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Watters writes: "An explosive New York Times piece alleges widespread sexism and gender pay disparity in the Bernie Sanders's 2016 campaign for president. Progressives should welcome the revelations about sexism within the organization. The timing of them is auspicious. I don't think this is an accident."

Bernie Sanders. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Bernie Sanders. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)


For a Bernie 2020 Win, Equitable Conditions for Staffers Are Essential

By Angela Watters, Reader Supported News

05 January 19

 

n explosive New York Times piece alleges widespread sexism and gender pay disparity in Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign for president. Progressives should welcome the revelations about sexism within the organization. The timing of them is auspicious. I don’t think this is an accident.

With the Iowa Caucuses thirteen months away, a letter published by Politico from former staffers to Bernie and his top aides shows a keen understanding not only that sexism proliferates in the dark, but also that closer to the primaries, these allegations could do more damage to a fully operational organization than a nascent one. The authors of the letter “request a meeting with Senator Sanders and his leadership team to discuss the issue of sexual harassment on the 2016 campaign, for the purpose of planning to mitigate the issue in the upcoming presidential cycle – in both the primary and the potential general election campaigns for 2019 and 2020.” In short, the staffers want to ensure any future campaign avoids the problems discussed by named sources in detail in the New York Times article.

If you believe women, and that the reporting by Ember and Benner is factual, the following occurred during the Bernie for President campaign:

  • A Bernie surrogate touched Giulianna Di Lauro inappropriately over the course of the day and when she complained to her supervisor he told her “I bet you would have liked it if he were younger” and then laughed. The supervisor’s response was corroborated by another woman in the room.

  • Samantha Davis experienced sexual harassment in both New York and Texas offices. According to the New York Times article, Davis said “her supervisor marginalized her after she declined an invitation to his hotel room.”

  • Sarah Slamen worked for the 2016 campaign in Texas and for Our Revolution subsequently. She quit the organization after she reported issues of sexist behavior and “received no reassurance that anything would change.”

Overt sexism and sexual harassment were not the only revelations brought to light in Ember and Benner’s New York Times piece. Gender pay disparity was a frequent complaint by nearly a dozen staffers interviewed by The New York Times. One can either view this news story and the subsequent coverage as a thinly veiled attempt to weaponize gender politics to further an establishment agenda or, one can see this as an attempt to hold a powerful man and movement accountable to the values they profess. I prefer to view it as the latter.

It’s clear that the Sanders organization grew too quickly for proper oversight and that women suffered as a result, which was acknowledged by Mr. Sanders in his interview with Anderson Cooper:

When our campaign grew from, I think we started with three or four paid employees, and over a period of a few months, as the campaign exploded we went up to, I think, twelve hundred employees, and I am 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.

The 2020 Sanders campaign, if there ends up being one, has been given a unique opportunity to make their presidential run an equitable and harassment-free zone for staffers. By Sanders’s own account on CNN, this is exactly what he directed his organization to do in his Senate campaign last year:

What I will tell you is that when I ran for reelection 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 can go to and I think that is kind of the gold standard for what we should be doing. So, I certainly apologize to any woman who felt that she was not being treated appropriately and, of course, if I run we’ll do better our next time.

People make mistakes, even Bernie. Imagine what could happen if the sexism within his last campaign were swept under the rug? Sanders will be relying on personnel in Texas and in New York where some of the harassment was alleged to have taken place, not just his Vermont crew. Would an opponent leak a story the week before Super Tuesday?

Making the workplace safe for women is not simply a moral imperative, it’s crucial to Bernie’s success as a candidate. It’s a good thing.

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Angela Watters is the managing editor of Reader Supported News. Follow her on Twitter @ajwatter.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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