‘Keep This Hospital Open’: Bernie Sanders Joins Rally In Philadelphia To Protest Hahnemann University Hospital’s Closure

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders joined in a big rally Monday to protest the closure of Hahnemann University Hospital. The Vermont senator was with hundreds of supporters outside of the hospital on Monday afternoon.

Last month, the hospital announced plans to shut down in September, citing financial issues.

Sanders says health care should be a guaranteed right for all Americans and he used the hospital’s closure to drive home that point.

“The issue that brings us here today is not complicated. At a time when our country faces a major health care crisis, when 80 million Americans are either uninsured or underinsured, including tens of thousands of people here in the Philadelphia area, we should be moving, we must be moving forward to guarantee health care to all the people as a right,” the presidential candidate said.

Sanders took aim at Joel Freedman, the hospital CEO and owner.

“We’re sending a very loud and clear message to Mr. Joel Freedman, the investment banker from Los Angeles, and that message is as simple as one can imagine and that is do not shut down this hospital,” Sander said to a roaring crowd. “Work with local officials, work with the unions and the people of this city and keep this hospital open.”

Sanders added his voice to a growing chorus of those condemning Hahnemann University Hospital’s closure.

“It’s insane,” Sanders said in an exclusive interview with CBS3 prior to the rally. “If you look at this thing objectively and you say that in the midst of a health care crisis, a hospital is being converted into a real estate opportunity in order to make some wealthy guy even more money, ignoring the health care needs of thousands of people, that is pretty crazy.”

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Good morning friends! Since yesterday’s thread is fairly full here is a new one! Have a great day!

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Sanders in Las Vegas: ‘We are taking on virtually everyone’

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders detailed a long list of institutions Saturday that his revolution-themed presidential campaign seeks to challenge, from pharmaceutical and fossil fuel companies to wealthy political donors and members of the Republican and Democratic parties.

“We are taking on virtually everyone,” Sanders, a Democratic candidate, told a church full of supporters while campaigning in Las Vegas.

Sanders, who kept a popular political following after his 2016 primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, told the crowd their support would help topple power concentrated in corporations, the wealthy and the establishment.

“The one percent has enormous wealth and power. But you know what we’ve got? Ninety-nine percent is a hell of a lot bigger number than one percent,” Sanders said to loud cheers.

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Later Saturday afternoon, Sanders met with veterans and their family members at the Veterans Village, a nonprofit that provides housing, food, employment training and more for veterans, particularly homeless veterans.

Sanders asked questions of those in the room, including querying the veterans who had been homeless about how they managed to survive living on the streets of Las Vegas with the triple-digit summer temperatures.

Veterans described how they struggled to find places to stay cool or clean, the burdensome paperwork they have to fill out to receive health care and other benefits and the difficulty of learning about what help is available to them.

“We have a moral responsibility,” Sanders said. “If a country is worth anything, it is how we treat those people who put their lives on the line to defend us. And frankly, we have not been doing anywhere near as much as we should.”

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Bernie Is the Best Candidate on Palestine

In an interview last year with the New Yorker, Palestinian author and activist Yousef Bashir recounted his 2017 visit to Bernie Sanders’s congressional office with a group of Israeli students. “I told Bernie he was the most popular Jew in Gaza since Moses,” Bashir recalled.

And for good reason.

Alone among the major presidential candidates, Sanders has repeatedly spoken out about Israel’s violence against Palestinians. During the last Gaza War, in 2014, he called Israel’s use of force “disproportionate” and “indiscriminate.” He publicly condemned Israel’s killing of peaceful Palestinian protesters during last year’s Great March of Return. “Innocent people are being killed,” Sanders told the Intercept. “Those are terrible actions. Instead of applauding Israel for its actions, Israel should be condemned.” In an additional tweet, Sanders called the deaths “tragic” and unequivocally defended Palestinians’ freedom of assembly, saying: “It is the right of all people to protest for a better future without a violent response.”

And while many US politicians have rushed to blame Gazans for their own dire circumstances, Sanders has instead pointed to the prolonged Israeli siege as the source of the humanitarian crisis. In a coauthored letter to secretary of state Mike Pompeo last year, Sanders decried the massive levels of unemployment and poverty in the blockaded Strip and reminded the Trump appointee that “while Israel withdrew its forces from within Gaza in 2005, its continuing control of Gaza’s air, sea, northern, southern, and eastern borders have made the humanitarian crisis there even worse.” He reiterated his call for rebuilding Gaza, easing the blockade, and restoring US funds to UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East).

Not surprisingly, Sanders’s outspoken support for Palestinians has put him in the crosshairs of hawkish pro-Israel groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). During the last presidential campaign, Sanders was the only major candidate to decline to appear in person at AIPAC’s annual conference. When AIPAC refused to allow him to address the conference by video link from the campaign trail, Sanders recorded a speech addressed to the AIPAC audience and posted it online. “We have also got to be a friend, not only to Israel, but to the Palestinian people,” Sanders said in his remarks. “When we talk about Israel and Palestinian areas, it is important to understand that today there is a whole lot of suffering among Palestinians and that cannot be ignored.” Sanders also skipped this year’s AIPAC conference. In response, AIPAC has targeted the Vermont senator in Facebook ads in key Democratic primary states, urging users to sign an online petition telling Sanders that “America stands with Israel.”

Compare that to Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who insisted before a large crowd of AIPAC donors last March that “too many Palestinians and too many Arabs do not want any Jewish state in the Middle East” because “they don’t believe in the Torah.” Or Democratic presidential candidates like Joe Biden, who gushed to a group of AIPAC-affiliated donors in 2014: “Send a message to Bibi: I love him, I love him.” Or Pete Buttigieg, who recently snagged an endorsement from former AIPAC president Steve Grossman. Or Kamala Harris, who turned her private meeting in March with California AIPAC into a very public one on Twitter. Or Cory Booker, who has met regularly with AIPAC representatives to coordinate a “unified voice from Congress” against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. (While stridently pro-Israel in the past, Elizabeth Warren has taken a more balanced stance of late, including signing on to the Pompeo letter.)

Amid this sea of anti-Palestinian sentiment, Sanders has consistently expressed his support for Palestinians’ civil rights in the United States. He staunchly opposed the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, a bipartisan bill that criminalizes the boycotting of Israel. He was quick to condemn another bill, the Combating BDS Act, sponsored by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), tweeting: “It’s absurd that the first bill during the shutdown is legislation which punishes Americans who exercise their constitutional right to engage in political activity.”

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