During his speech in front of the boisterous crowd, Sanders said he is confident that if he wins the California primary Tuesday, he will win the presidential nomination despite the fact that Clinton currently holds the sweeping majority of votes from Democratic superdelegates.
Sanders' campaign said the crowd numbered 5,804.
Sanders called for investment in rural areas and inner cities, as opposed to Afghanistan, as well as the need for equal representation of people in the LGBT community and Native Americans, for African-American people and Latinos and Latinas. He stood by women's rights to equal pay and abortion.
"Women want the whole damn dollar and they're right," he said.
He also called for a $15 minimum wage, which California has pledged to enact. He declared health care a human right and shared his plans to increase Social Security benefits, which he told the crowd that President Barack Obama supports as well.
Candidates should be able to run a campaign without big-money interests controlling them, Sanders said.
"The current campaign finance system is corrupt and undermining American democracy," he said. "It is time for us to tell corporate America that they are no longer going to get it all."
Sanders says he owes his constant drive to young people, who understand the vision of the United States to be one of social justice, racial justice and environmental justice.
It was a diverse crowd who congregated on the lawn in front of laxson auditorium this evening and each person had their own personal reason to be front and center.
Whether it was the promise of affordable education,
“I’m a big advocate for his education platform, i think it speaks really loudly when he says it was free earlier,” said Karen Vang, a rally attendee and Sanders supporter.
Or his taxation platform.
“I think progressive taxation is really important to tax the rich at a higher rate if we are going to fund the infrastructure improvements we need,” said Nelson Anthoine.
Paige Eichar, a graduate student at Chico state, was excited at the prospect of seeing sanders in person.
“I'm very excited, this is an amazing opportunity that we are having at Chico State and I am really glad I get to be a part of this,” she said.
Kyle Prager said this year's election is the first one in which he would be able to vote in and attended the rally as a chance to hear what sanders stands for from the man himself
“I’m not really leaning any way, I just came out to learn what it was about and learn what Mr. Sanders had to do. It’s great it's a really great environment,” he said.
Bernie Sanders charged up a Modesto audience Thursday with a promise of victory in next week’s presidential primary.
The Vermont senator, speaking to a capacity crowd of about 2,300 at Modesto Centre Plaza, vowed to help people in poverty, to make public colleges tuition-free and to fight Wall Street influence.
“If the turnout is high, we’re going to win that primary,” said Sanders, who is making a last-ditch effort to wrest the Democratic nomination from Hillary Clinton. “If the turnout is very high, we’re going to win with big numbers.”
Sanders drew cheers throughout the hourlong speech, which brought national media to a city rarely visited by presidential candidates. He said his campaign – with almost 8 million donors giving an average of $27 apiece – disproves the idea that voters do not care about big-money influence.
“Our job is to tell them that they are dead wrong,” said Sanders, who was introduced by actress Susan Sarandon. “We are going to get involved in every way.”
The Modesto rally did not draw the kind of protests that have dogged billionaire Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, at events in Fresno and elsewhere. A few people violated the rule against banners with a sign about the Animal Liberation Front; they were escorted out of Centre Plaza.
Sanders said 2.2 million people are in U.S. prisons and jails, the highest rate of any country, at a cost of about $80 billion a year. He called for investments in education and jobs and an easing of federal drug policy that equates marijuana with heroin.
“Think about an America where those young people are not rotting in jail cells,” he said.
Gravity had hold of them like it does everyone, but many Bernie Sanders supporters left Modesto Centre Plaza on Thursday afternoon feeling like they were walking on air.
“He’s an inspiration,” said Elizabeth Zaremba, 52, of Modesto. “I’d really, really believe in my future if he is our next president. I’d feel hopeless with any of the other candidates.”
The Vermont senator, who’s seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency, was dead on when he spoke about the rich getting richer and the American middle class being almost nonexistent, Zaremba said.
Jennifer Carlson-Suarez, 56, of Modesto, who was listening to the rally outside over the public-address system, said she agreed with everything Sanders had to say. His position on education reform especially hit home with her. Her daughter carries $35,000 in student debt and is paying 8.5 percent interest, she said. And college took her four years, attending full time, because she couldn’t get into the classes she needed.
The nation is broken, Carlson-Suarez said: The rich buy politicians, and “one person, one vote doesn’t count anymore.” She can’t understand, then, why “the only ones listening (to what Sanders has to say) are the fringe and the kids,” she said.
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Added Ian Martin, 32, “This is the first time I’ve ever felt this kind of attraction to a candidate, where I’ve gone to a rally, contributed a few dollars.”
He shared his brother’s – and Sanders’ – support for grand ideas. “It’s about time to start reaching for the stars,” Ian Martin said. “We have to try it, see if we can.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders picked up another superdelegate on Thursday: New Hampshire Democratic Party vice chairwoman Martha Fuller Clark, who also serves as a state senator.
Clark's backing on Thursday, confirmed by the Sanders campaign, is the latest in a string of superdelegate endorsements Sanders has gained in the past week.
On Thursday afternoon Maureen Monahan, vice chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, announced that she would back Sanders and encouraged other unpledged superdelegates to support him.
"In the primaries and caucuses held so far, Senator Sanders has won about 45% of the pledged delegates, yet has pledges from only about 6% of the “super delegates.” No wonder Sanders voters are so frustrated with the party," Monahan said in a statement. "Party leaders need to acknowledge and embrace Senator Sanders and his supporters. That is why today I am pledging my super delegate vote to Senator Sanders. I am encouraging all still unpledged super delegates to support Senator Sanders as well. We need new energetic people in the Democratic Party to spread our effective message."
On Tuesday, Hawaii's Democratic Party elected Tim Vandeveer as its party chairman, meaning he also becomes a superdelegate. Vandeveer said he would vote for Sanders at the state party convention. A week earlier, West Virginia Democratic National Committeewoman Elaine Harris said she would support Sanders in her role as a superdelegate.
Bernie Sanders may be facing tough odds on the national front, but the Democratic presidential candidate has scored a win in Nebraska.
One of the state’s five Democratic superdelegates announced Thursday that she would back Sanders.
Maureen Monahan, who is the first associate chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, said she decided to support Sanders because he has brought “thousands of new people” into the party. She said those voters need to be acknowledged by party leaders.
Three other Nebraska superdelegates have thrown their support behind Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton: Rep. Brad Ashford of Omaha, Democratic National Committeewoman Patty Zieg and Democratic National Committeeman Ron Kaminski.
A fifth superdelegate, State Party Chairman Vince Powers, remains undecided.
President Barack Obama endorsed an expansion of Social Security for the first time on Wednesday.
“We can’t afford to weaken Social Security,” he said during a speech on economic policy in Elkhart, Indiana. “We should be strengthening Social Security. And not only do we need to strengthen its long-term health, it’s time we finally made Social Security more generous, and increased its benefits so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they’ve earned.”
The increased benefits, he said, could be paid for “by asking the wealthiest Americans to contribute a little bit more. They can afford it. I can afford it.”
This was a far cry from Obama’s position on the program in late 2012, when his administration argued for reducing Social Security benefits by recalculating the way cost of living adjustments are made.
“President Obama’s evolution on Social Security, from at one time being open to cuts to calling for an expansion of benefits … is certainly welcome news, but not at all surprising,” said Alex Lawson, the executive director of Social Security Works, a nonprofit group that advocates for protecting and expanding the program.
Lawson’s organization has worked with lawmakers and other nonprofit organizations to oppose Obama’s proposed Social Security cuts and shift the conversation towards expansion. By the summer of 2014, a small group of Democratic caucus senators, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, started advocating for lifting Social Security’s payroll tax cap so wealthier people paid more into the system, and then increasing benefits to seniors. Polling by advocacy groups found broad support for expansion.
This idea became a central theme in Sanders’s presidential campaign. In the speech announcing his candidacy, the senator said that “instead of cutting Social Security, we’re going to expand Social Security benefits.”
“It has become impossible for elected officials to ignore the simple fact that Social Security is a solution and not a problem, and that the only thing wrong with it are that benefits are too low,” Lawson said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign is seeking a demonstration permit for the day before the Democratic National Convention kicks off in Philadelphia.
The Sanders campaign wants to hold a "traditional Bernie campaign rally" July 24 at FDR Park in South Philadelphia, campaign spokesman Michael Briggs said.
The date and location already had been scooped up from the city by Sanders supporter Bill Taylor, of Northeast Philadelphia. Now, the Sanders campaign is coordinating with Taylor to use the permit to get a prime spot for the rally. Briggs did not elaborate on the rally plans except to say that Sanders would deliver a "victory statement."
Taylor said that he plans to release his city permit to the campaign, but that there was still a lot of paperwork to be done. He also has requests for the campaign, in particular that the rally be open to everyone with March for Bernie, a group of supporters not affiliated with the campaign. The rally was approved under a demonstration permit for 30,000 people.
Taylor, 30, is organizing the March for Bernie from City Hall to FDR Park, which is across from the stadiums complex in South Philadelphia, where the convention will be held. Once there, the marchers would join an official Sanders campaign rally.
"We are heavily encouraging Bernie to lead that march," Taylor said.
For all the punditry about the Vermont Senator's historic rise (or lack thereof), a simple truth has been missing. Quite the contrary from some radical, "pie in the sky" revolutionary, Sanders is actually an FDR Democrat.
You know, the Democrat who brought America back from the brink of economic calamity. The Democrat whose New Deal programs led to the creation of the American middle class. The same Democrat whose policies in the 1930's and 40's led to the strongest decades of economic equality and prosperity for the majority of Americans—as opposed to those at the top—in the 1950's and 60s.
And the Democratic Party and establishment, who beginning in the 1970's decided to begin a pivot away from the working class and New Deal era in favor or wealthier suburbanites and corporatists, has fought Sanders every step of the way.
Sure, party leaders and lawmakers have delivered good lip service. Hillary Clinton—whose big-money donors from Wall Street, corporate America, K Street, and other special interests have served as her political oxygen throughout her career—lauded Sanders for challenging the Party on unaccountable money.
But she, and the Democratic establishment backing her, don't mean a damn word of it. No objective person can suggest Democrats haven't looked the other way as inequality exploded.
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The optics of going with the candidate limping into the convention; backed by the Democratic Party's past instead of its future; possessing record unfavorable ratings; who'll struggle to pick up young Sanders supporters; versus the movement candidate polling the best against Donald Trump; who will turn out young voters and Independents; and who's the only candidate left with a positive favorability rating.
Huddled in Philadelphia, the Democratic establishment will finally have its come-to-Jesus moment: stay married to corporate money or return to its first love—the American middle class.
If they're smart enough to read the tea leaves of the movement exploding under them, it's really a no-brainer.
Bernie Sanders isn't just winning the youth vote — he's crushing it.
A new analysis from Tufts University shows that Sanders has now surpassed Barack Obama's 2008 Democratic primary totals among young people in the 25 states where we can draw a comparison — whether you count by raw vote total or percentage of the overall vote share.
In 2008, the press marveled that Obama beat Hillary Clinton by 60 to 35 points among voters under 30, racking up around 2.2 million young votes throughout the primary.
Now Sanders is beating Clinton by a 71-to-28 margin, receiving more than 2.4 million votes from young voters in the 25 states we can compare, according to numbers compiled by Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts.
"The energy that young voters have kept up throughout the primary has been incredible," Kawashima-Ginsberg says in an interview. "It's been amazing to see."
Sanders's insurgency is being powered by young people, who are thrilling to his message in what looks like historic numbers.
A chart released Wednesday by Matt Karp, a Princeton professor and Jacobin contributor, shows that Sanders outperformed Obama among young voters in 15 of 20 primary states, based on exit poll data from the states that have voted thus far:
Bernie Sanders may not become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, but his political voice will continue to shape the party for years to come. That’s mostly due to his extraordinary campaign, of course, but the grassroots movement leaders he placed on this year’s Democratic National Committee platform drafting committee will help too.
Sanders was asked to select five of the 15 members of the committee responsible for producing the Democratic Party’s national platform. With Sanders’ selections, the platform drafting committee will include determined advocates for economic equality, campaign finance reform, and an aggressive response to climate change.
It won’t be the first time that people affiliated with social movements have served in this role. The 2008 committee included U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro, who once led campaigns to stop U.S. military aid to Nicaraguan contras. But the 2016 committee will have members who are directly involved in grassroots movements today, from climate justice to Black Lives Matter. Of the five people Sanders chose, three have recently been arrested while engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience.
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Bill McKibben
McKibben is an environmental activist, author, and co-founder of 350.org, a global grassroots organization fighting climate change. He has been arrested several times, most recently this March while protesting a proposed pipeline in New York. He argues that Obama hasn’t done enough to fight climate change because his administration is too closely tied to fossil fuel industries. The Boston Globe referred to McKibben as “probably America’s most important environmentalist.”
From the goosebump-inducing strains of “America,” to the lump-in-the-throat endorsement of Erica Garner, the Bernie Sanders campaign has become famous for its masterful storytelling and moving imagery.
Bernie’s latest ad features the story of Chris Wilson, a young black man whose life went off the rails due to poverty and inequality, landing him in prison with a natural life sentence, but he got it back on track by using what he calls “positive delusion,” creating an outrageously ambitious “master plan” and using every opportunity he had in jail to further his education.
A week after the Sanders campaign went big in California with $1.5 million spent on a 30-second ad specifically targeted at Californians, the stirring short is almost four minutes in length and is much more documentary-like. It shows the neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, where Chris grew up, the photos he cut and pasted onto different scenes to create his “positive delusion” and the business he now runs to help former inmates get a new start in life.
The ad elicited an outpouring of emotion on the Bernie Sanders Facebook page, especially from people who had been through similar circumstances
Wilson became something of a celebrity when a sympathetic judge told him at his 10-year hearing that if he completed his master plan, she would release him. By taking every class offered by the jail, he earned himself an Associate’s degree, and after 14 years incarceration, the judge was good to her word and set him free
That’s the short story. The long one is an extraordinary read of Dickensian proportions where the system fails him again and again, from incarcerating him as an adult at age 17, to siphoning the $40,000 in funds he and another inmate raised in prison to upgrade their gym and instead installing another surveillance system, to finally making it to the halfway house where he could attend university but being repeatedly told by his caseworker that he should just give up and pump gas, to being sent back to jail for 13 months for “administrative reasons.”
Despite the frustrations and the setbacks, Wilson clawed his way out of there, is completing his full degree, and now runs a business employing ex-cons. He’s sought after by Harvard and John Hopkins to complete his MBA with them, but his priority remains with staying in Maryland to lift people out of the poverty/crime cycle through education.