Bernie Sanders' Criminal Reform Plans Are Catching Up With His Radical Economic Platform

[Uncle Joe]

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In Sanders’ second run for president, he appears to be strengthening his positions on key issues that will persuade black voters that he is the candidate for them. The campaign released a video, exclusive to The Root, of Sanders speaking with young black and brown people in Miami about their issues with policing, healthcare and student debt. Facilitating the conversation was Phillip Agnew, co-founder of Dream Defenders and a national surrogate for the Sanders campaign. At 8:24 into the video, Agnew discussed the for-profit prison system in his home state of Florida. An African-American man told Sanders and the rest of the small group that, out of 10 of his friends, only two of them don’t have an arrest record or any charge.

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Sanders has always performed well with young voters of color and, in at least 27 states, voters under 30 supported him with a slim majority in 2016. The campaign is hoping that his criminal justice platform helps to attract more of them to the polls in 2020 to compete in a fiercely competitive pool of candidates that include two popular black senators in Kamala Harris and Cory Booker and, so far, a very popular Joe Biden who is currently attracting the most black support of anyone in the Democratic field.

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His conversation in Miami with young people of color is an extension of the public engagement he’s made over the years, admittedly, with some criminal justice legal policies that have some actual teeth. The Root was at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, in Detroit, watching the second primary debate with a mostly black audience who all very much were won over by Sanders’ performance. As I wrote that night, Sanders is likely the person to beat in Detroit and the rest of the state, with Harris and Warren not too far behind.

He’ll need every black vote he can get in this primary pool, but it seems like his engagement with young activists on the ground and their efforts to push his messaging through to older voters may prove to be formidable when Super Tuesday rolls around.

https://www.theroot.com/bernie-sanders-criminal-reform-plans-are-catching-up-wi-1837483886

[Uncle Joe]

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