Little Anna (& Annette)
7:00 pm
Anna wanted to write to Bernie Sanders. She told Annette, and Annette spent the next few minutes tracking down his email, and even his letter address, and she said she was going to do the exact same thing, and so they both sat down after that and they wrote down how thankful they were for him, except that Anna added on a whole bunch of stuff about how messed up her school was, and how her mom had lost her car, and how maybe they were going to lose their house, but she wasn't sure, and how badly she needed his help, and that if he wanted, maybe she could help him out, too, cause after today, she was thinking maybe she wanted to go into politics. Maybe with him?
Sally Thompson
Anchor for The Friday Night News with Sally Thompson
12/10/2010, 9 p.m.
"Mrs. Bachmann," said Sally, folding her manicured nails over her papers and leveling her dark brown eyes onto Michelle's. "How to do you respond to people who say that this tax loophole for the wealthiest Americans is going to increase the deficit by 700 billion dollars?"
"Well that's true," she conceded . . . she'd been ready for this question, "but it's a deficit to government," she enjoyed emphasizing the word. It was so good she repeated it, "to government," she raised a finger, "not to the people who get to keep their money" (of course) "and I think that's what's important for us to remember here." She laughed coyly, and crossed her slender legs wrapped like vegan sausages in sheer black tights, "I don't think people getting to keep their own money should be considered adding to the deficit. And I don't think those people, if you were to ask them, would say that the money they've worked so hard for staying in their personal bank accounts rather than going into the coffers of the National Treasury is what should be called a deficit." She took a well-deserved sip of coffee, "I mean, that's just the complete wrong way of looking at it!"
She laughed again.
Bernie
7:45 p.m.
The whole time I was standing up there I just kept thinking to myself, My God, I really am the only one, except Dennis, but he wasn't up there. And I'd brought everything I could think of worth bringing with me up to that podium, and I'd stood with my hands on each corner, and I'd spoken as loud and as long as I could and I made it real obvious what I was there for. What I would have done if I was still living in Brooklyn is hire some god-fearing assassins to take down the whole lot, but things just aren't what they used to be anymore.
Sally Thompson
12/10/2010, 8 p.m.
"And now we have the congressmen from Ohio's tenth district here to talk to us about the Junior Senator from Vermont's great show of courage today. Mr. Kucinich, thank you so much for your time."
"Thank you, Sally."
Barack
8:00:30 p.m.
I always had a lot of respect for that Bernie, but he has no idea what he has gotten himself into. Why does he think I backed down? This isn't just anybody's game anymore.
Sally Thompson
12/10/2010, 8:01 p.m.
"What do you have to say to all of our viewers tonight?"
"I want to say thank you to my good friend Bernie Sanders for his unprecedented show of courage, strength of conviction, and passion today."
"What do you think is going on here?"
"Well, I think the Republicans are getting their way. Once the deficit goes up, they'll be able to call for an end to the social programs they've always wanted to get out of the way. Medicare, social security, state money for higher education . . . they'll say, privatize everything 'cause government can't do anything right. They'll keep saying, like they always have, that taxes are somehow a separate issue from whether or not the government has any revenue . . ."
"Considering the day we've had, what do you want to say to the American people right now?"
"I want them to know that they deserve better from their President, and they deserve better from this economy that they've worked their whole lives to prop up. There is no reason why one of the richest countries in the world can't provide each of its citizens with at least food on the table and a stable house to lay their heads down in. And I want to apologize to them that we haven't been able to give them, so far, what they deserve."
Elizabeth
12/11/2010
1 a.m.
"Dennis!"
I had been woken up by a loud sound coming from the kitchen.
"Dennis I think someone's in the house!"
"What?"
He was sleepy, but awake now. He sat up in bed and he looked at me all groggy, then it happened again. The noise. Something rumbling and moving and banging around in there. He jumped out of bed.
"Don't move," he told me, putting up his hands like a shield. I got up quick and put on some sweat pants and was about to go for the phone when I heard him scream, and not any sort of scream I'd ever heard from him before. It sounded like real terror, or pain, or both, and it froze me still. Then came an awful crunch which would have haunted me the rest of my years, then two shots. Fighting the impetus to run for Dennis and hold his head as he left me for good, I stood dumb as a doll in my sweats, with a tone-dead phone in my useless hand. They burst into my bedroom so fast I didn't even have time to run. I screamed as loud as I could, hoping the terrible sound might get into their psyche's and follow them around. Then all I could see was black, and all I could hear were the shots that rang out as I dropped the phone.
Bernie
12/11/2010
1:15 a.m.
I was sitting in my living room checking my email when I heard them out front. I had just read the first three paragraphs of a letter from a girl who lived in Baltimore, telling me about shootings that happened at her school, and about her mother who was about to loose her house, and I was busy wiping a tear off my cheek and cracking my knuckles, getting ready to write her back when they bust through my front door.
I'm no pushover, though.
There were two of them, but I grew up in Brooklyn so I always had a buck knife on me, and I pulled it out and I threw it at the first one batman style. It hit him square in the neck, and then I ran at the other one like a bat out of hell and I knocked him down and I grabbed his gun and I shot at him over and over again until my carpet was red as hell.
Anna
As soon as I heard that Bernie Sanders was attacked in his home I got on the bus. I didn't know where the Senate building was but I thought I could figure it out when I got there, and I did. All the taxi drivers knew where things were. When I got there I had to put everything I owned on the x-ray machine and the security guards looked at me a little bit askew cause I was so young but there was a line out the door when I came in so they didn't pay me too much mind and I just pushed through, pretending like I was waiting for my mommy to come through after me, looking over my shoulder a few times and smiling at them.
I asked a lot of people where his office was, and finally someone took me by the hand and let me up to the second floor. His door was open . . . I couldn't believe it! There he was, sitting behind the desk, and when I saw him I almost started to cry right then.
Bernie
After the little girl calmed down and told me her name was Anna I knew immediately it was the same little Anna whose letter I read just before they bust into my front door and tried to take me down.
They got Dennis, but they didn't get me. I was tough as nails. Still, thinking about it made my skin crawl.
I took her by the hand then, and I looked her in the eyes, and I told her, "It's just me and you now, little Anna. And I need your help."
She was wiping away a tear and looking me in the eye all serious and proud.
"Would that be all right with you?"
Amanda Fiore has worked with environmental and political activist organizations around the U.S. for more than five years. Her stories and poems have appeared in Prick of the Spindle, Guanxi, and Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, among others. She currently lives and writes in San Diego, California.