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This Video Proves Bernie Sanders Was Fighting For Racial Justice Before You Were Born

This Video Proves Bernie Sanders Was Fighting For Racial Justice Before You Were Born

A quarter of a century ago, Bernie Sanders was the lone legislator from Vermont to the United States House of Representatives after the 1990 election. Unlike most of his peers in 1991, Sanders believed passionately that the United States criminal justice system was on the wrong track, and even back then incarceration rates – the number of people in prison per 1,000 population – showed the authoritarian direction that crime-fighting had taken in America.

“We have the highest percentage of people in jail, in America, of any industrialized nation on earth. What do we have to do, put half the country behind bars?” asked Sanders twenty three years before Ferguson turned criminal justice into a national political issue and gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Sanders concluded with this: “If you want to get tough on crime, let’s deal with the causes of crime. Let’s demand that every man, woman and child in this country have a decent opportunity and a decent standard of living.  Let’s not keep putting poor people into jail and disproportionately hurting blacks.” Sanders also said that “All over the industrialized world now, states are saying lets put an end to institutional murder, state murder, let us stop capital punishment.”

Watch it here:

Colin Taylor
Opinion columnist and former editor-in-chief of Occupy Democrats. He graduated from Bennington College with a Bachelor's degree in history and political science. He now focuses on advancing the cause of social justice and equality in America.

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