Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders this weekend brought his populist message to South Carolina where, addressing crowds of black and white voters, he spoke forcefully about criminal justice reform, police brutality, and systemic inequity.
And along for the ride on his four-day Southern sweep was Sanders’ friend and champion, black academic Dr. Cornel West, who introduced the Vermont Senator as “a brother of integrity and honesty and decency.”
“Dear brother Bernie Sanders, he is not just on the move, he is going to win,” West told the crowd of 1,000 Saturday morning at Benedict College, a historically black college located in Columbia. Last month, the Princeton University professor emeritus officially endorsed Sanders for president.
In addition to discussing his populist touchstones—income inequality, breaking up the banks, campaign finance reform, healthcare for all—Sanders also lingered on issues of racism and racial inequality.
The Hill reports:
At one point, Sanders’ warned the young crowd, “I’m going to bore you with facts; I’m not great at jokes. Alright? So let’s get some truth out there.”
He went on to cite a statistic that in 2009, 69 percent of black male high school dropouts ended up in jail, which he said is up from 15 percent in 1979. “Now it seems to me, given that reality, that tragic reality, it makes a lot more sense for us just to invest in jobs and education rather than jails and incarceration,” he said.
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