Bernie Sanders
Related: About this forumSanders speech before the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Posted by Clayguy61 in Good Reads. Please show him some love for posting it. http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016128594
Fabulous speech!
So we can have it in our group to discuss, I am also posting a portion here:
Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice. We know their names. Each of them died unarmed at the hands of police officers or in police custody. The chants are growing louder. People are angry. I am angry. And people have a right to be angry. Violence and brutality of any kind, particularly at the hands of law enforcement sworn to protect and serve our communities, is unacceptable and must not be tolerated.
We must reform our criminal justice system. Black lives do matter. And we must value black lives.
We must move away from the militarization of police forces. We must invest in community policing. Only when we get officers into the communities, working within the neighborhoods before trouble arises, do we really develop the relationships necessary to make our communities safer.
We need a federal initiative to completely redo how we train police officers in this country and give them body cameras. States and localities that make progress in this area should get more federal justice grant money. Those that do not should get their funding slashed. The measure of success for law enforcement should not be how many people get locked up.
For people who have committed crimes that have landed them in jail, there needs to be a path back from prison. The federal system of parole needs to be reinstated. We need real education and real skills training for the incarcerated.
We must end the over incarceration of non-violent young Americans who do not pose a serious threat to our society. It is an international embarrassment that we have more people locked up in jail than any other country on earth more than even the Communist totalitarian state of China. That has got to end.
The war on drugs has been a failure and has ruined the lives of too many people. African-Americans comprise 14 percent of regular drug users but are 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses. From 1980 to 2007, about one in three adults arrested for drugs was African-American.
It is an obscenity that we stigmatize so many young Americans with a criminal record for smoking marijuana, but not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy. This must change.
We need to end prisons for profit, which result in an over-incentive to arrest, jail and detain, in order to keep prison beds full. We need to invest in drug courts and medical and mental health interventions for people with substance abuse problems, so that they do not end up in prison, they end up in treatment.
But we have to go beyond just violence perpetuated by the state. As we saw so horribly in South Carolina, there are still those who seek to terrorize the African American community with violence and intimidation. We need to make sure the federal resources are there to crack down on the illegal activities of hate groups. We need a new social movement to let all the racist haters out there know that they will no longer be accepted in a civilized society.
In addition to the physical violence faced by too many in our country we need look at the lives of black children and address a few other difficult facts. Black children, who make up just 18 percent of preschoolers, account for 48 percent of all out-of-school suspensions before kindergarten. We are failing our black children before kindergarten! Black students were expelled at three times the rate of white students. Black girls were suspended at higher rates than all other girls and most boys. According to the Department of Education, African American students are more likely to suffer harsh punishments suspensions and arrests at school.
We need to take a hard look at education system. Black students attended schools with higher concentrations of first-year teachers, compared with white students. Black students were more than three times as likely to attend schools where fewer than 60 percent of teachers meet all state certification and licensure requirements.
We must get into our schools and keep kids in school. We must ensure that children graduate from high school and dont drop out. This is a complicated problem and Im not going to stand here and say I have all the answers.
But one thing that will help kids stay in school is if they have a belief that they will be able to get a college education. For too many families college seems like an impossibility. We have got to change that. We need to give our children, regardless of their race or their income, a fair shot at attending college. Thats why I support making all public universities tuition free.
Communities of color also face the violence of economic deprivation. Lets be frank: neighborhoods like those in west Baltimore, where Freddie Gray resided, suffer the most. However, the problem of economic immobility isnt just a problem for young men like Freddie Gray. It has become a problem for millions of Americans who, despite hard-work and the will to get ahead, can spend their entire lives struggling to survive on the economic treadmill.
We live at a time when most Americans dont have $10,000 in savings, and millions of working adults have no idea how they will ever retire in dignity. God forbid, they are confronted with an unforeseen car accident, a medical emergency, or the loss of a job. It would literally send their lives into an economic tailspin. And the problems are even more serious when we consider race.
Much more at link: Sanders remarks at SCLC
Thank you, Senator Sanders for this!
Beartracks
(12,809 posts)marym625
(17,997 posts)jwirr
(39,215 posts)night and mainly to keep the kids from raising hell. I remember he did two things to reach that goal.
Early in the evening he knew which kids were likely to be out there and might get into trouble. He would gather them together and take them out to the dump where they would shot rats with the guns he had in the car. In doing this he taught them how to safely use a gun and he kept them off the street.
Later in the evening he sometimes would see the older kids driving drunk and pick them up but he did not arrest them. He either took them home or if they were unable to go home for some reason he let them sleep it off in the jail and let them go when they woke up.
Old fashioned community policing. Years later I was visiting him and went out with one of my friends. Didn't know a soul other than her but as soon as the kids found oui I was his granddaughter I was welcomed. They all loved him.
Elmer S. E. Dump
(5,751 posts)I like what he said. I think what he said is reasonable, and who else is talking like this?
marym625
(17,997 posts)stillwaiting
(3,795 posts)I have no doubt that Bernie GETS this and will ACT on this more than any other candidate running.
I hope that others come to the same conclusion.
He's been a fighter for average Americans and for what is RIGHT for so very long.
Social issues have always been important to Bernie, and he has almost always done the right thing. Many, many times over many, many years.
marym625
(17,997 posts)And thanks!
historylovr
(1,557 posts)It's disappointing to see the other thread seems to have escaped notice of those who wanted to hear just this, however. Too bad. They're missing something good.
marym625
(17,997 posts)With good reception
historylovr
(1,557 posts)It's not just a great speech, it's a very important one too.
marym625
(17,997 posts)beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)If you're tired of the meme that Bernie doesn't care about social justice, rec this op.
Post the text and link to it whenever they push their false narrative.
Thank you for posting it, mary.
marym625
(17,997 posts)And every single person should hear it. Someone posted a link to the video of it on the other thread
Pastiche423
(15,406 posts)marym625
(17,997 posts)Not like the stalkish, blind love some people have for certain politicians. Just regular love