and this has been his life’s work as one of the great leaders of the American civil rights movement, that there is something profoundly wrong when the United States has more people in jail than any other country on earth, and that disproportionately those prisoners are black, Latino and Native American. He has spent decades fighting for real criminal justice reform.

Ben understands, unlike President Trump, that climate change is not a hoax, and as governor of a state that is uniquely threatened by rising sea levels, he is going to work with many of us to transform our energy system to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

And Ben understands that in the richest country in the history of the world, it is long past time that we join the rest of the industrialized world in ensuring that health care is a right for every single man, woman, and child. That is why he is a strong advocate of a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.

Lastly, let me say this: I am asking you to donate to Ben’s campaign because we want to elect him governor of Maryland. But I am also asking you to donate to his campaign because our participation and Ben’s victory will send a very powerful message to candidates all across the country.

And that message is that when you stand up and authentically fight for the working class in this country, when you fight for people of all backgrounds, they will stand up and fight with you. That is how we elect progressives to Congress, to governors' mansions, and to state legislatures across the country.

Ben Jealous has always been with us-- please join me and be there for him today. He needs us.

Electing a leader like Ben Jealous would be a tremendous victory not just for our political revolution, but it would demonstrate that our values are on the march everywhere in this nation. That’s why your donation means so much.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders