A review by mcwyss
The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class by Bernie Sanders

4.0

The Speech is an incredibly helpful and great companion to the C-SPAN video of Senator Sanders’s filibuster. The book clears up some of Sanders’s speech and corrects and adjusts some figures and statistics he gave to more accurately reflect reality. However, sometimes the book does misquote him and in doing so changes the meaning slightly of what he said. Because of this, and because of the numerous graphs and charts Senator Sanders uses, it is best to read the book with the video playing nearby. The Speech is a passionate lambasting of the 2010 tax cuts and Sanders used this bill to demonstrate the harsh class warfare occurring in this country and the sorry state of the US for the vast majority of its people. Bernie describes this class warfare in particular detail and fury on page 73 (2:30:00) and connects this warfare to mass incarceration. Bernie also takes the opportunity to speak to the American people and tell them that their suffering is not their fault, something no other politician is likely to do it seems. And in a particular moving section that brought me to tears, beginning on page 201, he tells the stories of Americans, mostly Vermonters, who are suffering as a result of the economic crisis and who are struggling to survive. This proved to be a central idea of Bernie’s political career, as outlined in the article You Don’t Know Bernie Sanders by Ruby Cramer, that people should get the chance to speak for themselves. As Cornel West says, “Let suffering speak.” The Speech is incredibly moving and if the full C-SPAN video wasn’t available for free online it would be 5/5 stars.