Why I’m Supporting Bernie Sanders

by Tom Coulson –

Twenty-five candidates—seventeen Republicans and five Democrats—were running for president as of early September.

By early February, the Republican competition had fallen to fewer than a dozen, all on the far right wing of their party’s spectrum. Two Democrats, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, remained in the race as of February 3, 2016.

Of all these candidates, only one has a history of activism on behalf of racial equality—Bernie Sanders. Sanders has served as an organizer for CORE (Congress for Racial Equality) and he is the only candidate who joined the March on Washington in 1963, at which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his historic “dream” speech; he is also the only candidate who was ever arrested for demonstrating for equal rights.

As a 2016 candidate, Sanders began his early discussions on the urgency of his economic program by referring to the unemployment rate among young African Americans.

As a senator he voted for the bipartisan immigration reform act and has supported passage of the Dream Act.

After discussions with representatives of Black Lives Matter he released his Platform for Racial Justice, which includes detailed plans for dealing with physical violence by the state and by extremists, and addresses the political violence of disenfranchisement, legal violence, and economic violence.

Tom Coulson is a lifelong advocate for justice who lives in Marshall, NC.