Selected Bernie Sanders news items from this week are curated below.
Please see Bernie Sanders’ approaches to institutional racism, brutality & inequality parallel MLK’s, which analyses Bernie’s approach to issues and complements his major policy speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Bernie Sanders has often said that it will require a “political revolution” to make a success out of his presidential campaign. On Wednesday, the Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont senator took steps that he hopes will turn that revolution into a reality.
More than 100,000 Sanders supporters participated in an estimated 3,500 town halls and house parties across the country, where they were greeted by a live webcast with the candidate. Attendees also signed up to volunteer and learned how to otherwise help his campaign.
Speaking to Al Jazeera earlier on Wednesday, Sanders said the most important thing to happen at those events would be communication between various activists and volunteers.
“We need to develop a grassroots movement,” said Sanders. “And the way you do it is people communicate with each other, determine what has to be done, who’s going to be knocking on doors, who’s going to be making the phone call, who’s going to be passing out the literature.”
One Simple Chart Explains The Climate Plans Of Hillary Clinton And Bernie Sanders
When Hillary Clinton released a fact sheet detailing her plan to fight climate change on Sunday night, her presidential campaign characterized it as “bold.” Indeed, the goals outlined in the plan are significant — a 700 percent increase in solar installations by the end of her first term, and enough renewable energy to power every home in the country within 10 years.
But not everyone thought Clinton’s plan was as bold as her campaign made it out to be. That seemingly included the campaign of her Democratic rival, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, which sent an email to reporters titled “What Real Climate Leadership Looks Like” about an hour before Clinton’s plan was scheduled to be released.
What does real climate leadership look like? According to the O’Malley campaign’s email, it looks like having a definitive position on every controversial policy in the environmental space. Arctic drilling, fracking, the Keystone XL pipeline — O’Malley’s climate plan details strong stances on all of those topics. The plan Clinton released on Sunday does not.
Clinton’s plan does include ways to achieve her stated goals in solar energy production, including awarding competitive grants to states that reduce emissions, extending tax breaks to renewable industries like solar and wind, and investing in transmission lines that can take renewable power from where it’s produced to where it’s needed for electricity. She also proposed cutting some tax breaks to fossil fuel companies to pay for her plan, though she hasn’t proposed eliminating them completely like Sanders and O’Malley have. Vox’s Brad Plumer called Clinton’s goals “certainly feasible in principle, but the gritty details will matter a lot.”
From left to right: Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). All three have different plans to fight climate change if elected to the presidency.
https://youtu.be/IY_pN5Poego
Bernie Sanders takes his campaign for president to Louisiana for a rally.
https://berniesanders.com/on-the-road…
Poll: Bernie Sanders would beat Donald Trump
Washington (CNN)Sen. Bernie Sanders runs far behind Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination fight, but the socialist from Vermont would defeat New York real estate mogul and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in a presidential general election, a new poll suggests.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday shows that in a hypothetical general election match-up, Sanders tops Trump 44% to 39%. The data point shows that although Trump is leading the GOP pack now, he could prove to be a disaster for Republicans in a broader presidential contest next year.
Read the rest on CNN.com
Bernie Sanders Looks to Volunteers | Al Jazeera America
NEW YORK — Tens of thousands of Bernie Sanders supporters around the country gathered in local town halls and house parties Wednesday evening as the Sanders campaign ramped up its efforts to build a grassroots volunteer infrastructure. More than 100,000 people sent in RSVPs for 3,500 events, according to an early campaign estimate.
The candidate addressed all the events — held in studio apartments, private venues that could seat hundreds, and everything in between — via a live webcast. Attendees were asked to volunteer for the campaign, donate what they could and sign up to receive updates on the left-wing challenge to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
“The only way I know we can do this is if we put together a strong grassroots movement of millions and millions of people,” Sanders said during his brief remarks over the webcast. “And that is what I mean by a political revolution.”
Without either a comparable war chest or a large campaign staff, Sanders is attempting to translate enthusiasm for his candidacy into a nationwide volunteer network. President Barack Obama relied on a similar grassroots organizing base for his successful 2008 presidential campaign. As in that instance, the Sanders campaign appears to be betting on its ability to mobilize large groups of young people who may never have been politically active before this election cycle.
So far, the campaign appears to have been successful in generating some enthusiasm among young political outsiders. Brooklyn-based actor and bartender Joe Beuerlein, 33, told Al Jazeera that his past campaign work had been limited to doing some volunteer phone banking on behalf of Obama’s presidential campaign. On Wednesday night he helped organize a gathering of supporters at a German-style beer hall in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope, for an event called “Brooklyn feels the Bern.” Beuerlein says he plans to stay involved in organizing efforts. “I will see this campaign through to its end,” he said.