By Baptist Pastor who switched "Bernie Sanders & the After Affect of Liberty University"

[Catherina]

Bernie Sanders & the After Affect of Liberty University

By Pastor Frantz Whitfield

...

When President Obama came into office I was very displeased with a lot of the African American community because they bashed him for his support of Same Sex marriage. I had to explain to several parishioners, and friends that he is not “Pastor Obama” or “Father Obama” or “Rabbi Obama”, but he is President Obama. No matter who you are, no matters your religious beliefs, and no matter your race or ethnicity you are not always going to agree with how things are done, but as long as at the end of the day you can end up respecting one another then things will be so much better for everyone.

...

Some of you may say “Well he is just another man like everybody else, or he’s just talking the talk to get into office”. I have to disagree with the naysayers. Let me ask you a question. What do you truly, and honestly feel when you hear Bernie speak. Do you hear garbage, lies, or the same ole same ole, or do you hear compassion, trustworthiness, hope? I feel all of that, and so much more. I could care less what people think of me switching my support from Hillary to Bernie. Your word is your bond, and if I am going to support a candidate I need your morals to be on point, and need you to keep your word.

Bernie has a heart for the people. Those who otherwise don’t have someone to stand up, and speak for them. Bernie stated Monday that when we talk about Morality, and when we talk about Justice we have to understand that there is no justice when so few have so much, and so many have so little. There is no justice when the top one-tenth of one percent in America owns almost as much wealth as the bottom ninety percent. Millions of people are working long hours making $7-$9 an hour, but still unable to feed their kids.

I would ask us one question. Where are our priorities? Are we more concerned with having the latest Mercedes Benz than making sure the less fortunate children who are being raised by single parent homes, and elderly grandparents like I was are being fed decent meals. How does it make you feel to order three, and four pair of Gucci shoes while kids are walking to school everyday with cardboard in their shoes. How does it feel to purchase cases upon cases of Voss Water (which is my favorite) when kids go without because their parents can’t afford to pay the water bill. Am I saying that these material things are bad? No not at all, but what I am saying is SHARE THE WEALTH!!! It’s better to give than to receive. Knowing that you helped someone who was truly in need is much better than receiving some type of award or trophy.

In Conclusion what is the after affect of Bernie’s Liberty University Speech? The message has been the same as it always has, but it was just delivered to a new crowd of people. I know your approach to people getting them to support Bernie can become repetitive, and you probably have every word down verbatim, but the big picture is to get the word to as many different people as possible, and when you do make sure that you do as Bernie did at Liberty. Bernie was speaking at a Christian University, but his message didn’t change. Stand firm on what you believe in. People may not like or agree with everything you believe in, but one thing they must do is respect you at the end of the day. Keep up the great work my friends, and don’t get weary. We have a long way to go. Bern Baby Bern!!!

https://frantzwhitfield.wordpress.com/2015/09/17/bernie-sanders-the-after-affect-of-liberty-university/

Pastor Whitfield.

Rev. Frantz Whitfield switches support to Sanders
August 30, 2015

WATERLOO | The Rev. Frantz Whitfield was ready for Hillary before she announced her second bid for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. But now he’s feeling the Bern. Whitfield, a pastor at Mount Carmel Baptist Church, had been a vocal and loyal supporter of the Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton since her first bid in 2008, but as of last week, he’s decided to back her main challenger Bernie Sanders.

Whitfield’s decision, announced on social media site Twitter, did not come lightly. He remembers being impressed with Sanders when he heard the Vermont independent speak at a conference in New York in April, but he still maintained his loyalty to Clinton. It wasn’t until Whitfield recently looked at Sanders’ priorities -- at the urging of a local organizer -- that his support began to waver.

“One of the big reasons and the main reasons that I switched my support isn’t because of the fact that Hillary is a bad person, you know, but it’s just because of the fact that Bernie has so much more issues that he is running on, and he’s just genuine in what he does,” Whitfield said.

When Whitfield began to peruse Sanders’ issues on his website, two things immediately jumped out to him: that Sanders is a believer in getting big money out of politics and that he had a detailed plan for racial justice. “Bernie has been passionate about that particular issue (of racial justice) at a point when it wasn’t even popular, and what I mean is that he was doing it back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, back then when he wasn’t even looking to be the president of the United States, so that’s one of the things that got me,” Whitfield said.

It wasn’t just Sanders’ long tenure of fighting for racial justice, it’s also the particulars of his detailed plan. Whitfield points specifically to Sanders’ desire to re-enfranchise African-American voters and his recognition of the names of those who were unarmed and died by police hands or in police custody.
...

More: http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/update-rev-frantz-whitfield-switches-support-to-sanders/article_396232d3-78b3-5e81-a15d-83f1a891804a.html

[smokey nj]

1. "Bernie has a heart for the people."

That right there is why he has my support.

[a kennedy]

9. Yup...me too. This statement....."Bernie has a heart for the people" is exactly why

Last edited Fri Sep 18, 2015, 08:40 AM - Edit history (1)

I will be working my arse off for him in South Eastern MN. I FEEL THE BERN.

[peacebird]

2. Great articles, thanks for posting!

[Doctor_J]

3. I think the pastor is confused though

When Obama took office, he didn't support gay marriage. He evolved later.

[Mabus]

4. Thank you. K&R

I wasn't crying, it just suddenly got dusty.

[NorthCarolina]

5. I'd take political endorsements like this over a roomfull of "congress critter"

endorsements any day of the week.

[Catherina]

8. Same here. With the added bonus that this is a way to spread messages quickly

and since we keep hearing that Bernie's message hasn't been reaching POC communities, well here we go. Start feeling the Bern!

[Salviati]

15. Indeed, all her increasing pile of endorsements tell us is something we already know;

She is the establishment candidate.

[lonestarnot]

6. See all it takes is to hear the message, understand the platform and make the judgment for ones'

self.

[draa]

16. Well said.

[zeemike]

7. Religious people are not locked in to the GOP as many seem to think.

But the left writes them off as if they were.

Religion is the natural ally of the left if we let them in. Because Jesus was a liberal in every way, and those who truly believe in Jesus can also support liberal causes. We just have never exploited this fact until Bernie came on the stage.

[Ilsa]

10. My pastor talked about the congregation's diversity of reactions on

Same sex marriage the weekend after the SCOTUS decision. He said there will always be areas of dissent in the church and that this can't be the only issue, that our church has greater priorities in serving the sick, poor, those needing justice, and to feel God's love.

Our priorities and behaviors as Christians should, frankly, almost mirror those of the Democratic Party and Progressives. So, we need to do more to show Christians that the DP is home to the practice of their faith.

[zeemike]

13. Being inclusive is what the Dems need to be, not exclusive.

But there are always some who want to exclude any one that deviates from their own positions on a single issue. And it is foolish to do that.

[99th_Monkey]

11. K&R Amen. -nt-

[MannyGoldstein]

12. Who knew? Values voters want to vote for someone with values.

Shocking!

[reformist2]

14. Bernie has the courage to say our economic system is inherently unjust, and people are responding.

Everyone who is honest with themselves knows it's absurd and wrong that one person could make $3,000,000 a week while another person, in the very same building even, might work all week long just to make $300.

It really is amazing bordering on insane that we tolerate this, never mind those who dare to claim it's fair.

[L0oniX]

17. K & R

[Left coast liberal]

18. The tidal wave continues....

Feeling the BERN! Big time!

[coolepairc]

19. Bern Baby Bern

Amen Pastor Whitfield

[hifiguy]

20. You are on a hell of a roll this week, Catherina.

Thanks for this. K&R!!

[Catherina]

22. Ya know when you get passionate about something? Like a little bit of justice?

[hifiguy]

23. Bernie has me more psyched each and every day.

I haven't been this amped about a candidate since I was 12 and RFK was running.

I was a very politically precocious boy.

[Catherina]

24. Same here because this is about a lot more than one man

the Sanders campaign represents a breakthrough for progressive “messaging” of remarkable scope and impact. Sanders, with his calls for political revolution against the billionaire class, is not just another standard-issue, forked-tongue, feel-your-pain Democrat; at each MSM-covered appearance he blasts out piercing alarms about the radical inequities and irrationalities of the status quo, along with sorely needed solutions—primal truths that would otherwise lie dormant and buried in the scattered isolated islets of far-leftdom.

To dismiss these crucial inroads into mass consciousness as mere diversion, to deride his proposals as milquetoast Keynesian stopgap, betrays the old far-left allergy to the complexity and cacophony of the large stage of life, a debilitating preference for the safety and certitude of the tiny left echo chamber. Sanders’s campaign, whatever its flaws, is thrusting front and center to a mass audience a whole series of principled, critical demands and issues (many of which overlap with those raised in splendid isolation by Jill Stein and the Green Party), the realization of which would markedly advance the material well-being and future prospects of ordinary Americans: $15 an hour minimum wage; union card check to expand organizing rights; improved Medicare for all; expansion (not retrenchment) of Social Security; revamped progressive taxation to reduce income inequality; a Wall Street transaction tax; a rapid transition to renewables to combat climate change; opposition to the ecocidal, neo-fascist TPP, NAFTA, and WTO; an end to the militarization of local police forces; cracking down on hate groups; free tuition at all public universities and colleges to alleviate student debt peonage; paid family leave; and so on. If realized in the aggregate, these demands would challenge the neoliberal logic of the prevailing order.

As a tactical matter, then, the Sanders upsurge is an invaluable tool for the mass dissemination of left themes and solutions right now—a priceless benefit that far outweighs the realpolitik lapses that preoccupy the left-echo-chamber Sanders refuseniks.

...

Whatever the outcome of Sanders’s campaign, the sheer scope of the audience for his progressive checklist, his slashing denunciations of the economic and political tyranny of the billionaire class, are green shoots in an otherwise barren political landscape—and who knows how they might flourish in the future? This is a major breakthrough that has the potential, in countless molecular ways, to burst through the Democratic institutional framework in which it is now embedded—and, by the way, Sanders would not be commanding that mass audience were it not in that framework: hence the Sanders Paradox.

...

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18425/why-the-radical-left-really-really-needs-to-quit-whining-about-bernie-sande

[hifiguy]

26. Agreed completely.

And as Bernie says, this is not about him, this is about the capital-P People.

The reason for the Dem debate debacle is a simple one - put HRH on stage with Martin O'Malley and Bernie for two hours and she will end up being in fourth place in a three-horse race, and the DNC/Hillionaires KNOW it.

[Maedhros]

21. Would Hillary have been able to walk into Liberty University and convince even one of them

to vote Democratic? Hell no!

Bernie wins support in that hostile environment just by being straightforward. Yet he "can't win."

Yeah, right.

[Catherina]

25. Nope. Neither could any of the others incl Biden n/t

[Maedhros]

27. And Bernie was CRITICIZED by some here on DU for even talking to Liberty University.

As if by visiting the school he thereby agrees with their curriculum.

Bernie is winning votes from all across the spectrum of American politics. In this hyper-partisan age, that in and of itself is a fantastic achievement.

[cui bono]

28. "he had a detailed plan for racial justice"

“Bernie has been passionate about that particular issue (of racial justice) at a point when it wasn’t even popular, and what I mean is that he was doing it back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, back then when he wasn’t even looking to be the president of the United States, so that’s one of the things that got me,” Whitfield said.

It wasn’t just Sanders’ long tenure of fighting for racial justice, it’s also the particulars of his detailed plan. Whitfield points specifically to Sanders’ desire to re-enfranchise African-American voters and his recognition of the names of those who were unarmed and died by police hands or in police custody.