Knowwhereyoustand
beforetakingone.
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a6 | NEWS OTHEGLOBEANDMAIL | MONDaY,OCTOBER21,
In a park on the Queens side of
the East River on a sunny fall
afternoon, Bernie Sanders is try-
ing to prove he’s still got it.
Standing before 20,000 sup-
porters Saturday at his first cam-
paign rally since suffering a heart
attack earlier this month, the
Vermont senator nearly shouts
himself hoarse as he proclaims
that his health scare was only a
bump on the road he is certain
will lead to the White House.
“I am happy to report to you
that I am more than ready, more
ready than ever to carry on with
you the epic struggle that we
face today. I am more than ready
to assume the office of President
of the United States,” the 78-
year-old declares, as the crowd
bursts into cheers and chants his
name. “To put it bluntly: I am
back.”
Mr. Sanders is also getting a
crucial assist. Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez, the rookie Democratic
congresswoman who is the most
visible figure in the party’s
youth-driven move left, is here
to offer her coveted endorse-
ment.
Introducing Mr. Sanders asTio
Bernie – Spanish for “uncle” –
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez credits him
with her own political awaken-
ing during his previous presiden-
tial campaign in 2016, when her
job at a Manhattan taco joint put
her face to face with the conse-
quences of economic inequality.
“I was on my feet for 12-hour
days with no structured breaks. I
didn’t have health care. I wasn’t
being paid a living wage. And I
didn’t think that I deserved any
of those things,” she tells the
gathering. “It wasn’t until I heard
of a man by the name of Bernie
Sanders that I began to question
and assert and recognize my in-
herent value as a human being
that deserved health care, hous-
ing, education and a living
wage.”
This event, in a working-class
neighbourhood in the shadow of
a power plant, may be the most
crucial of Mr. Sanders’s run for
the 2020 nomination.
Even before his hospitaliza-
tion, Massachusetts Senator
Elizabeth Warren had been
steadily rising in the polls and
threatening to displace Mr.
Sanders as the progressive stan-
dard-bearer in the Democratic
primaries. And the leftward pull
the rumpled, self-described so-
cialist has exerted on the party
has meant even his more moder-
ate rivals in the race have em-
braced elements of his plans to
expand the social safety net andfight climate change.
But Danny Awalt Jr., 29, a
schoolteacher and former ma-
rine from Long Island who also
backed Mr. Sanders the last time
around, says his primacy in the
field counts for a lot.
“The other candidates are
only moving left because of Ber-
nie. Why would I vote for Diet
Coke when original Coke is still
an option?” he says.
Where Mr. Sanders had seem-
ingly come out of nowhere to
mount a serious challenge to
Hillary Clinton for the nomina-
tion in the previous race, he be-
gan the current campaign near
the top of the field. And he has
battled to keep his base of mil-
lennial and Generation Z sup-
porters together.
The crowd Saturday evinces
much of that youthfulness. The
median age appears decidedly
low for a political event, withuniversity students turning out
en masse. Mr. Sanders’s appeal,
they say, is a mix of unapologet-
ically leftist policies – single-
payer health care, free university
tuition, higher taxes on the
wealthy and corporations – and
perceived authenticity as a poli-
tician whose views have re-
mained substantially unchanged
since the 1960s.
“His actual plan goes further
than other candidates’. He’s been
consistent for decades,” says
Abby Leedy, 18, who travelled
from Providence, R.I., to attend
the rally as part of the Sunrise
Movement, a youth environmen-
tal group.
While Ms. Warren has cam-
paigned on many of the same
issues as Mr. Sanders, many in
the audience express uncertain-
ty about her sincerity. She identi-
fies as a capitalist, they point out,
and was registered as a Repub-lican at one time before embrac-
ing liberal Democratic politics.
“I just trust Bernie more. He
was talking about climate
change in the 1980s. He’s been
arrested for civil disobedience,”
says Matthew Mellea, 20, refer-
ring to Mr. Sanders’s famous
brush with the law while protest-
ing for civil rights in Chicago in
1963.
Many know first-hand the
problems Mr. Sanders is vowing
to fix.
Kayla Walker says her family
certainly could have used a uni-
versal health-care system when
her father broke his neck in a
construction accident. The cost
of his treatment meant Ms. Walk-
er and brother went without
lunch in high school, while the
family had to rely on well water
and a generator because they
could not afford utilities.
“We were struggling with the
insurance company, we were
struggling to pay medical bills,”
Ms. Walker, a 30-year-old Colum-
bia University student, says. “I
don’t want anyone else to go
through that.”
In his own endorsement
speech from the stage, filmmak-
er Michael Moore pointed out
that the U.S. remains the only
high-income country in the
world without universal health
care, even as Mr. Sanders’s more
moderate Democratic rivals
insist the country cannot afford
to pay for it.
“How does Canada afford it?”
Mr. Moore says. “The Canadians
sell so much maple syrup that
everyone gets free health care?”
As for concerns about Mr.
Sanders’s own health and age,
his supporters point out that Ms.
Warren and former vice-presi-
dent Joe Biden, his other chief
rival for the nomination, are also
in their 70s.
And they are ready, after
watching their candidate speak
for over an hour Saturday and on
the heels of a similarly even de-
bate performance earlier in the
week, to believe his professions
of readiness.
“He was so vigorous,” says
Cybele Mayes, 21. “He’s even
more energetic than before.”Afterheartattack,Sandersdeclares‘I amback’
Infirstcampaignrally
sincehealthscare,
Vermontsenatordraws
crowdofthousands,gets
covetedendorsement
fromOcasio-Cortez
aDRIaNMORROW
U.S.CORRESPONDENT
NEWYORK
CongresswomanalexandriaOcasio-CortezclaspshandswithDemocraticpresidentialcandidateBernieSanders
atarallyinQueens,N.Y.,onSaturday.Ms.Ocasio-Cortez,ahighlyvisiblefigureintheparty’syouth-driven
shifttotheleft,creditedMr.Sanders’s2016runforherownpoliticalawakening.MARYALTAFFER/APHundreds of thousands of Leba-
nese protesters of all ages flooded
major cities and towns nation-
wide Sunday demanding an end
to corruption and the rule of the
country’s political elite. Each
hour brought hundreds more
people to the streets for the large-
st anti-government protests yet
in four days of demonstrations.
Protesters danced and sang in
the streets, some waving Leba-
nese flags and chanting “the peo-
ple want to bring down the re-
gime.” In the morning, young
men and women carried blue
bags and cleaned the streets of
the capital, Beirut, picking up
trash left behind by the previous
night’s protests.
The spontaneous mass dem-
onstrations are Lebanon’s largest
in five years, spreading beyond
Beirut. They are building on long-
simmering anger at a ruling class
that has divvied up power among
themselves and amassed wealth
for decades but has done little to
fix a crumbling economy and
dilapidated infrastructure.
The unrest erupted after the
government proposed new taxes,
part of stringent austerity mea-
sures amid a growing economic
crisis. The protests have brought
people from across the sectarian
and religious lines that define the
country.
“People cannot take it any
more,” said Nader Fares, a protes-
ter in central Beirut who said he’s
unemployed. “There are no good
schools, no electricity and no
water.”
In the northern Beirut suburb
of Jal el-Deeb, hundreds of people
held a boisterous protest gather-
ing on the main highway that
links Beirut with the northern
city of Tripoli. They covered a
nearby overpass with Lebanese
flags, forming a sea of red and
white. As in other locations, there
was no sign of any political par-
ty’s flag.
Claire Abu Rached came with
her two sons, ages 10 and 8, to
support the protesters.
“They [the politicians] have
been stealing from the people for
30 years,” she said, referring to the
period after the 1975-90 civil war.
“They stole and stole and stole
and they still don’t have enough.
We are here to tell them enough is
enough!”
Politicians are now racing
against time to put forward an
economic rescue plan that they
hope will help calm the public.
Many of the protesters have
already said they don’t trust the
currentgovernment’s reforms,
and are calling on the 30-member
cabinet to resign and be replacedby a smaller one made up of tech-
nocrats instead of members of
political groups.
“I hope thegovernment will re-
sign and I think we are ready and
the whole country is ready for
something else at last,” said real
estate agent Fabian Ziayde.
On Sunday, the Progressive So-
cialist Party of Druze leader Walid
Joumblatt said his two cabinet
ministers would only stay in the
government if it enacts reforms
including no new taxes and no
deductions from retirement sala-
ries, plus an end to overspending.
One of Mr. Joumblatt’s minis-
ters, Wael Abu Faour, said they are
against thegovernment resigning
because a political vacuum could
lead to financial collapse.
On Saturday night, a Lebanese
Christian leader asked his four
ministers in the cabinet to resign.
Samir Geagea, who heads the
right-wing Lebanese Forces Party,
said he no longer believes the cur-
rent nationalunitygovernment
headed by Prime Minister Saad
Hariri can steer the country out of
the deepening economic crisis.
In a speech Friday night, Mr.
Hariri had given his partners in
the government a 72-hour ulti-
matum to come up with convinc-
ing solutions to the economic
crisis.ASSOCIATEDPRESSHundredsofthousandsofLebanese
floodstreetsinanti-governmentprotests
BaSSEMMROUEBEIRUT
DHAKABangladesh will start relocating Rohingya Muslims
to a flood-prone island off its coast next month as sever-
al thousand refugees have agreedto move, agovernment
official said on Sunday.
Dhaka wants to move 100,000 refugees to Bhasan Char- a Bay of Bengal island hours by boat from the main-
land – to ease overcrowding in its camps at Cox’s Bazar,
home to more than one million Rohingya Muslims who
have fled neighbouring Myanmar.
“We want to start relocation by early next month,”
said Mahbub Alam Talukder, the Relief and Repatriation
Commission chief based in Cox’s Bazar, adding that “the
refugees will be shifted in phases.”
“Our officials are compiling the lists of the refugees
who are willing to move there,” he said, adding that as
many as 7,000 refugees had by Saturday agreed to shift.
Some human-rights groups have expressed concern
over that plan because the island is remote and prone to
devastation from cyclones. Many refugees oppose the
move, which some human-rights experts fear could spark
a new crisis.
Densely populated Bangladesh has been grappling
with large refugee numbers, with local communities
turning hostile toward Rohingya after a second failed bid
to send thousands back to Myanmar in August.
The number of refugees in Cox’s Bazar has swelled
since August, 2017, when a Myanmar military-led crack-
down that United Nations investigators have said was
conducted with “genocidal intent” prompted some
730,000 Rohingya to flee.
A UN human-rights investigator who visited in January
said she feared a new crisis if Rohingya were taken to
the island.
“There are a number of things that remain unknown
to me even following my visit, chief among them being
whether the island is truly habitable,” said Yanghee Lee,
the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar.
Shah Kamal, secretary of Bangladesh’s Disaster Man-
agement Ministry, said the government was in talks with
UN agencies to move the refugees to Bhasan Char, which
it has been developing for the past three years.REUTERS
BANGLADESHTOMOVESOMEROHINGYAREFUGEES
TOFLOOD-PRONEISLANDNEXTMONTH