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Bernie Sanders: Dem platform for last 15 years has been a ‘failure’

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slammed the Democratic Party’s platform at an event in Mississippi on Wednesday, saying it had been a “failure.”

“The business model, if you like, of the Democratic Party for the last 15 years or so has been a failure,” Sanders said, according to The Washington Examiner.

“Now what happened — people sometimes don’t see that because of the charismatic individual named Barack Obama who won the presidency in 2008 and 2012. He was obviously an extraordinary candidate, brilliant man,” the senator continued.

“But behind that reality, over the last 10 years Democrats have lost about 1,000 seats in state legislatures all across this country.”

Sanders’s comments come as Democrats across the U.S. gear up for November’s midterm elections. Sanders has long criticized the Democratic Party’s establishment, accusing it of being beholden to special interests

Bernie Sanders, Mayor Lumumba Have Campaign-Like Chat on MLK Anniversary

Cries of “Bernie 2020!” accented the conversation between U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba at a town hall on economic justice 50 years to the night since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis.

Sanders told the crowd that he had come to Mississippi because he believes the Democratic Party has to become a 50-state party, which prompted enormous cheers from the crowd.

In line with the theme, Sanders said King was his “major political inspiration,” and that he resonates with the work for economic justice King did toward the end of his life.

“You have got to ask yourselves … how it could be that in this great country with so much wealth, we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth? Bad for whites, much worse for African Americans,” Sanders said. “How could it be that we are the only major country not to guarantee healthcare to all people—,” but the cheering crowd didn’t let him finish.

Sanders picked back up saying that Dr. King taught us to have a bold vision and to move the country forward to create the America the late hero envisioned. 



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Bernie’s Criticisms Don’t Mean Democrats Are in Disarray

In the latest iteration of the relitigation of the 2016 Democratic presidential nominating contest, Bernie Sanders said something critical about the Democratic Party this week, and people freaked out.

Sanders went out of his way to mention Obama’s brilliance, and in context it was reasonably clear he was talking about the Democratic Establishment, not necessarily the 44th president at the top of the party pyramid. But it was almost certainly the wrong place at the wrong time to make this argument, as actor Jeffrey Wright made clear:

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To put it a tad more charitably, Bernie has always, for many decades, been a gadfly when it comes to Democratic politics, and it’s a mite strange to expect him to become anything else in his mid-to-late 70s. This is why he’s never joined the Democratic Party–he feels he can’t maintain healthy pressure on the old donkey if he’s in harness with it.

And you know what? That should be okay to regular Democrats. Bernie’s gonna Bernie, and most of the time that will consign him to limited influence in the party he’s criticizing from outside the ranks. As Waldman points out, his near-conquest of the party in 2016 was the produce of extremely unusual circumstances, and probably won’t recur in 2020, even if he does ignore concerns about his age, given a larger candidate field with fewer clear left-center fault lines. But any way you slice it, Sanders’ criticisms don’t necessarily show any “disarray” or deep identity crisis among Democrats. So long as Donald Trump is in the White House, the necessity of fighting him off and putting an end to this sad national experiment in white nationalist populism or whatever you want to call it should keep Democrats unified when and where it matters quite well.

Donald Trump will not always be in the White House and income inequality and social injustice will still be as strong as ever.

https://youtu.be/qMRSmRPxxvA

Former Bernie Sanders press secretary calls for persistent effort to combat racism

The former national press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., during his presidential campaign, spoke at the Betts Theatre Wednesday about the future steps policymakers should take to address racial and economic inequalities in America.

The event was part of the annual two-day diversity summit organized by the Office for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement. At the summit, students were invited to participate in a number of smaller events that focused on various topics including race relations in America, gender biases and socio-economic inequality.

Symone Sanders, the former press secretary for Sanders’ campaign, delivered the summit’s second keynote address to an audience of students and faculty on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

At the beginning of her address, Sanders said that even though five decades have elapsed since King’s death, some of the goals he fought for during the Civil Rights Movement still haven’t been realized.

“Fifty years later, the thing that Dr. King laid down his life for, we still haven’t figured out. Fifty years later we ain’t been to the promised land – I don’t care if we’ve had a black president,” she said.

She added that King’s movement was not solely geared toward achieving a passive peace among races in America, but also aimed at reducing economic and income inequality.

“Dr. King knew that one cannot fully exist and participate in the fullness that America has to offer if they are hampered economically, so he put the poor people’s fight together,” Sanders said.

NYPD settles lawsuit after illegally spying on Muslims

Muslim leaders and their lawyers say a settlement of legal claims that the New York City Police Department illegally spied on Muslims empowers them to prevent future abuse.

The deal was announced Thursday by the city and the Islamic community.

Baher Azmy, legal director of Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), told a news conference that the agreement ensures the NYPD will act legally as an increasingly empowered Muslim community asserts its rights.

The agreement resolved a 2012 suit in Newark, New Jersey, after the Associated Press revealed how the NYPD infiltrated Muslim student groups and put informants in mosques to try to prevent terrorist attacks.

By the NYPD’s own admission the blanket surveillance failed to produce a single intelligence lead.

“There is no reason a police officer should be scribbling notes on little girls attending school, or noting what type of clothes someone wore to a store. This was not lawful policing, it was blatant discrimination against innocent Americans,” said Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates which brought the lawsuit jointly with CCR.

Under the terms of the settlement, the NYPD confirmed that it has dismantled the surveillance unit formerly known as the “demographics unit” that carried out the spying on Muslim communities. The department also agreed that it would not engage in religious-based surveillance in the future in New Jersey, as it had already accepted for New York.

‘Saheed is no gunman’: hundreds protest in New York against police shooting

Hundreds of people have marched through the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Crown Heights to protest against police for shooting an unarmed black man.

Saheed Vassell, 34, was shot and killed by police on Wednesday afternoon. The New York police department said it had received calls that a man was wielding a gun, but it turned out to be a metal pipe.

People blocked the corner of Utica Avenue and Montgomery Street, where Vassell was shot, chanting: “no justice, no peace”. Vassell’s mother, Lorna Vassell, was among those to address the crowd.

“Saheed came from a good family, and they had no right to shoot him down the way they did, because Saheed is no gunman,” Vassell said on Thursday night. “They murdered my son and I want justice for him.”

Vassell would regularly hang out at the corner where he was shot, residents said, and was known to suffer from mental illness.

Oklahoma teachers ride wave of support in march to capital: ‘It’s for the kids’

“Wool socks, that’s what I need,” says the retired teacher Robert Niemi, 68, as he takes off his white cotton socks in an effort to keep his feet dry and prevent blisters.

Niemi is one of more than 125 teachers and their supporters marching 110 miles to demand action on badly needed classroom supplies.

They left Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Wednesday for a seven-day walk to the state capital, Oklahoma City.

“Yesterday, I only made it halfway, but today I hope to make it all the way to Bristow,” adds Niemi as a blast of wind hits us in the face.

As news helicopters constantly hover overhead broadcasting the march down historic Route 66, neighbors have begun to gather outside their homes to provide food, water, and words of encouragement to the marchers on their grueling trek.

Teachers In Other States Are Striking. Texas Teachers Can’t Do That.

Teachers in states across the nation are going on strike to protest funding cuts for public education. But a Texas law is quashing talk of teachers here joining the walkouts.

The statute, enacted in 1993, says any employees who “strike or engage in an organized work stoppage against the state or a political subdivision of the state” will lose all their “civil service rights, reemployment rights, and any other rights, benefits, and privileges the employee enjoys as a result of public employment or former public employment.”

While supportive of the movements happening in other states, several Texas teachers associations are encouraging their members to refrain from leaving their classrooms and going on strike. Doing so, advocates say, could result in having their teaching certificates and Teacher Retirement System benefits permanently revoked.

“Teachers in Texas have a pension,” said Paul Tapp, the managing attorney for the Association of Texas Professional Educators. “That’s a benefit that they have because of their public employment, so we’ve always warned teachers that when it comes to going on strike, there’s a risk beyond losing their jobs.”

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Texas teachers are feeling the squeeze due to a lack of state funding for public education. During the 2008 fiscal year, the state covered roughly 48.5 percent of the cost of public education, according to the Legislative Budget Board. By the 2019 fiscal year, it will support closer to 38 percent. And educators have long expressed their grievances over inadequate funding for public schools, which many argue cuts into their salaries. In 2016, they earned roughly $6,500 below the national average for teacher pay.

“They say don’t mess with Texas, but I say don’t mess with Texas teachers,” said Hugh Brady, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “They’ve been stretched so far they’re at the breaking point.”

Former Trump aide approved ‘black ops’ to help Ukraine president

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort authorised a secret media operation on behalf of Ukraine’s former president featuring “black ops”, “placed” articles in the Wall Street Journal and US websites and anonymous briefings against Hillary Clinton.

The project was designed to boost the reputation of Ukraine’s then leader, Viktor Yanukovych. It was part of a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort carried out by Manafort on behalf of Yanukovych’s embattled government, emails and documents reveal.

The strategies included:

• Proposing to rewrite Wikipedia entries to smear a key opponent of the then Ukrainian president.

• Setting up a fake thinktank in Vienna to disseminate viewpoints supporting Yanukovych.

• A social media blitz “aimed at targeted audiences in Europe and the US”.

• Briefing journalists from the rightwing website Breitbart to attack Clinton when she was US secretary of state.

Seems a bit familiar!

So what do you think of our new @OurRevolution logo? I love it! pic.twitter.com/8nc2BhSQUt

— James J. Zogby (@jjz1600) April 6, 2018

I stand with the lecturers demanding a living wage and fair benefits. Some of my best teachers at Michigan we’re lecturers, and more and more of the burden of teaching is falling on them. Time to empower them. https://t.co/GJ1rFRAC1H

— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) April 5, 2018