Calling for “a new relationship with the Native American people,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday came to this Oglala Lakota reservation to put a spotlight on poverty and to detail proposals to create jobs, raise wages and reduce growing wealth and income inequality in America.
“There is a lot of pain in the community,” Sanders told a forum that focused on poverty, inadequate health care and schools. “We’ve got a lot of work to do but nothing ever good happens if people give up. You’ve got to stand up and be involved in the political process.”
“The reason we are here today is to try to understand what is going on in Pine Ridge and other reservations,” Sanders said. “There are a lot of problems here. Poverty is much too high. There are not enough decent jobs in the area. The health care system is inadequate. And we need to fundamentally change the relationship between the U.S. government and the Native American community.”
The reservation sprawls across three counties that are among the poorest in the United States. Forty-nine percent of residents in Pine Ridge live below the poverty line including 61 percent of those under the age of 18. Per capita annual income is just $6,286. The infant mortality rate on the reservation is five times greater than the national average. Life expectancy is just 48 years for men and 52 for women. The high school dropout rate is 70 percent and the teacher turnover rate is eight times the national average.
Told that the Indian Health Service is a “failure,” Sanders called for the United States to join the rest of the industrialized world and provide health care as a right for all Americans. He also said he would lower sky-high prices for prescription drugs and push for tuition-free public colleges and universities.
Speaking at the site of the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890, Sanders said the United States and Native Americans must develop “a new relationship.” He added, “We owe a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid.”
KOTA Territory is pretty conservative country but don't tell that to Bernie Sanders who was greeted enthusiastically by 3,300 people Thursday in downtown Rapid City's Memorial Park.
Sanders is vying with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination and is far behind her in the delegate count. But he's vowing to fight to the end and that means June 7, the last day on the primary calendar and the day South Dakota votes.
So the Vermont Senator brought his progressive message here.
“Our vision a vision of economic justice, of social justice of racial justice, of environmental justice is the future of America,” said Sanders.
And found the message resonated with some residents.
“I think anybody who really just wants equality for everybody -- be at natural born immigrants or people who are trying to come over here -- I think that's a really positive thing,” said Box Elder resident Nate Dennis.
Added Lead’s Josh McDonald: “We need someone who's not in the political establishment to come out and give voice and opinion to regular people throughout the nation and Bernie Sanders has done that better than all the candidates that are out there now,” he said.
Four years of free college, universal health care, and re-distribution of wealth – the staples of the Bernie Sanders campaign echoed through the Sioux Falls convention center on Thursday night to the cheers of nearly 4,300 supporters.
From the beginning Sanders emphasized his feeling that the nation is rigged in favor of big business. From corporate greed buying politicians to tax loopholes allowing big business to skip out on paying Uncle Sam, even calling out Wal-Mart for paying low wages, the Democrat made it clear that his campaign is about standing up for the little guy and returning balance of power to the people.
Sanders also spoke of fixing what he called the problems no one wants to talk about, including “transforming our relationship with the Native American people,” a reference to his visit to Pine Ridge earlier in the day. He also called for better care for the nation’s Veterans and senior citizens, saying we can’t expect those on Social Security to live on ten to eleven thousand dollars a year.
The Democrat also emphasized his vision of free college tuition at public universities, saying if they can make it work in Germany and Scandinavia it can be done in America. Sanders said fifty years ago, a K-12 education was enough to allow Americans to get a job that paid a living wage, however today that isn’t the case. Sanders called his vision an “investment in our young people,” saying it would provide the country with a strong economy and good jobs for everyone. He also said it would provide children of low income families with a path to a brighter future, as long as the commit to their studies and do well in school.
..
It wasn’t all cheers for the Vermont Democrat all night; a slip of the tongue at the start of the rally had Sanders saying “Sioux City is ready for a political revolution.” After a chorus of boos, Sanders corrected himself and the cheers returned.
Sioux Falls was the final leg of a one day, three city tour of South Dakota; Sanders began the day in Pine Ridge then held a rally in Rapid City before his appearance at the Convention Center. He’s also scheduled to visit Fargo, ND on Friday the 13th.
Not much has changed in our community despite the fact that many in Washington are now aware of the living conditions in reservation communities across the Great Plains. How is it that for more than fifty years, lawmakers have opted to allow for Indian Country to become the symbol for intergenerational poverty? We here so many Washington insiders talk of rebuilding nations in the Middle East, yet, for a fraction of the investment the U.S. has made in Iraq our communities could have been rebuilt.
Today Bernie Sanders will arrive on the reservation and see first-hand the very same things that both Robert Kennedy and President Bill Clinton saw when they toured our community decades ago. They will see elderly people living without running water. They will see children being raised in addiction burdened homes. And they will see people dying of diseases that firstworld countries have long forgot to view as a threat. He will also confront the reality that the federal programs serving Indian Country (that have been guaranteed through treaties and Supreme Court decisions) are still grossly underfunded and thus inadequate. The current state of Indian Country is the direct result of policy decisions made by the United States government and this truth is what Bernie must take away from his visit to Pine Ridge.
When I came out and endorsed Bernie Sanders earlier this year it was because I saw a man who was running for President of the United States for all the right reasons. His campaign was not funded by the big banks or the powers behind the corporate news media. He, like many of us, was doing his work for the people. This is why Bernie is different.
If real change is to ever come to Indian Country, it will not come packaged by the political elites who stand to benefit from the status-quo. It will come in the form of a man like Bernie who has chosen to put the people before campaign contributions.
As teenagers Sam Tew, April Barfield, Max Laughlin and Beth Tew walked out of Memorial Park following the Bernie Sanders rally there Thursday afternoon they yelled “feel the Bern” and hoisted high their campaign signs.
The group clad in "feel the Bern" T-shirts and rainbow flag Bernie Sanders buttons said they appreciated Sanders' support for African Americans and the LGBT community.
"Especially because I'm both of those things," Barfield, 17, said.
Barfield, 17, and Laughlin, 18, said they can't wait for June to be able to vote for Sanders in the South Dakota primary. Twin sisters Sam and Beth Tew, both 16, said they support Sanders and wish they could vote for him, too.
“I’ve always been bullied for being transgender and gay, so the fact that he stands for equal rights for everyone, even if you’re gay or if you’re a different race or if you’re a white middle-aged man voting for Trump, he believes in all equality. And that’s what’s important,” Laughlin said.
Laughlin said she plans to study marine biology and equine science, two fields that could create a lot of debt.
“With Bernie’s plan I won’t have to go into as much debt,” Laughlin said. “And that would be good because I like to eat and, you know, survive.”
“I thought it was more an ideologically driven desire to bring issues up” than personal ambition, Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said of Mr. Sanders’s foray into presidential politics.
But to the surprise of many on Capitol Hill, Mr. Sanders has stayed in the primary race longer than any of his rivals across the aisle. In addition to Messrs. Cruz and Rubio, Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina waged unsuccessful primary bids.
“He’s surprised a lot of people and exceeded a lot of people’s expectations,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, a member of the Senate GOP leadership.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) said he had expected Mrs. Clinton to blunt Mr. Sanders’s momentum much earlier in the process. Instead, Mr. Sanders has continued winning contests, including Indiana last week and the West Virginia primary Tuesday.
“My gosh, at his age, to be able to be as energetic as he is, that’s terrific,” the 82-year-old Mr. Hatch said of the 74-year-old Mr. Sanders. “I don’t agree with him. I think he’s basically a socialist, but I give him a lot of credit.”..
His stances “deeply resonate with the American public,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore), the only senator to endorse Mr. Sanders, concurs. “That’s why he’s still in the campaign.”
Mr. Merkley noted that political prognosticators, including lawmakers, have misjudged this election year at every turn. “Nobody thought that Trump would still be in the race and nobody thought Bernie would still be in the race. That kind of sums it up,” he said.
After a George W. Bush-appointed federal judge had issued a ruling that could jeopardize health insurance subsidies for 5.9 million Americans, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders hammered the GOP.
In a statement, Sen. Sanders said:
At a time when the United States is the only major country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all Americans – and 29 million people still lack insurance – it would be a disaster to throw millions of low-income Americans off health insurance. I fully expect that today’s decision will be reversed.
The last eight years have proven that Republicans have no interest in universal health care. Instead, they have tried time and time again to take health care away from the 20 million newly insured Americans. We should be talking about how to make health care a right for all Americans, not finding new ways to make health care unaffordable.
Instead of gutting the Affordable Care Act, we need to expand on the improvements that it has made to our health care system. The time has come for the United States to join every major country on earth in guaranteeing health care as a right to every man, woman, and child.
In New Jersey, county clerks often determine ballot positions by randomly drawing county candidates’ names from a well-shaken wooden box. Sanders' campaign says those drawings can favor establishment and other candidates who are aligned — or “bracketed” — with the county candidates.
Had Sanders not assembled his own slate of affiliated county candidates, he could have ended up in New Jersey's version of "ballot Siberia," said State Assemblyman John Wisniewski, Sanders’ state chairman. That could have handed Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, a major advantage in last month's drawings.
In the end, Sanders got the prime ballot position in seven counties and will appear in the next column in most others.
His campaign's close scrutiny of New Jersey's quirky ballot process reflects Sanders' determination to win every delegate possible in the state’s June 7 primary. Although he has almost no chance to win the Democratic presidential nomination, his final haul of pledged delegates will determine his clout at the party's convention in July and his ability to shape its platform.
“You want to be part of the drawing so that at a minimum, if you don’t get (column) A you get B,” Wisniewski said. “If you’re not part of that, you can be literally anywhere on the ballot.”
..
Sanders was the first 2016 presidential candidate — from either party — to court New Jersey voters in person, with rallies that drew thousands at Rutgers University on Sunday and in Atlantic City on Monday. But it won't be an easy fight. Clinton defeated then-senator Barack Obama by 10 points in the state's 2008 presidential primary, and she had a 28-point lead over Sanders in the most recent Monmouth University poll.
Bernie Sanders' run for the presidency has helped the Democrats draw a sharp, positive contrast with the Republicans, Sen. Elizabeth Warren says.
In a wide-ranging interview Tuesday, Warren — who's been mentioned as a potential Hillary Clinton running mate — said Sanders has "put forward the arguments about what it means to be a Democrat."
"What Bernie has done, and this whole Bernie/Hillary [primary] process, has been to really draw the distinction between what it means to be a Democrat and what the Democrats stand for and what the Republicans are out there standing for, and I've got to say: I'm proud to be a Democrat," she said in an interview with Mic's Zeeshan Aleem.
Warren, one of the clarion voices of the Democratic Party's left flank, said the Clinton-Sanders debates suggested that the candidates differences on major issues were a matter of degrees, not deep divides.
"So what have the Democrats debated?" Warren asked. "'Should the minimum wage be $12 an hour or $15 an hour?' But all Democrats are saying that we need to raise the minimum wage and we need to make it a living wage."
She drew similar comparisons to the candidates' give and take over the cost of college and Wall Street regulation.
Full Transcript Here
“The American people understand there’s something wrong when they are working longer hours for lower wages, and almost all new income and wealth goes to the 1 percent. They understand there’s something wrong when we are the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all of our people or paid family and medical leave. Bottom line is, the American people are not going to go to an establishment billionaire who changes his mind every day. They want I think a president who has a life history of fighting for working people and prepared to take on big money interests.”
Sanders dropped two words on Trump that will doom his chances in November, and they were not “complete phony.” Most voters already know that Trump is a fraud. The soft underbelly of Trump’s campaign that Republicans were never able to exploit is that he is an establishment billionaire.
There is little difference between Trump and Mitt Romney. Just like Romney, Trump is working hard to hide the fact that he has no connection to the struggles and issue that matter to ordinary Americans. Trump’s sales pitch is about making things great and doing good things, but he never expresses and understanding of the struggles of the people who he wants to vote for him.
The reason for his lack of concern and understanding is that Trump is an establishment billionaire. Trump isn’t like the rest of us. His money has always given him access to highest levels of political power within the Republican Party. Trump isn’t the Republican establishment. He is the American establishment.
Bernie Sanders nailed it. The attack that will beat Trump in November isn’t limited to his inability to tell the truth. Donald Trump will lose because he is a walking billboard for billionaire entitlement and economic inequality.
n a last-minute addition to his North Dakota visit, Bernie Sanders' wife will speak to supporters Friday in Grand Forks.
Jane Sanders will speak at Archives Coffee House in Grand Forks, the Sanders campaign announced Thursday night. Doors for the event open at 10:30 a.m. Friday at 3012 University Ave.
The South Dakota primary is still weeks away, but a number of Bernie Sanders supporters see it as a great time to get people excited and bring them together.
Black Hills Bernfest 2016 will take place Friday night at The Seed Theater as a way to gear up for the primary and a celebration with music, dance, spoken word and more.
The event, courtesy of Black Hills for Bernie Sanders, will feature Sanders literature, volunteer opportunities and voter registration forms (donations will not be accepted, however).
"We really just wanted to have an event to bring supporters together and celebrate all of the hard work in the community," said Rachel Caesar, co-chair for Black Hills for Bernie Sanders.
..
Christianson was also happy to announce that Nicole Willis, Bernie Sanders' National Tribal Outreach Director, would attend and speak at the event.
Black Hills Bernfest's organizers said that they hoped the event would extend beyond Bernie Sanders.
"It's thrilling to find support beyond Bernie Sanders, for environmental justice, having effect on legislation and putting progressive leaders in," Boyle said.