Bernie Sanders: I Will Be an Arts President

Art is speech. Art is what life is about. 

• Bernie Sanders, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Can­di­date for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States

A rous­ing sen­ti­ment, and one rarely expressed by those run­ning for the nation’s high­est office.

Once a can­di­date has been safe­ly elect­ed, he may feel com­fort­able betray­ing a deep­er affin­i­ty, or ced­ing to the tastes of an arts-inclined First Lady. Sanders isn’t wait­ing, pledg­ing in the video above, that he will be an Arts Pres­i­dent.

The Amer­i­cans for the Arts Action Fund tracks the can­di­dates’ records with regard to arts advo­ca­cy, and it appears that Sanders has been walk­ing the walk for quite some time.

He filmed a half-hour long doc­u­men­tary about labor leader Eugene Debs.

He record­ed a 1987 folk album with the help of 30 Ver­mont musi­cians, stout­ly pro­nounc­ing the lyrics to “This Land is Your Land” and “Where Have All the Flow­ers Gone” a la Rex Har­ri­son.

Vice’s Paul Best made a com­pelling case for how Bernie Sanders shaped the north­east punk scene.

If Allen Gins­berg could vote from beyond the grave, I’m pret­ty sure I know which lever he’d be pulling…

With regard to liv­ing celebri­ties, it’s no big sur­prise to see that Will Fer­rell, Susan Saran­don, and John C Reil­ly are among the artists sup­port­ing Bernie Sanders. Hol­ly­wood has long embraced lib­er­al can­di­dates. They are joined on the ever grow­ing list of Artists and Cul­tur­al Lead­ers for Bernie Sanders by musi­cians Jel­lo Biafra and The Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, come­di­ans Mar­garet Cho and Sarah Sil­ver­man, and graf­fi­ti artists Ron Eng­lish and Shep­ard Fairey, cre­ator of the Oba­ma Hope poster.

As Sanders fans wait to see whether Fairey will per­form a sim­i­lar ser­vice for his 2016 pick, Sten­cils for Bernie is tak­ing up the slack with down­load­able images for the DIY-inclined.

I pre­sume that it’s only a mat­ter of time before some young ani­ma­tor puts him or her­self at Sanders’ dis­pos­al, though I kind of hope not. The candidate’s short video is reas­sur­ing­ly devoid of the snap­py visu­als that have become a sta­ple of the form, thanks to such pop­u­lar series as Crash Course, CGP Grey, The School of Life, and TED Ed.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bernie Sanders Sings “This Land is Your Land” on the Endear­ing­ly Bad Spo­ken Word Album, We Shall Over­come

Allen Ginsberg’s Hand­writ­ten Poem For Bernie Sanders, “Burling­ton Snow” (1986)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this month. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday