Bernie Sanders Rails Against Racial Inequality at Chicago Rally
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In one of his first campaign rallies, the Vermont senator recalled his days as a civil rights activist and called for change from “the bottom on up.”
Joshua Lott/Reuters
Speaking to a packed arena in Chicago on Sunday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders vowed to lead a political revolution ahead of the 2020 election that would bring about “real change” from “the bottom on up.” Before a crowd of more than 12,000 people at Navy Pier, the 2020 contender spoke at length about his time as a civil rights activist while a student at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, when he said he fought to stop segregated housing, and called for more to be done to fight racial inequality. In condemning the “terrible level of police violence against unarmed people in the minority community,” Sanders read off a list of names of young black men killed in police shootings, including 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, the black teenager who was gunned down by a white Chicago police officer in 2014. He went on to call for action to be taken to fix the racial wealth gap and other inequalities. “Today, the infant mortality rate in black communities is more than double the rate for white communities,” he told the crowd, “and the death rates from cancer and almost every disease is far higher for blacks.” Reiterating his calls for Medicare-for-all, immigration reform, and a $15-hour minimum wage, the Vermont senator told the crowd not to “allow Trump and his friends to divide us up.”
