The story of Bernie Sanderss quixotic but inexorable rise is told by a son of Burlington on a broad and vivid canvas, depicting the shaping of a peoples politics, as he tracks a political signal that traveled from the hard-luck neighborhoods, general stores, traditional businesses, and county fairs to the Town Meetings and the ballot boxes of the last century, predicting much of what has happened to our nation writ large since then.This utterly captivating symphonic story of city, a visionary, and the way our politics changed forever is told through the very specific people of Burlington, beginning with Dan Chiassons own mall-punk friends of the s: in a video that would go viral decades later in , they engaged with the itinerant carpenter turned socialist mayor, and there in that food court, the seeds of everything that was Bernie were sown. Dan, uniquely placed to bring a deep insiders perspective, knew all the players: the conservative French-Canadian Catholics whose great grandparents had worked in the mills his own the puppeteers and hippies and NYC transplants looking for land and authenticity in Vermont the developers involved in the eras Robert Moses urban-renewal schemes the corrupt old-school Dems at their table in the local dive and even Ben and Jerry who became Ben and Jerrys right there in town. They all made up the mosh pit of the Burlington that Bernie captivated, running on the slogan Burlington is not for sale, to become the modern eras first socialist mayor, intimate with his constituents across workers, cops, lefties, and the little old ladies who organized their streets he also boasted a foreign policy, a sudden national profile, and a bullhorn to speak to Ronald Reagan. In the tradition of J. Anthony Lukass Common Ground and the documentary films of Frederick Wiseman, this epic of American city life delves into the gossip--and the exhilaration--around Bernies unlikely rise, as we watch an American place transformed one diner coffee, one neighborhood door-knock at a time. Full of Sanders himself, reflecting and raging, hitting his themes, forging alliances with all comers, this is a mesmerizing portrait of a politician, a place, and a movement that would change America.
