Bernie Sanders Fights for Civil Rights [View all]

[cui bono]

There seems to be some confusion about Sanders' stance on social issues. This should help clarify where he stands - and has stood for decades now - on racial equality.

Sanders was an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and participated in the historic March on Washington in 1963 as a 22-year-old student at the University of Chicago. "It was a question for me of just basic justice — the fact that it was not acceptable in America at that point that you had large numbers of African Americans who couldn't vote, who couldn't eat in a restaurant, whose kids were going to segregated schools, who couldn't get hotel accommodations living in segregated housing," he told the Burlington Free Press. "That was clearly a major American injustice and something that had to be dealt with."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2015/04/29/399818581/5-things-you-should-know-about-bernie-sanders

March on Washington A 22-year old college student was among the more than 200,000 people who traveled hundreds of miles to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil right leaders. It was Bernie Sanders’ first trip to Washington. "There has been some real progress in breaking down barriers of discrimination and segregation, including the election and re-election of an African-American president. On the other hand, in terms of unemployment, low wages and more wealth disparity, we are worse off than we were in 1963," he said. The formal name of the gathering was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. “Jobs came first, an acknowledgement that the ability to enjoy liberty depends upon having the economic wherewithal to exercise our rights. The organizing manual for the march … spoke of demands that included “dignified jobs at decent wages.” It is a demand as relevant as ever,” E.J. Dionne Jr., wrote in The Washington Post.
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/recent-business/the-week-in-review-082313