A large group of Alabama socialists ventured out in public for the first time in ages to support Bernie Sanders at a Birmingham rally yesterday.
Bemoaning greed, Republicans, and wealth Sanders, called on political adherents to create a new society via grass roots organizing and wealth redistribution. (RELATED: Sanders Says Making Colleges Tuition Free Will Make America Great Again)
Around 300 socialists turned out in the widely conservative state to hear Sanders, who recently proclaimed his campaign would venture into red states on “Face the Nation.”
“We’re going to go to Alabama, we’re going to go to Mississippi…We have got to come together to create a new world and not a world in which a handful of people have so much wealth and so many other people are suffering,” Sanders said on the Sunday talk show.
“For a state that’s so red, it’s exciting to see [hundreds] of people for this. It sticks to the grassroots theme,” Marty Colby said joining other closeted progressives at the Good People Brewing Company in Birmingham.
The event coordinators Mallory Anderton, Jared J. Vanderbleek, and Jess Mathieu originally teamed up through Facebook. The organizers were scouring the web looking for serious Sanders comrades and came to the thrilling revelation the three progressives all hailed from the Heart of Dixie.
“He’s got me excited in politics again,” one attendee named Peter Stuart said. “He’s not just in it for the money or his own career. To me, he’s what politicians should be.”
Stuart’s jubilant support for Sanders is coupled by his Christian values.
“I think Jesus was a socialist,” he said, adding that Republicans “talk Christian values and family values, but they don’t do them.”
Despite the call by many on the left to leave religion out of politics, this sentiment resonates with many ardent Sanders fans. Likewise, the wiry and intrepid politician from Vermont is turning political apathy into action.
“We decided we’re kind of going to put our money where our mouth is and have an event here,” coordinator Malloy Anderton said. “We are just networking and really just putting our feelers out.”