On July 29, I attended an organizational meeting of local supporters of Bernie Sanders for President in 2016. This meeting was one of an estimated 3,500 being held throughout the nation that night, attracting a total of 100,000 attendees. As a senior adult with no previous political experience, I found the make up of this local group interesting in that it included a variety of interested parties from college students to grandparents, people with virtually no political experience to lifelong political activists.

The common ground of this group soon became evident during the discussions. That our current system of electing a president ultimately was determined not by the will of the people, but by whomever was backed by the most money. That our political system was broken and needed to be repaired.

Yes, there were discussions about the great inequality of income, including increasing the minimum wage, equal pay for women as men, the struggle of college students to pay for their education, and the fact that we are the only large industrialized nation that does not see health care as a right.

But our broken political system was central to all these issues.

And then we, as a group, watched a live broadcast of Sanders speaking about these same issues. We came to the understanding that electing him as president would not change these problems, that he, as one person, could not solve any of them.

The only way this situation would change is if a grassroots revolution of millions of Americans rose up to say that they have had enough of corrupt politics and the buying of the presidency of the United States of America.

Then I could see how we could win and make a difference, one small group at a time.

Glenn M. Oxley

Waterville