- 1 week ago
Bernie Sanders speaks with Tanya Christian about his plan for 2020 Presidential Candidacy.
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00:00I can guarantee there will be one old white guy there, but we don't know.
00:05I suspect there will not be too many others.
00:20So I will start with what message would you like to send to black women voters?
00:25That we are going to do everything humanly possible, not only to end institutional racism in this country,
00:38but to finally guarantee the human rights that all Americans are entitled to, which have not been delivered.
00:46And by that I mean health care is a human right, I mean education is a human right, affordable housing is a human right,
00:59the right to drink clean water when you turn on your tap, right to know that your kids are not getting asthma because of the pollution in your community,
01:09which is happening much too much in African American communities.
01:14And to tell the African American women of this country that the government that we are going to have will look like America.
01:23Our cabinet will look like America.
01:26I can guarantee there will be one old white guy there, but we don't know.
01:31I suspect there will not be too many others.
01:33Okay.
01:34And you bring up a good point about diversity and why do you feel like it's important to surround yourself with diverse voices?
01:44And I can obviously see that in the room based on your campaign.
01:48We're very proud of the diversity in our campaign and that's what our government will look like.
01:52One of the ugliest things about the very ugly Trump administration is he, in a unique way, unprecedented way, is trying to divide our country up based on the color of our skin or where we were born or our sexual orientation or even our religion.
02:09And I believe, as somebody, by the way, whose father came to this country from Poland, I'm the son of an immigrant, that this country belongs to all of us.
02:19It's black and white, Latino, Native American, Asian American.
02:23And that's the kind of America that I will try to build.
02:28And in that process, our government will look like America and our message to the world is that we are one people.
02:35And that we're going to come together around an agenda that works for all of us and not just the very wealthy.
02:42So we're sitting here at Morehouse College.
02:46Many people in the black community understand why these schools are so important.
02:51I know you recently came off of an HBCU tour.
02:54And why do you feel that HBCUs are so important to this country?
02:58They are enormously important.
02:59And I will confess to you that if you asked me that question five years ago, I would not have known the answer.
03:06There is no question that at a time when we do not have enough African-American professionals, we need more African-American doctors, nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, teachers.
03:21It is to a very significant degree the HBCUs who are providing that.
03:30And it is no great secret that a lot of HBCUs are struggling today.
03:34And we are going to provide the kind of support that they need.
03:39So we are going to make public colleges and universities in general for the whole country tuition-free and many HBCUs are public colleges and universities.
03:48But we are also going to pay special attention to those that are not.
03:53Would you increase funding to HBCUs?
03:55Absolutely. Very significantly.
03:57They are the backbone of the African-American community and they need support.
04:02So Essence and Black Women's Roundtable, back in September we came out with our study.
04:09Just to talk about the concerns that black women have as they look ahead to 2020.
04:15One of them was criminal justice reform, actually that ranked at the top.
04:20What would you do as president to get that next, I know we had first steps, so what's that next step?
04:27What do you feel is that next step?
04:29First is the recognition.
04:32This is an issue we have studied a lot and thought about a lot.
04:35We have a number of proposals out there.
04:37We have got to recognize that the current system is completely broken.
04:42It is racist and needs to be totally transformed.
04:47So the first thing that we have to do is recognize how does it happen in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world?
04:54We have more people in jail today than any other country on earth.
04:58Think about it. China is a communist authoritarian country, right?
05:01Four times our size that don't kind of tolerate dissent terribly well.
05:06We have more people in jail than China does.
05:09What does that mean?
05:11It means for a start that we've got to end the criminalization of poverty.
05:15Go into any jail in America, what are you going to find?
05:18You're going to find people who are poor.
05:19You're going to find people who are functionally illiterate.
05:21You're going to find people who have mental illness.
05:22All right?
05:23So what we have got to do, and we're going to find in jails people who are disproportionately African American, Latino, and Native American, by the way.
05:32All right? Rich white guys, by and large, are not in jails.
05:35So what we have to do for a start is to invest in jobs and education so that young people are not slipping through the cracks.
05:44If you drop out of high school as a sophomore or a junior and you don't have a good education and you have job skills, you know what?
05:52The likelihood is you're not going to do terribly well in your life.
05:55The likelihood is you're probably going to end up in the criminal justice system.
05:58We've got to change that, which means that we don't let kids slip through the cracks.
06:04That means we invest in education so that we're not underfunding African American schools, as currently the case, all over this country.
06:12Yeah.
06:13So the dropout rate does not be as high as it is.
06:16We invest in education. We invest in jobs. We can do that.
06:20We have the resource. That means hiring more teachers and good teachers and African American teachers, mentoring those kids.
06:26All right. Second of all, right now, this is an unbelievable fact.
06:31Twenty percent of the people in jail are in jail because they're poor and they can't afford cash bail.
06:37Is that unbelievable? See, our people haven't been convicted of anything.
06:40Right.
06:41This was something, but I haven't been convicted. Maybe I'm innocent. Maybe I'm not. I'm in jail. I can't afford to get out of jail.
06:46Yeah.
06:47So we're going to end cash bail in America.
06:49Thirdly, we're going to pay. We're going to end private prisons and detention centers.
06:56Corporations should not be making money by locking up people because they have an incentive to want to lock up more people.
07:01Fourthly, we're going to end up, do away with minimum sentencing, all right, and give judges more discretion, you know, and things like three strikes in your mouth.
07:13Give judges the discretion to say, you know what? Yeah, you arrested for obsessing marijuana eight years ago, but that doesn't, shouldn't be counted heavily against you.
07:21Also, very importantly, we're going to end the war on drugs, which has been incredibly destructive to the nation and specifically to the African American community.
07:33That is the community that has suffered the most.
07:35And what that means is that we will end the absurdity of having the federal government look at marijuana at the same level as it does heroin.
07:46Heroin is a killer drug. You could argue about marijuana, but it is not a killer drug.
07:51We're going to legalize marijuana in 50 states in this country.
07:54We're going to expunge the records of those who are arrested for possession of marijuana.
08:00I'm going to do something else very interesting and very radical, is right now if you go to Nevada, you go to California, go to those states where marijuana is legal, the industry is controlled by large corporations.
08:13And it seems to me that the people who have suffered the most for the so-called war on drugs should benefit from the legalization of marijuana.
08:22So right now you have people literally in jail having done the same thing that large corporations are doing right now legally.
08:28So we have developed a program which will help African American business people get involved in the sale of legal marijuana.
08:41That we think the African American community, the Latino community, the communities that have been hit the hardest, especially the African American community, should benefit when marijuana is legal.
08:50So that's kind of some of what we're talking about.
08:53Nice. And you make a good point because it's expensive to get into that business.
08:57So a lot of times the black community, people in the black community just don't have the funds to do that.
09:03That's right. And corporations can come in and control the industry.
09:06Yeah. We're here in Georgia, so I have to ask two important questions.
09:10One is about reproductive rights because, you know, it's an all-out war on women's reproductive rights.
09:16Absolutely.
09:17Georgia being one of the places where the fight is, is heating up.
09:22How would you address that?
09:24I believe and have always believed that it is women who should control their own bodies and not politicians.
09:34And I can, with 100% assurance, guarantee you that it was men who were having babies in America.
09:40That would be the, that would be, that would be the rule.
09:43Don't tell me what I could do with my body.
09:45Right, right.
09:46Right.
09:47And so, for a start, we will do our, we will codify Roe v. Wade.
09:54That means make it into law, not just.
09:56We will appoint Supreme Court justices only, I will never appoint, nominate anybody to the Supreme Court.
10:04It's not 100% pro Roe v. Wade.
10:07Okay.
10:08We will increase funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood that do a great job in dealing with reproductive rights.
10:14And I will make that as a major political issue.
10:17I'm sick and tired of conservatives telling us they want small government, government off the backs of the people.
10:24Well, how do you want government off the backs of the people, and yet I'm saying to you from Washington, you cannot make a decision about your own body?
10:31That's total hypocrisy.
10:33And we will challenge those people politically.
10:35Nice.
10:36And on the topic of voter suppression, how would your administration handle that?
10:42I'll tell you something.
10:43This one, you know, it gets to me in my gut because I'm a politician and I've run for office many, many times.
10:51And it has never occurred to me, honest to God, in my own state.
10:56There are parts of my state where I'm strong.
10:58There are parts of my state where I'm not strong.
11:00It has never occurred to me to say, okay, we're weak up here.
11:03How do we make it harder for those people to vote because they're going to vote against me?
11:07And my attitude has been, you know, these are my ideas.
11:10I'm going to go all over the state and I'm going to win based on my ideas.
11:14The idea that you have cowardly Republican governors and other officials who don't have the guts to run on their record
11:22and who believe that the only way that they can win elections is to deny people the right to vote is to be really disgusting.
11:29It really is.
11:30And I say that as a politician, you know.
11:32If you can't win on your ideas, get another job.
11:35Don't run for office.
11:36It really is.
11:37I mean, look, people disagree with me.
11:39You disagree with me.
11:40You beat me.
11:41You beat me.
11:42Yeah.
11:43But if you can't run on your ideas and the only way you can win is by suppressing the vote,
11:47then you are a coward and, of course, undermining American democracy.
11:52So this is an issue I feel very strongly about.
11:55And right here we're in Georgia right now.
11:57And it is very likely that the governor of Georgia should not be the governor of Georgia.
12:02That Stacey should have won that election if it were not for voter suppression.
12:08And I congratulate her very much for doing exactly the right thing, building, registering people to vote.
12:14So what we will do, bottom line here, is make it easier for people to vote, not harder for people to vote.
12:23And that is we will fight for universal voter registration, which says that if you're 18 years of age, you're registered to vote.
12:33What's so hard about that?
12:35Right now it is incredibly complicated and people are intimidated and often made to feel intimidated.
12:42All right.
12:43If you're 18 years of age, you are registered to vote.
12:47End of discussion.
12:48And I think that's probably the simplest way to deal with voter suppression.
12:53What makes you uniquely qualified for this position?
12:57Well, let me say, knowing obviously all my Democratic opponents and knowing some of them for many years, there are a lot of good people out there.
13:05And you don't hear me disparaging any of them.
13:07They're good people.
13:08And I think on our worst day, any of these candidates would be a 10 times better president than Donald Trump is on his best day.
13:15Although I haven't quite figured out what his best day is.
13:17What the best day is.
13:18Right.
13:19I would say this.
13:25The views that I'm expressing to you are views that I've held for my entire political career, and it's a long career.
13:34When I talk about civil rights and I talk about justice, it's not an issue that came to me yesterday.
13:40At the age of 21, I was arrested fighting school segregation in the city of Chicago.
13:49And, you know, I've been waging fights for justice my entire life.
13:55And that is for workers' rights, for women's rights, for the rights of minorities, for our environment and climate change.
14:04I've taken on every special interest that there is in this country.
14:09And what our campaign is about is bringing people together in an unprecedented grassroots webinar.
14:16Ironically, we're sitting here, what am I looking at?
14:18I know.
14:19We're looking at Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi.
14:21Malcolm X.
14:22Right.
14:23And Malcolm X.
14:24And I think all great leaders have understood that the only way that change takes place, whether it is the civil rights movement or the women's movement,
14:34is when millions of people get involved in the process.
14:37That's what this campaign is about.
14:39And that's why we are right now on an HBCU campus.
14:43We are going to be going to many campuses all over this country.
14:47And not only to black campuses, the campuses talking to young people in general, who have not been as involved in the political process as they should.
14:56And unless young people, black and white and Latino, Asian and black, get involved in the process, you can continue to see a handful of billionaires controlling what goes on in this country.
15:08And that has got to change.
15:09So I think maybe I'm uniquely qualified because I understand the reality.
15:13And that is what we're trying to do.
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