Bernie Sanders Laces Speech With Themes of Race, and Gets Warm Reception From Activists
"Senator Bernie Sanders wove issues of race and civil rights into his standard speech about income inequality and overhauling the campaign finance system on Thursday as he sought to win over an influential crowd of black leaders.
“I have a history of being blunt, so let’s be blunt today,” Mr. Sanders said to open his remarks to the National Action Network annual conference in New York, put on by the group’s founder, the Rev. Al Sharpton.
He listed his usual litany of complaints with the political system and the influence of Wall Street, but he tried to root that message more distinctly in race, weaving quotes from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. into his remarks.
“Dr. King recognized it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis, in a full-time job, getting part-time income,” Mr. Sanders said. “That was the 1960s. Sad to say, it is still true today in many respects.”
Mr. Sanders spoke a day after Hillary Clinton received a lukewarm reception from the crowd, partly because her remarks were heavily reliant on policy proposals rather than rallying cries.
Mr. Sanders, of Vermont, did not talk policy and did not overly adapt his remarks to the crowd. But his words played well. At points the audience chanted, “Bernie! Bernie!” Cries of “Tell it, Bernie!” rang out when he listed unemployment statistics for African-American youth.
“How is it possible we have trillions of dollars to spend on a war in Iraq we should have never gotten into but somehow we don’t have the funds to rebuild inner cities?” he said to a roar of applause."
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/14/bernie-sanders-laces-speech-with-themes-of-race-and-gets-warm-reception-from-activists/
It was a good speech!
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