WATCH Bernie Sanders Defend Skipping Bloody Sunday Anniversary: 'We Showed Up in L.A. Where We Had 1

[sheshe2]

WATCH Bernie Sanders Defend Skipping Bloody Sunday Anniversary: ‘We Showed Up in L.A. Where We Had 15,000 People’

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders was confronted over his decision to skip the annual march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to commemorate the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, and defended it by invoking his huge crowd size.

https://www.mediaite.com/news/watch-bernie-sanders-defend-skipping-bloody-sunday-anniversary-we-showed-up-in-l-a-where-we-had-15000-people/

You really can't make this shit up. A rally that drew 15K for Bernie is far more important that honoring the black community on their 55th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. A march that left John Lewis near dead 55 years ago. A march that lead to equal voting rights.

A march that John attended while battling stage 4 cancer. This is an election of our lifetime and he left our base behind.

He, Bernie abandoned Mississippi as well. Then went to Flint MI a community that he voted against for clean water. Sigh. This is just not right. I just don't get it.

[NurseJackie]

1. Bernie is more important to Bernie...

... Obviously.

[dalton99a]

15. Bernie the man is the only thing that matters in Bernieworld

[ucrdem]

2. He left out his first rally that day, in Santa Clara aka $ilicon Valley.

Tsk tsk.

[sheshe2]

4. $ilicon Valley.

Hm.

Luv ya, ucrdem.

[ucrdem]

7. The day after SC too

You'd think he'd have taken the hint !

[calimary]

13. Nope. The California primary was more important.

More so than the national remembrance of a VERY fateful moment in our history.

[Cha]

3. Yeah we know. Where you were ahead in the polls so

we know what your priorities are over honoring Bloody Sunday with John Lewis and African Americans. and everyone else whose priorities are different.

Mahalo, she

[still_one]

5. Just sad is all I can say

[Gothmog]

6. sanders scrapped his speech on race

Last edited Sun Mar 8, 2020, 07:39 AM - Edit history (1)

Link to tweet

[sheshe2]

8. Hmmm

snip

As the candidate prepared to fly to a town hall in Flint, Michigan — a state whose diverse working-class electorate could decide his future in the Democratic primary — an aide gathered reporters to make an announcement: Sanders would “directly address the African-American community and make the case for why black voters should support him over Joe Biden."


Everyone took note, tapping furiously on their iPhones.

It's not often that Sanders deviates from his core message about social and economic injustice, delivered daily to thousands of people across the country at rallies that clock in, as if by science, at 47 minutes. He hardly ever directs a speech to a specific demographic. And he almost never asks his campaign team to preview a major address to reporters in order to ensure coverage.

But a couple hours later, when Sanders stepped to the podium in Flint, he did not give his prepared remarks on race — instead delivering his familiar stump speech, making only brief mention of “a same-old, same-old status quo politics” that, he said, has “failed African-American communities.”


After the event, as the campaign’s press bus idled outside the venue, Sanders communications director Mike Casca told reporters that the candidate scrapped his prepared remarks after discussing the event backstage with panelists, including community leaders in Flint and one of his top supporters, Dr. Cornel West.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rubycramer/bernie-sanders-flint-michigan-speech-black-voters

[B Stieg]

9. Somebody appears to be panicking!

Just sayin,' Bernie...

[MineralMan]

18. When he got there, he no doubt noticed that the audience

was overwhelmingly white, so he switched speeches. Bernie thinks "economic justice" trumps everything else. That kind of thinking would give us Trump again in 2020.

[Moderateguy]

19. This

He would have looked much worse droning on about racial justice to a majority white audience and they had no choice but to change tactics

[bobbieinok]

10. if rallies so important , could have picked different day, March date known long ago

[grantcart]

11. To be fair he is going to double all his current Mississippi scheduled events to make up for it

[zackymilly]

14. Is he going to video himself crossing the bridge in Selma too? n/t

[patphil]

12. Remember, John Lewis refused to acknowledge Bernie in 2016.

So, did Bernie deliberately dis John Lewis?

[Gothmog]

16. Bernie Sanders does not care about Black people.

Link to tweet

[MineralMan]

17. Bernie Sanders is tone-deaf when it comes to the African-American vote.

I suppose he thought nobody would notice that he skipped that in states like Michigan. He's mistaken about that, as he is about a lot of things. I believe he also gets very bad advice from his staffer, but that's not surprising, considering who they are.

When you put ideology over people, you are on a losing path. Sanders has never understood that. Clearly, he would rather hold a rally in Michigan with an audience of white people than recognize that Detroit has a majority black population.

Tone-deaf.

Notably, this is the second time that Sanders and his supporters have dissed John Lewis. The first was at the 2016 convention, when his delegates and supporters booed Lewis as he spoke for the nomination of Hillary Clinton. Sanders is just continuing the "same old, same old" pattern.