Bernie’s backstory life in a city with a socialist mayor

Bernie’s Burlington Was an Experiment in Practical Socialism

“I am a democratic socialist,” Dan Chiasson, the fifty-five-year-old author of Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People’s Politician, told me proudly over Zoom, his “Zohran for New York City” cap visible in the frame. Chiasson and I have known each other for over a decade — he was my professor at the poetry Master of Fine Arts program at Boston University — but this is the first time he has shared his political views directly with me. Best …

Bernie’s backstory life in a city with a socialist mayor

Few Americans or outside observers of the Excited States are neutral about Bernie Sanders, the long- serving independent Senator from Vermont. For many, he is the best President America never had, after two failed attempts to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. For others he is the heroic standard bearer and one of the key spokespeople for a resurgent progressive tendency in US politics and a leader in the struggle…