Bernie has NO detailed plans! Grand ideas but no substance.

[senz]

61. Bernie on Achieving Racial Justice

Achieving Racial Justice

Addressing Physical Violence

We must demilitarize our police forces so they don’t look and act like invading armies.

We must invest in community policing. Only when we get officers into the communities, working within neighborhoods before trouble arises, do we develop the relationships necessary to make our communities safer together. Among other things, that means increasing civilian oversight of police departments.

We need police forces that reflect the diversity of our communities.

At the federal level we need to establish a new model police training program that reorients the way we do law enforcement in this country. With input from a broad segment of the community including activists and leaders from organizations like Black Lives Matter we will reinvent how we police America.

We need to federally fund and require body cameras for law enforcement officers to make it easier to hold them accountable.

Our Justice Department must aggressively investigate and prosecute police officers who break the law and hold them accountable for their actions.

We need to require police departments and states to provide public reports on all police shootings and deaths that take place while in police custody.

We need new rules on the allowable use of force. Police officers need to be trained to de-escalate confrontations and to humanely interact with people who have mental illnesses.

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.

We need to make sure the federal resources are there to crack down on the illegal activities of hate groups.

Addressing Political Violence

We need to re-enfranchise the more than two million African Americans who have had their right to vote taken away by a felony conviction.

Congress must restore the Voting Rights Act’s “pre-clearance” provision, which extended protections to minority voters in states where they were clearly needed.

We must expand the Act’s scope so that every American, regardless of skin color or national origin, is able to vote freely.

We need to make Election Day a federal holiday to increase voters’ ability to participate.

We must make early voting an option for voters who work or study and need the flexibility to vote on evenings or weekends.

We must make no-fault absentee ballots an option for all Americans.

Every American over 18 must be registered to vote automatically, so that students and working people can make their voices heard at the ballot box.

We must put an end to discriminatory laws and the purging of minority-community names from voting rolls.

We need to make sure that there are sufficient polling places and poll workers to prevent long lines from forming at the polls anywhere.

Addressing Legal Violence

We need to ban prisons for profit, which result in an over-incentive to arrest, jail and detain, in order to keep prison beds full.

We need to turn back from the failed “War on Drugs” and eliminate mandatory minimums which result in sentencing disparities between black and white people.

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.

We need to boost investments for programs that help people who have gone to jail rebuild their lives with education and job training.

We must abolish civil asset forfeiture programs which allow police departments to seize property from people who have not been convicted of a crime and profit off of such seizures.

Addressing Economic Violence

We need to give our children, regardless of their race or their income, a fair shot at attending college. That’s why all public universities should be made tuition free.

We must invest $5.5 billion in a federally-funded youth employment program to employ young people of color who face disproportionately high unemployment rates.

Knowing that black women earn 64 cents on the dollar compared to white men, we must pass federal legislation to establish pay equity for women.

We must prevent employers from discriminating against applicants based on criminal history.

We need to ensure access to quality affordable childcare for working families.

https://berniesanders.com/issues/racial-justice/