Bernie’s Burlington Was an Experiment in Practical Socialism
When Bernie Sanders was mayor of Burlington, the spirit of socialism showed up in everything from snowplows to poetry. Writer Dan Chiasson tells the story of these years from the unique vantage point of his own experience growing up in Bernie’s Burlington.
As Burlington's mayor, Bernie Sanders built a community land trust, rerouted snowplows to serve the working class, and invited residents into a process of self-governance. (Bettmann Archive / Getty Images)
“I am a democratic socialist,” Dan Chiasson, the fifty-five-year-old author of Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People’s Politician, told me proudly over Zoom, his “Zohran for New York City” cap visible in the frame. Chiasson and I have known each other for over a decade — he was my professor at the poetry Master of Fine Arts program at Boston University — but this is the first time he has shared his political views directly with me. Best known for his precise and often deeply personal poetry as well as his poetry criticism for the New Yorker magazine, it likely came as a surprise to many that Chiasson’s latest book would be a nonfiction, 592-page memoir-cum-biography centered on Bernie Sanders’s time as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. But the signs had been there for some time: his childhood in Burlington has played a central role in Chiasson’s poetry all along.
Bernie for Burlington is a painstakingly detailed and deeply researched account of the eight years Sanders was mayor of Burlington and the years and circumstances leading up to his political ascent. The author was the ripe age of nine when Sanders first took his seat in Burlington’s city hall and in every sense of the word came of age during what, according to his book, seems to have been a thrilling time to be a Burlingtonian. With Reaganite neoliberalism sweeping through the nation, the Vermont city took a distinctly different path in electing a democratic socialist — and was forever changed by this decision, with some progressive programs begun under Sanders still in place today.
More than a memoir, the book reads like a lyrical love letter to the Burlington that made Chiasson, Sanders, and a whole memorable cast of characters the democratic socialists they are now. It is also a much-needed account of what can happen when a city is run by people who believe, as Sanders said in one of his final speeches as mayor, “that men, women, and children can come together in relationships that are not based on greed, exploitation, and domination — but on love, cooperation, and mutual respect.”
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