 Welcome back to our eighth annual award show folks. It is now time for our biggest, most important, most prestigious award that we hand out only once per year, our MVP of the year award. Here's how it works. If you don't already know, I make four nominations, put it up to a vote, and then ultimately my audience across YouTube, Twitter and Patreon is going to decide who's the actual MVP. Now let's get to the nominations first and foremost and my personal pick, Chris Mauls. I don't think I even have to explain why he's nominated. What he accomplished was truly remarkable and it really didn't even seem possible but yet he did it. He was fired from Amazon and then he went on to create and organize the first union in Amazon's history and he's just getting started. That type of labor power, that type of organizational wherewithal and savviness is just truly something that has to be applauded and he is setting a blueprint for everyone across the country who is dissatisfied with their employer who's exploiting them and he's showing them what they need to do and how to do it and that's just so invaluable. So of course I had to nominate Chris Mauls. I personally think that he deserves this award but it's not up to me ultimately. Next is Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders has won 7 out of 7 times for the MVP award and the fact that he's kind of dominated this category I think shows you that we need more heroes in this country to step up because Bernie Sanders can't be the only one and some years he gets more support than others but Bernie Sanders is nominated again because I had to. He's basically the one lawmaker who consistently gets it right, consistently fights for workers, constantly stands up when everyone else within the Democratic Party is too cowardly to stand up and do the right thing and take on corporate interests. So of course Bernie Sanders had to be in this category. Second was Richard Fierro. Richard Fierro is a hero. He put his life on the line and he stopped the mass shooter at Club Q. Had he not intervened who knows how many more people would have died and if that's not heroic, if that's not courageous, then nothing is. So I had to nominate him. Now the next nomination is Lula De Silva. He defeated Jair Bolsonaro. He showed that leftist pro-working policies can defeat fascism. You know in this world where there's so much evil, so much nastiness, so much despair, Lula De Silva is a light that proved to us that sometimes good people can win. The left working class people, they can get a victory and that alone is cause for celebration. But before we get to the results, let's look back at the history of this award. See, this is an award that could be called the Bernie Sanders Award because as you can see here, Bernie's dominated. But let's get to the runner-ups here. So in 2021, Mike Ravel came in second place in 2020. Michael Brooks came in second place in 2019 and 2018. AOC was the runner-up in 2017. Jessica Rosenwurzel, the now FCC chair, was in second place and she resisted Ajit Pai's repeal of net neutrality. In 2016, Jill Stein was the runner-up and in 2015, Malala Yousafzai was the runner-up. But let's get to the results of the MVP of 2022. The true question is, has Bernie Sanders been dethroned? Well, folks, the winner of the Humanist Report's MVP of the year, now for the eighth year in a row, is unsurprisingly, Bernie Sanders. And he won yet again largely due to the power of our YouTube audience overwhelming the polls and voting for him. But what's interesting is that our Patreon and Twitter audience actually opted for Lula. So Lula was the preferred choice for certain sectors of our audience. But overall, Bernie got the dub. Now, the runner-up this year was my personal pick, Chris Smalls, with Richard Fierro, narrowly edging out Lula de Silva overall. Now, let's get to some comments here. Mike Murdoch writes, as much as I would love to give Bernie Sanders the MVP award again for his never-ending efforts to make the U.S. a better country, this year I have to give it to Lula. He helped rally the people of Brazil to vote out Bolsonaro. But hopefully get Brazil back to its pre-bull scenario path towards democratic socialism. I'm hoping the best for Lula and the people of Brazil. I second that, Mike. Alex Kowal writes, I have to go with Chris Smalls. He's an integral part of the new labor movement that has given people on the left a newfound sense of optimism and the Staten Island Amazon unionizing was no small part of that. Totally agree, Alex. Nathan Clayton writes, Chris Smalls deserves the MVP award. That man was fired by Amazon, started ALU and successfully unionized the Staten Island warehouse that takes balls of steel to combat Amazon on the labor front. Yes, every strike and union drive will suffer losses and setbacks. Smalls ain't giving up. Exactly. Sinister hooded figure says Richard Fierro literally risked his life to save as many. Chris Smalls risked everything to uplift everyone. Lula brings hope, Bernie, only because he never stops fighting and because he goes after every issue, whereas the others, while they do great things, are only heroes for their specific issues. Mitch Carlo says, dang, I think they all deserve it. Well put. So there you have it, folks. Once again, Bernie Sanders is the MVP of the year. And I feel like he's probably going to keep winning unless I don't nominate him. But I think he always does something that is sufficient enough to get him nominated. So yeah, there you have it. It's Bernie Sanders, folks. He's the MVP. And yeah, I think he deserves it, even if he's not my first choice this year. But either way, it's been a great award show. And I thank all of you for participating. I'll see you all next year.