Bernie Sanders alumni want meeting to discuss 'sexual violence' on 2016 campaign

[Swordsmyth]

Alumni of Sen. Bernie Sanders (https://thehill.com/people/bernie-sanders)'s (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign are requesting a meeting with the senator and his advisers to discuss the issue of "sexual violence" on his 2016 campaign, according to a new Politico report (https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/30/bernie-sanders-campaign-harassment-1077014).
"We the undersigned request a meeting with Senator Sanders and his leadership team to discuss the issue of sexual violence and harassment on the 2016 campaign, for the purpose of planning to mitigate the issue in the upcoming presidential cycle - in the primary and potential general election campaigns," the group of more than two dozen women and men wrote, according to a letter obtained by Politico.


They confirmed to the outlet that they sent the letter to Sanders on Sunday.
Sanders has said publicly multiple times that he is considering a bid for the presidency in 2020.
The letter does not specify instances of sexual violence and harassment from the previous presidential campaign.
Some of the signatories told Politico that they felt the issue was not the Sanders campaigns, but rather a culture of toxic masculinity on campaigns in general.
“This letter is just a start,” one of the organizers told Politico. “We are addressing what happened on the Bernie campaign but as people that work in this space we see that all campaigns are extremely dangerous to women and marginalized people and we are attempting to fix that.”
The letter says that there have been "ongoing conversation on social media, in texts, and in person, about the untenable and dangerous dynamic that developed during our campaign."
They called for a meeting with Sanders in which they would set the agenda. They also requested that Sanders' top advisors come up with a follow-up plan after the meeting outlining concrete sexual harassment and violence policies.
Sanders's campaign committee, Friends of Bernie Sanders, in a statement emphasized the privacy of the signees and called the discussion "incredibly important."

More at: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/423280-bernie-sanders-alumni-want-meeting-to-discuss-sexual-violence-on-2016

[Swordsmyth]

Sen. Bernie Sanders (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/bernie-sanders) (I-Vt.) said in an interview Wednesday that he had no knowledge of multiple allegations (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-alumni-request-meeting-to-address-sexual-violence-on-2016-campaign_us_5c2a2adae4b0407e9084c768) that members of his 2016 presidential campaign harassed or discriminated against female campaign workers. The claims have been circulating in recent weeks as the lawmaker mulls a second bid for the White House.
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper (https://twitter.com/AC360/status/1080638469569949696), Sanders said that his campaign for the Democratic nomination, which he lost to rival Hillary Clinton, exploded in size over several months as his team hired more than 1,200 employees. Sanders suggested that disorganization may have led to instances of inappropriate behavior within his campaign.
“I’m not going to sit here and tell you that we did everything right in terms of human resources, in terms of addressing the needs that I’m hearing from now, that women felt disrespected, that there was sexual harassment which was not dealt with as effectively as possible,” said Sanders, who is actively cultivating support (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/us/politics/bernie-sanders-president-2020.html?module=inline) for a 2020 bid.


The Times notes that sources said their claims reached the desks of several leading campaign officials, but it’s unclear if Sanders knew of them at the time.
On Wednesday, Sanders said his campaign for the 2018 midterms featured a new “gold standard” that other lawmakers should be working toward.
“What I will tell you is that when I ran for re-election in 2018 in Vermont we put forward the strongest set of principles in terms of mandatory training, in terms of women, if they felt harassed, having an independent firm that they could go to, and I think that’s kind of the gold standard for what we should be doing,” he said.
Sanders also issued an apology to those who voiced criticism of his 2016 presidential campaign, saying he apologized “to any woman who felt that she was not treated appropriately.”
“And of course,” he said, “if I run, we will do better next time.”

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/bernie-sanders-says-unaware-harassment-023038527.html

[Swordsmyth]

Rumors and suspicions about endemic and pervasive sexism during the Bernie Sanders' 2016 primary campaign have been circulating almost since he first emerged as a credible threat to Hillary Clinton (rumors that Clinton staffers have admitted they helped to fan to try and undermine Sanders' upstart challenge). But just as Sanders and a handful of other potential Democratic 2020 contenders are preparing to make their final decisions about whether to run for the nomination in 2020, it appears the #MeToo movement has finally come for Sanders and his legion of "BernieBros".
In an expansive expose that included on-the-record comments with a handful of former female Sanders' campaign staffers, the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/us/politics/bernie-sanders-campaign-sexism.html) portrayed the Sanders campaign as a boys club where complaints about sexual harassment were largely ignored or not taken seriously, and where male employees were regularly paid more than their female counterparts.
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/2019.01.02bernie.JPG
Some of the women who worked on Sanders campaign have reportedly taken to a Facebook group where they have been sharing their stories, and all are demanding that, should Sanders choose to again seek the Democratic nomination in 2020, that he must ensure that these issues are addressed - or some of the financial backers and delegates who supported his campaign won't be returning.
According to the Times, the complaints have raised questions about whether Sanders is capable of adequately fighting for the interests of women.
At the start of its story, the Times shared an anecdote where one regional Latino outreach strategist complained to her boss that she had been harassed by a Sanders campaign surrogate. But instead of taking her complain seriously, the director responded with a snide remark, and promptly dismissed her claims.

She said the surrogate told her she had “beautiful curly hair” and asked if he could touch it, Ms. Di Lauro said in an interview. Thinking he would just touch a strand, she consented. But she said that he ran his hand through her hair in a "sexual way" and continued to grab, touch and "push my boundaries" for the rest of the day.
"I just wanted to be done with it so badly," she said.
When she reported the incident to Bill Velazquez, a manager on the Latino outreach team, he told her, “I bet you would have liked it if he were younger,” according to her account and another woman who witnessed the exchange. Then he laughed.
Accounts like Ms. Di Lauro’s - describing episodes of sexual harassment and demeaning treatment as well as pay disparity in Mr. Sanders’s 2016 campaign - have circulated in recent weeks in emails, online comments and private discussions among former supporters. Now, as the Vermont senator tries to build support for a second run at the White House, his perceived failure to address this issue has damaged his progressive bona fides, delegates and nearly a dozen former state and national staff members said in interviews over the last month.
One former female campaign official said the campaign's disorganized structure made it difficult to now whom to turn to with complaints about harassment - but this didn't stop her former supervisor for sidelining her after she declined an invitation to his hotel room.

"I did experience sexual harassment during the campaign, and there was no one who would or could help," said Samantha Davis, the former director of operations in Texas and New York, who also worked on the campaign’s advance team. She said that her supervisor marginalized her after she declined an invitation to his hotel room.
The experience has prompted some of Sanders' most dedicated female supporters to abandon the democratic socialist icon and declare that he doesn't need to vessel for the movement that he helped to create.

"I don’t think he has to be the vehicle or the platform for the movement that emerged from his campaign," said Sarah Slamen, who worked for the campaign in Texas, was the state coordinator in Louisiana and helped build out Our Revolution, a progressive organization born from Mr. Sanders’s presidential campaign.
"Do you know how hard that is for me to say after working so hard for him?" she said.
Ms. Slamen quit the organization at the end of 2016 after she said she was berated by a male member of the Our Revolution steering committee for suggesting an organizing plan. In emails reviewed by The Times, she raised issues about sexist behavior with committee members who saw the incident and Our Revolution’s national board of directors. She said she received no reassurance that anything would change.
A lack of transparency surrounding the campaign's pay structure resulted in many female employees being paid far less than their male counterparts.

Some former staff members said there was little pay transparency, and employees often negotiated their own salaries - practices that tend to favor men, who often feel more comfortable requesting higher compensation packages.
Ms. Davis, the former state director, said that she was originally paid about $2,400 a month as a senior staff member and saw in the campaign’s records that a younger man who was originally supposed to report to her made $5,000 a month. She said that she brought the issue to the campaign’s chief operating officer, who adjusted her salary to achieve parity.
"I helped at least a dozen women request raises so that they would be paid on par with their male peers," Ms. Davis said.
In one of the most shocking anecdotes, a female employee described being assigned to stay at a campaign house in Chicago. After arriving, she learned that she would be sharing a room with three men whom she had never met. She described "shaking in fear" at the prospect.


More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-02/metoo-comes-bernie-sanders-campaign-ignored-sexual-harassment-allegations

[Stratovarious]

Liberalism bites liberals in the a## , who could have guessed...

[Occam's Banana]

I'm not wasting any sympathy on Sanders, but the orchestration of this smacks of a "Do you still beat your wife?" poison pill.

Someone doesn't want Bernie gumming up the works this time around ...

[Swordsmyth]

At least one of the Bernie Bros who grabbed and fondled Bernie Gals during the 2016 campaign did a little more than grab and fondle.
One was a downright masher, if a young woman’s story is to be believed.
That Bernie Bro was Robert Becker, the chieftain of Bernie Sanders’ campaign in Iowa. His career as a top “progressive,” as the euphemism for 21st-century totalitarians goes, is over.
And what he did comports with what we know about most of the men felled by the #MeToo movement. They are liberal. They support abortion. And they force themselves on women as they pay lip service, so to speak, to the feminist cause.


Unwelcome French Kissing
The report on Becker comes from webzine Politico (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/09/bernie-sanders-2016-robert-becker-women-inappropriate-behavior-1093836) a week after revelations that the men of the Sanders campaign get a little handsy with the help (https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/31087-bernie-bros-fondled-bernie-gals-sanders-apologizes-says-he-was-too-busy-to-notice).
Politico reported that the Sanders campaign lieutenant and a group of his disciples met at a hookah bar in Philadelphia after the Democratic National Convention in 2016 “to celebrate and mourn the end of the campaign.”
Becker couldn’t have been too sad, though, given what he said to a young lady who “worked under him with her boyfriend,” an unwise choice of words from Politico given what the webzine described (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/09/bernie-sanders-2016-robert-becker-women-inappropriate-behavior-1093836):
Becker, now 50, told the 20-something woman that he had always wanted to have sex with her and made a reference to riding his “pole,” according to the woman and three other people who witnessed what happened or were told about it shortly afterward by people who did. Later in the night, Becker approached the woman and grabbed her wrists. Then he moved his hands to her head and forcibly kissed her, putting his tongue in her mouth as he held her, the woman and other sources said.
The woman did not report the incident at the time because the campaign was over.
That would have been that, but then Becker made a mistake. In prepping for another Sanders run at the White House, he began rounding up possible staffers.

And who do you think he called? That’s right, the woman he cornered in the bar.
And that, Politico reported (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/09/bernie-sanders-2016-robert-becker-women-inappropriate-behavior-1093836), “prompted her to step forward and tell senior Sanders advisers, including 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver, about what happened to her.”
Unsurprisingly, the woman told Politico that “candidates who allow people like Robert Becker to lead their organizations shouldn’t earn the highest office in our government.”
The woman remained anonymous because she rightly fears retaliation. She must know how vindictive and dangerous, sometimes physically, radical leftists are when their power is threatened.


“It just really sucks because no one ever held him accountable and he kept pushing and pushing and seeing how much he could get away with” she told the webzine (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/09/bernie-sanders-2016-robert-becker-women-inappropriate-behavior-1093836). “This can’t happen in 2020. You can’t run for president of the United States unless you acknowledge that every campaign demands a safe work environment for every employee and volunteer.”
Actually, it can happen in 2020, and even as Becker proclaimed innocence — “I categorically deny these allegations” — one campaign veteran admitted the truth: “There was lots of bros protecting bros, to the point that now there is a conversation among female alumni of not working on this campaign again.”
The group Friends of Bernie Sanders said Becker “would not be a part of any future campaigns,” and that “no one who committed sexual harassment in 2016 would be back if there were a 2020 campaign.”
In something of an amusing turn, the campaign for the little guy settled a discrimination claim from two of Becker’s underlings for $30,000.
Sanders said (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bernie-sanders-apologizes-says-he-didnt-know-about-30000-settlement-of-2016-campaign-staffer-accused-of-sexual-harassment/2019/01/10/db2c061e-14fc-11e9-90a8-136fa44b80ba_story.html?utm_term=.181b02bcc2d0) he was unaware of the settlement.

Becker follows the #MeToo pattern. Most of the culprits (https://www.vox.com/a/sexual-harassment-assault-allegations-list/politics) that movement has targeted are self-proclaimed feminist men (https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/30953-cbs-saves-120m-moonves-gets-no-severance).
That truth aside, while Sanders “was a little busy” making the case for “free” everything, Bernie Bros were “a little busy” pressing the earnest, if misguided, young Bernie Gals for a little “free” hootchy-koo.
But they didn’t care to “Feel The Bern.”

More at: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/31158-accused-top-sanders-lieutenant-follows-metoo-pattern-mostly-leftist-men-accused

NEVER trust a male feminist.