Watch Bernie Sanders interview a couple of shopping mall goth kids in 1988

When Bernie Sanders was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he had a cable access show called Bernie Speaks. In this 1988 episode, Sanders spoke to a couple of affable goth kids about capitalism, fashion, politics, anarchy, and society.

From Reason:

The episode originally aired in March 1988, and it mostly consists of Sanders playing roving reporter at the Burlington Square Mall. About halfway through the program, he starts talking with a couple of friendly punk-rock kids. He asks them what they don't like about society. They reply with a collection of complaints, some vague and some highly specific, that-speaking as someone who in March of 1988 was 17 and listening to punk rock and sometimes hanging out in malls-is as good a condensation as you're ever likely to find of a particular teenage worldview in that particular historical moment. "People are not open-minded enough," one says. "They think that in order to be stable in society you have to have money, you have to live in a suburb, you have to do the 'set' things, such as have so many people over for dinner"a week, or you're not socially acceptable. You've got to dress a certain way to be socially acceptable. And I don't believe in having to belong to anything to be a person. I can do basically what I want with my appearance, with my attitude, and it doesn't matter."

They both identify themselves as anarchists, as 1980s mall-punks were prone to do. But most people's politics are a mish-mosh, and that's true here too. One of them says he'd be happy in a communist society with "no freedom of enterprise" as long as there's still freedom of speech. The other says she's "kind of an anarchist too, but I don't believe in total anarchy, because then we're just gonna kill ourselves." Sanders plays his Phil Donahue role with aplomb, holding the mic and nodding his head encouragingly.

I wish we could find out what these kids are up to now, 30 years after this was aired.