Campaigning in Martin Luther King Jr.'s hometown, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Monday sought to position himself as a political heir of the slain civil rights leader.
The Vermont senator said that while King is remembered mostly for his efforts on racial equality, he should be more fully understood as a "revolutionary" who spoke out against "the entire establishment" on matters from race relations to economic and foreign policy.
"The truth is he did much more than just fight segregation and racism," Sanders told more than 5,000 supporters at the Fox Theatre in downtown Atlanta.
Sanders continued with a lengthy history lesson seemingly aimed at both the black voters he must win over to catch Hillary Rodham Clinton and the younger, white voters who dominated the raucous Fox assembly.
What King said, Sanders mused, "was that, of course, we have to end segregation at lunch counters and hotels and universities and schools. But he also said, 'What difference does it make if a family can't afford to send their kids to those schools or eat at that restaurant?'"
King, Sanders recalled, railed against the Vietnam War as an unjust battle fought by poor and working-class Americans, and he went to Memphis, where he was assassinated, to support striking sanitation workers.
Ahead of an evening rally at the Fox Theater, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has been making the rounds in Atlanta today.
First he stopped at the King Center, where he met with Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, and toured the civil rights leader’s crypt.
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After the meeting, Sanders said Martin Luther King Jr. has been “an inspiration to me for my entire life,” not just for his work to end racial segregation but because of his demands – often less remembered – for economic opportunity for all Americans, the central them of Sanders’ presidential campaign.
Sanders, a 74-year-old who participated in the famous 1963 march that concluded with King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, noted that the event was officially “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”
“Sometimes people forget he was assassinated because he stood up with sanitation workers fighting for decent wages and decent working conditions,” Sanders said, referring to King being shot in 1968 in Memphis, where he went to support striking workers.
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was introduced by Killer Mike at a rally in Atlanta tonight.
During the speech, he invoked Dr. Martin Luther King, said he doesn't want to relive the Reagan years, and quoted his song "Untitled". "In my heart of hearts, I truly believe that Senator Bernie Sanders is the right man to lead this country," he said. He also told the crowd to "stay confronting bullshit wherever you turn."
"He's trying to talk truth throughout this country and, in fact, throughout the world—trying to bring people together," said Sanders. "Mike, thanks very much for what you're doing."
Before the rally, Mike took Sanders to the Atlanta soul food restaurant Busy Bee.
Blue warriors in a red state were on fire for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders Monday night in Atlanta.
A standing room-only crowd of mostly college age voters packed the Fox Theater, to show their support for Sanders and the political revolution they believe he represents.
Sanders, a Democratic Senator from Vermont, promised a host of government programs for the poor and middle class, such as universal health care, and free public colleges.
"We will guarantee to all of our people the great promise -- the birthright of America -- which is freedom and justice," Sanders said. "Every kid in this country who studies hard, who takes school seriously, will be able to get a college education regardless of income."
Attendees at Monday’s rally booed Wall Street as Sanders blamed the richest one percent for many of the nation’s problems and for income inequality. The crowd cheered Sanders for declaring war on billionaires.
"This great country and our government belongs to all of us, not just a handful of billionaires," Sanders said. "The powers that be -- corporate America, Wall Street, the huge campaign contributors, the corporate media -- these folks are so powerful that no president can do what has to be done for working families unless millions of people join the political revolution.... And this campaign is sending a message to the Billionaire Class. And that message is, you cannot have it all. You are not going to get huge tax breaks when children in Georgia and Vermont go hungry. Ain't gonna happen.... You are not going to cut the wages and the benefits and the pensions of workers, and then give the CEOs of large corporations outrageous compensation packages."
With eleven days left to go before TIME’s 2015 Person of the Year poll come to a close, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the upstart candidate for president, holds a wide lead over global notables among TIME readers even as he trails Hillary Clinton in voter polls and fights a long-shot battle for the Democratic nomination.
The self-described democratic socialist currently leads Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist, with 11% in the TIME reader poll compared with her 5%. Sanders also leads Pope Francis and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama, and is far ahead of entertainers like Adele (2%) and Jennifer Lawrence (1.7%). In voter polls against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, Sanders is consistently losing by about 20 percentage points in national polls. In the Person of the Year poll, Hillary Clinton has earned 1.3 % of the vote, trailing the likes of Vladimir Putin and Francois Hollande as well as Nicki Minaj and Amy Schumer.
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Sanders, who was little-known when he began his unlikely bid for president in April, has become a hero on the Democratic left among progressives disillusioned by growing income inequality and money in politics. With a little over two months until the Iowa caucuses, Sanders faces tough odds to win the Democratic nomination. But he has cast a long shadow over the Democratic primary with his ability to introduce a progressive wish-list including breaking up the big banks, instituting public financing of elections, socialistic single-payer healthcare system and tuition free college at public institutions.
Bernie Sanders condemned the Pfizer Inc acquisition of Allergan Plc on Monday and urged the Obama administration to block the deal.
Pfizer said it would buy Botox maker Allergan in a record-breaking deal worth $160 billion to cut its U.S. tax bill by moving its headquarters to Ireland.
“The Pfizer-Allergan merger would be a disaster for American consumers who already pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs,” Sanders said in a statement.
US-based Pfizer announced Monday a 160 billion merger with Ireland-based Allergan to create the world’s biggest pharmaceutical group and shift to a lower-tax jurisdiction despite government policies discouraging such deals.
The deal, the biggest merger announced this year and, if completed, the second largest takeover ever, combines Pfizer’s vast portfolio of drugs and vaccines addressing cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and other ailments, with smaller rival Allergan’s holdings that include anti-wrinkle treatment Botox as well as treatments for eye care, dermatology and urology.
A senior aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday characterized Hillary Clinton’s latest tax plans as “tentative half-steps that sound Republican-lite,” escalating the sparring between the Democratic presidential campaigns over their respective commitments to helping the middle class.
“Given the disappearing middle class and massive income wealth inequality in America today, we clearly have to go a lot further than what Secretary Clinton proposes,” Sanders’s communications director, Michael Briggs, said in a statement issued Sunday night as Sanders campaigned here.
The statement came in response to a pair of initiatives put forward by Clinton on Sunday that would benefit people who care for an elderly parent or other family member. The former secretary of state is proposing a tax credit that would defray up to $1,200 in out-of-pocket expenses, as well as changes to the Social Security system to allow credit toward a wage earner’s monthly benefit at retirement when that person takes time off to care for an elderly relative.
As part of an ongoing rollout of measures aimed at bolstering the middle class, Clinton also has previously proposed tax credits for college costs and large out-of-pocket medical expenses.
I asked myself what is there to stop six people similar to the Paris attackers from coming here and doing something like the Paris attack here in the U.S.A. The answer is absolutely nothing.
Here are the facts. Six people with French or Belgian passports could travel here easily because there is a visa waiver program that allows the holders of passports from some countries to travel here without the scrutiny of the visa process.
Once here, they could simply go to a gun show and purchase guns and ammunition. So the facts are six people could easily and quickly come here. Once here they would have no difficulty obtaining everything they need to carry out the attack.
We can expect lots of tough talk from our elected representatives but I fear they are no good against the lobbyists for the hotel and travel industries that would not want the visa waiver program ended. Is the threat posed by terrorists enough for them to close the gun show loophole? Probably not since the gun lobby is against it and not likely to change.
This is the kind of Democracy you and I get in the age of unlimited money in politics. A government that works for the entities that fund it while using that money to manipulate us.
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Bernie Sanders is not beholden to the lobbyists and Big Money Donors. Congress is bought and paid for now. That has got to change and that could start with Bernie winning the Democratic Party nomination.
Jeremy Corbyn, Justin Trudeau, Bernie Sanders, and even Donald Trump all have something in common: nobody was expecting them. All four are part of a populist phenomenon that’s sweeping political circles in this worldwide election season. For Corybn and Trudeau, their respective chances at victory were largely shrugged off by political pundits and the media, and yet both of them defied all expectations and led their parties to decisive electoral victory.
So too is the case with Sanders and Trump. They’re pretty far away from each other politically, but they are likewise defying expectations and building enough political momentum to be considered viable contenders in the 2016 race.
The reasons why may have to do with how ideas are spread. In 2011, researchers from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute published a study called “Social Consensus Through the Influence of Committed Minorities.” In it, they lay out the results of a study that measured how popular opinion was affected by so-called “randomly distributed, committed agents.” In other words, they measured how people tend to react when they encounter others with unwaveringly strong beliefs.
The results are telling. When just ten percent of a given social network (or group of people in contact with one another) espoused a strong opinion, the rest of the people in that network rapidly followed suite. In other words, when ten percent of a society believes something, everybody else rapidly adopts that minority view, quickly making it the majority opinion.
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All of this points to one, inescapable conclusion: politics is a war of information, and only the most successful cultural replicators will ultimately prevail. In a loose sense, the 2016 presidential race could be called a war of memes, so it’s no surprise that populist candidates like Sanders have been so successful in organizing them into a robust and powerful ideology.
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