Millions of views and counting! Athesia makes the featured Bernie Sanders campaign video.

Posted by [email protected] | Apr 10, 2016 | Politics | 0 |

At the Memorial Art Gallery, left to right, Brighton Town Court Judge Karen Morris, Athesia, and former Brighton Town Supervisor Sandra Frankel 1/30/16 [Photo: David Kramer]

When she heard the news ten hours ago, Athesia Benjamin, art professor at MCC, wrote: Isn’t it crazy?!??! I didn’t go to sleep till about 3 am, I was so pumped.

Hillary Bialecki outside the Bug Jar, Monroe Avenue, 3/12/16

Yesterday, Athesia, a huge, Rochester, huge, Bernie, supporter appears twice on the newest Bernie Sanders campaign video which is going, as they say, viral. Note: this updated version is at about 410K. The first version was seen by 1.7 million in the first few hours. UPDATE: 3,854,522 people like this

You met Athesia in Trump supporters outside the Bug Jar where we wrote (including a link to her blog):

Athesia was at Archimage on Monroe Avenue Saturday after the St. Patrick Day Parade. She reports hearing a group of people walk by shouting, “Trump 2016!” And a few seconds later, “White power!”

In the ten years or so I have known Athesia, we’ve talked about art and life. I don’t particularly recall any political conversations. But Athesia is so alarmed by what she thinks Trump represents, she started her own blog, 2016electiongotmelike, to record such incidents.

Now, Athesia’s fifteen minutes of fame (for a cause dear to her heart) and counting.

SEE ALSO

Citizenship in action at the corner of Culver and Parsells

On seeing my first Trump supporters outside the Bug Jar

Would America elect a democratic socialist? We already have. Think FDR

About The Author

[email protected]

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones. So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.