Two days before the New York primary, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders toured one of New York City's poorest neighborhoods much to the surprise of local residents.
"Nice to get to know you now," one lady told Sanders, shaking his hand as he exited a public housing project and stopped by a playground in Brownsville, Brooklyn. "I was against you at first."
"I am not so bad as I look on TV," Sanders replied.
"No, you aren't. It is nice to see that you are coming through here. So, you might get our vote now," she continued, before turning to the crowd who had formed around Sanders. "He actually came to the 'hood to get our vote. He shook our hands."
Brownsville has been listed as one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York City, with a high crime rate, too. According to a study by the city last year, 76 percent of the population in the neighborhood is African American and more than 37 percent live below the federal poverty line.
Two city councilmen and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams led Sanders on his tour. The Vermont senator addressed reporters at the end of his visit.
"People should not be forced to live in dilapidated housing where elevators break down and elderly people have to walk eight flights up or down to go and get some groceries," Sanders said. "What this campaign is about is transforming our national priorities, rebuilding our infrastructure, and when we talk about rebuilding our infrastructure, that means rebuilding housing projects like this. Not only here in New York, but all over this country."
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont drew a record-breaking crowd to Brooklyn's enormous park Sunday as he looks to build momentum ahead of the New York Democratic primary.
Sanders attracted more than 28,300 people on the sunny afternoon, according to the campaign and a production company helping to plan the event. This total just crept higher than the campaign's previous record of 28,000 in Portland, Oregon, in August.
"In case you haven't noticed, there are a lot of people here this afternoon!" Sanders bellowed to cheers as he took the stage after actor Danny DeVito glowingly introduced him.
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"A few hours ago, I was in Brownsville here in Brooklyn, ... and what I learned is we have a $17 billion backlog in construction needs," Sanders said in Prospect Park. "We have community centers that are closing down."
As Sanders supporters drifted out of the rally, Bill Bernstein, a photographer by trade and native New Yorker, was nearly speechless.
"I thought it was an amazing moment in history," he told NBC News when asked his reaction to the giant crowd, which doesn't always correspond to votes.
"If he doesn't get the nomination this time," Bernstein said as his son stood by his side, "there are millions of millions of people who heard what he had to say. This is not going to die. This started something."
Bernie Sanders rallied a huge crowd in his home borough of Brooklyn on Sunday afternoon, with a speech that drew stark and sometimes scathing comparisons with his rival, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Sanders, who has become more sarcastic about Clinton of late — including in the ninth and fieriest debate between the two last Thursday — mocked the former secretary of State for her refusal to release the transcript of her lavishly-paid speeches to corporations, including Goldman Sachs.
Noting that Clinton has received as much as $225,000 per speech, Sanders said: “Now, if you give a speech for $225,000, it must be a pretty damn good speech; must be a brilliant and insightful speech analyzing all of the world’s problems; must be a speech written in Shakespearean prose. And that is why I believe Secretary Clinton should share that speech with all of us.”
Sanders devoted a significant portion of his hour-long address in Prospect Park to assailing Clinton for issue after issue on which he suggested she was insufficiently liberal or flat-out wrong: free trade agreements; fracking; the war in Iraq; her refusal to call for a $15 per hour minimum wage and her reluctance to support raising the income cap on Social Security contributions.
“I have challenged Secretary Clinton, and challenged her and challenged her — and she still refuses to come on board” on Social Security, Sanders said.
More generally, he framed the support for his candidacy as a consequence of people being “sick and tired of establishment politics and establishment economics.”
At First Corinthian Baptist Church, Mr. Sanders asked voters that they not only vote for him but encourage others to do the same. On stage, Mr. Walrond asked Mr. Sanders a series of questions about why he remained in the race and why he got involved in politics in the first place.
Mr. Sanders told the church members that he learned important economic lessons from watching his parents argue over not having enough money. He also said he was moved to protest segregation as a college student because he was interested in social justice.
“I am running for president because it is just too late for establishment politics and establishment economics,” Mr. Sanders said, repeating a line he uses often in his stump speeches. “We need a candidate now who has the track record, the agenda, and the guts to stand up to the billionaire class.”
Mr. Sanders added that he believes many of the goals of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. remain unrealized and pointed out that black people continue to be underpaid without access to affordable housing and proper healthcare. He also said he learned about racial profiling by talking to people who regularly experienced being “harassed” and “intimidated” by police officers.
“I learned from Black Lives Matter,” Mr. Sanders said to applause. “What I learned is how police in white communities are regarded very differently than police in black communities.”
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As the senator was leaving, one man happily shouted to him, “It’s a beautiful day.”
Mr. Sanders quickly responded, “Let’s make Tuesday a beautiful day, too.”
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders says actor George Clooney, who said the amount of money he'd raised for Hillary Clinton is "obscene," is backing the wrong candidate in the 2016 presidential race.
Sanders praised Clooney's acknowledgment in an interview aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that "it's ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics."
"They're right to protest," Clooney said of Sanders backers who protested his fundraiser for Clinton. "They're absolutely right. It's an obscene amount of money."
Asked in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" Sunday if Clooney is backing the wrong horse, Sanders said, "Well, I think he is."
"He is honest enough to say that there is something wrong when few people -- in this case, wealthy individuals, but in other instances for the secretary, it is Wall Street and powerful special interests -- who are able to contribute unbelievably large sums of money," Sanders said. "That is not what democracy is about. That's a movement toward oligarchy."
One of Hillary Clinton’s most famous supporters, actor George Clooney, says he hopes Bernie Sanders “stays in for the entire election.”
Clooney, who hosted a big-dollar fundraiser for the former secretary of state Friday, said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he likes the Vermont senator, who has been challenging Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“I think what he's saying in this election is important if you're a Democrat,” Clooney said, adding he'd do “whatever I can” to help Sanders if he wins the nomination.
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Clooney also said he understood the criticism from protesters outside Friday’s event for Clinton, who has long been the Democratic front-runner, saying he shared their distaste for money in politics.
“They're absolutely right,” Clooney said of protesters. “It is an obscene amount of money. The Sanders campaign when they talk about it is absolutely right. It's ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics. I agree completely.”
Brooklyn Councilman Jumaane Williams this afternoon became the second member of the City Council to endorse Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for president.
Taking the stage at the candidate’s massive rally in Prospect Park today, Mr. Williams announced he supported the self-described democratic socialist’s bid for the White House. He mocked the Daily News for suggesting Mr. Sanders’ was “at war with reality,” which the councilman argued was a battle worth fighting.
“I thought to myself, ‘you’re goddamn right.’ Because too many people’s reality in this borough, and in this city and in this nation needs to be at war with,” he said. “Too many people’s reality is struggle. And maybe if you’re not at war with reality, you’re not focused enough.”
The candidate insisted on the value of what he termed a “political revolutionary moonshot.”
“From an eight-hour workday, to no child labor, from LGBT rights, to women’s suffrage, from the Civil Rights movement, to freeing the slaves, were all revolutionary moonshots. In fact, the birth of this nation was a revolutionary moonshot. The people who say it cannot be done, please move out of the way of the people who are doing,” he said. “I’m proud today to endorse the next president of the United States of America, Senator Bernie Sanders, who will bring the revolutionary moonshot, baby!”
The Caribbean-American Mr. Williams is known as one of the Council’s most left-wing members on economic and racial issues, having participated in Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter demonstrations. As a legislator and advocate, he has pushed hard for police reform and gun control—the last being one of Mr. Sanders’ perceived weaknesses, as a longtime representative a rural and heavily armed state.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders pledged today to dedicate federal funds to mitigate the troubled New York City Housing Authority‘s massive backlog in repairs and to establish new lead standards for public housing nationwide.
The underdog Democratic candidate for the White House toured NYCHA’s Howard Houses in the impoverished enclave of Brownsville, Brooklyn with Borough President Eric Adams, Bronx Councilman Ritchie Torres, chairman of the City Council’s Committee on Pubic Housing, and Brooklyn Councilman Jumaane Williams, chairman of Committee on Housing. The Brooklyn-born New England lawmaker described learning about the depth and severity of NYCHA’s budget shortfalls at a huge powwow in Prospect Park that afternoon.
“We have a $17 billion backlog in construction needs. We have community centers for kids that are closing down,” the candidate said, provoking boos from the racially mixed but predominantly white crowd. “And that is why together we are going to transform our national priorities. We are going to rebuild inner cities in this country, rather than waste trillions on wars we never, ever should have gotten into.”
The campaign unveiled the outline of a national affordable housing plan to coincide with the rally. The proposal includes a promise to provide “sufficient funding” to deal with the epidemic of “leaky roofs, mold, unreliable heating systems, broken elevators and vermin.”
NYCHA is the largest housing authority in the country, and its capital improvement deficit makes up roughly two-thirds of the $26 billion in infrastructure work needed at all public housing in America.
Many Arab-Americans want the Jewish candidate to be president. The prominent Arabic-language newspaper for that community in Southern California, Watan (“A Nation”), has endorsed Bernie Sanders.
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Watan noted that Sanders lived in a kibbutz in his youth in what the paper calls “Occupied Palestine” (but it later spoke of “Israeli” kibbutzes). But it went on to praise Sanders for voting in 1991 to hold up aid for Israel because of its colonization of the Palestinian West Bank; and it praised him for voting in 1990 against the Gulf War (Sanders did not think the war would make the Middle East more stable).
It then lauds him for his opposition to the Bush administration’s USA PATRIOT Act (which weakened 4th amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure), and for his 2002 stance against the Iraq War.
The paper carefully lays out his domestic policies, including his concern with growing wealth inequality and the impunity of Wall Street and the big banks.
It notes that Sanders’s demand for even-handedness in US policy toward Israel and Palestine is unusual in the Democratic Party.
A major Arab-American leader and head of the Arab American Institute, James Zogby, has also endorsed Sanders; his reasons for doing so are completely centered on the senator’s domestic policies.
To support their favorite candidate, attendees of the event — which doubled as a free concert by Grizzly Bear — brought a whole lot of artistry, including DIY and handmade stickers, cutouts, signs and even a one-man flag dance dedicated to Sanders.
While waiting in the Nethermead meadow in for the rally to begin, Steph Burr, a 27-year-old artist who traveled from Connecticut to the event, gave away about 50 handmade signs of the Vermont senator’s face above the words “our voice.”
“People thought I was trying to sell them,” she said with a laugh. She also gave away dozens of stickers with the same image, which she painted herself.
Pancho Gonzalez, 43, cheered on Sanders from on top of a police barricade at the rally as he watched two new endorsements of the candidate by political commentator Sally Kohn and Brooklyn Councilman Jumaane Williams.
Gonzalez, a Fort Greene resident, brought his own handmade signs to the event depicting “Rosario the Riveter” — a mash-up of actress (and Sanders supporter) Rosario Dawson and Rosie the Riveter.
“Bernie people, that’s why they love him. He’s the most pun-able presidential candidate of all time,” he said.
As Sanders took the stage to make his stump speech, artist Dick Averns chose a spot right in front of him, carrying two fake street signs, “Ambivalence Blvd.” and “Liberty Ave.,” above the heads of the cheering crowd. The Calgary native says he traveled from his home country to bring the signs to rallies for all the 2016 candidates; he brought them to a Trump rally in Syracuse, N.Y. on Saturday and got thrown out.
They were feeling the earn!
Two Park Slope teens did a hot trade in home-made Bernie Sanders T-shirts during his rally in Prospect Park on Sunday, taking on the cavalcade of professional vendors who follow the campaign around the country flogging Bernie-branded merchandise to his fans. The senator may preach peace and a “moral economy,” but the young entrepreneurs say the message hasn’t reached his attendant merchandise market.
“It was ruthless out there!” said 16-year-old Maxwell Quinn, who came to help his 17-year-old pal and fellow Millennium Brooklyn High School student Chance Landesmann sell his Sanders shirts to the crowd.
The pair say they first tried to market Landesmann’s designs to the those lining up to get in, but gave up when the out-of-town vendors kept swooping in, pushing their racks in front of the teens, and eventually found they were more successful hanging back to catch the 28,000 crowd members on their way in and out.
Landesmann says he ultimately sold around 40 shirts — which he designed and printed at his family home, and presented on a rack he and Quinn crafted from plastic pipes — for $10 a pop, reaping a profit of $350. Each shirt costs a “$3 and change” to make, and he will also pay his buddy for his help.
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Landesmann doesn’t think Sanders would mind the fact that he is making a few bucks off his campaign, and doesn’t think his fledgling business runs counter to any of the pol’s principles.
“Bernie doesn’t want to get rid of capitalism, he just wants to regulate it,” said Landesmann, who plans on attending Massachusetts liberal arts school Hampshire College in the fall. “Socialism is a very broad term — I consider it to be a free-market system that’s heavily regulated so that everyone is taken care of.”
Jane Sanders, Bernie Sanders' wife, stars in emotional 60-second political ad to share a few words about the "partnership" she and Bernie have.
"We've always worked together really well and it's the work that has brought us together," Jane Sanders says. "He's been an unbelievable partner – somebody I can always count on."
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Mary Jane O'Meara Sanders is a social worker and activist. Early in her career, she worked in the Juvenile Division of the Burlington Police Department, and then as a community organizer with the King Street Area Youth Center.
Jane also served as the fourth president of Burlington College, from 2004 to 2011, and was a political consultant in a Burlington, Vermont-based firm, Leadership Strategies.
Jane has played a major role in Bernie Sanders' past campaigns, as well as his current presidential campaign. Bernie Sanders has described Jane as a "one of his key advisors" – and he has employed her as an administrative assistant, spokeswoman, policy adviser, chief of staff and media buyer in the past.