Professor (now Senator) Elizabeth Warren spoke with Bill Moyers in 2004 about Hillary Clinton's support for her husband's bill that "reformed" the bankruptcy laws that disproportionately harmed African-Americans, particularly women. Hillary Clinton had voted for the bill in her first year as a New York Senator because she referred to the Wall Street bankers as her "constituents".
While President, Bill Clinton signed many bills that either directly or indirectly harmed the Black community. On more than one occasion, Hillary Clinton (while campaigning for President) has criticized Bernie Sanders for voting for bills that her own husband had signed into law, one being the 1994 crime bill.
Recently Dr. Cornel West appeared on CNN's Anderson Cooper to put this in perspective while debating former House Rep. Bakari Sellers (a CNN commentator) who is regularly on CNN to shill for Hillary Clinton. Sellers is the son of the civil rights activist Cleveland Sellers, who is the current president of Voorhees College, a Black liberal arts college about 50 miles south of Columbia, South Carolina.
Bakari Sellers is one of the many mouth pieces we see in the mainstream media shilling for Hillary Clinton. Seller has been on CNN regularly and has been unabashedly criticizing Senator Bernie Sanders — and being disingenuous in many of his claims. Evidently Dr. Cornel West, like many of us, may have had enough, and went on Anderson Cooper to debate with Bakari Sellers.
While appearing on CNN, by using Bernie Sanders' vote on a 1994 crime bill, Bakari Sellers was being somewhat intellectually dishonest. Sanders disagreed with many parts of that bill, but only voted for it because it also included the Violence Against Women Act. Back in 1994 Bernie Sanders was always speaking out against mass incarceration, while Hillary was talking about "Super Predators" and rounding up votes.
In 1994 then-Vermont Rep. Bernie Sanders had denounced the federal crime bill, and had argued that Congress needed to address the very serious issues that underlie the problems of crime and addiction – such as poverty, hunger, unemployment, social and economic alienation.
When speaking to Anderson Cooper, Professor Cornel West spoke out in support of Bernie Sanders and characterized Hillary Clinton‘s enduring popularity with African-Americans as an issue of “a neo-political, black political class that confuses the gravy train with the freedom train.”
Dr. West explained that Sanders’s social progressivism should have made him a much more attractive candidate than Hillary Clinton, whom he blasted for her ties to Wall Street, her husband’s policies that led to mass incarceration of African-Americans, her connections to lobbyists for private prisons, and remarks she made in 1996, in which she referred to urban youth as “super-predators” with “no conscience and no empathy.” Hillary Clinton wanted to "bring them to heel."
“I think part of it is we’re in a paradox,” West told Cooper. “Black people have been the most progressive group when it comes to social justice. No doubt Bernie Sanders is the most progressive when it comes to social justice. He’s not tied to Wall Street in any way. And he doesn’t use the language of our dear sister Hillary Clinton when she talks about young black youth as super-predators.”
Dr. West dismissed Hillary Clinton’s supposed progressive bonafides and her "plan" to reform the prison system as “just lip service, brother, lip service. She’s just talking, talking, talking...”
He called Hillary Clinton a “Wall Street Democrat” — whereas, Bernie Sanders had pledged to decrease mass incarceration and was “anti-Wall Street” — and for those reasons poor, working-class and middle-class black voters should support him. “We can understand the black elites sometimes pulling back,” he said, because Sanders was passionate “about accountability in terms of elites no matter what color. That’s why I’m with him, my brother.”
Related video at YouTube: Why African Americans are on FIRE for Bernie Sanders -- If someone knows the name of the background music, please let me know ;)
As an aside: When a person is paid by a major media corporation to go on national television to essentially campaign for a politician, I suspect that technically, there may be some conflict with federal Election laws unless an opposing candidate is offered equal time — because, isn't a media corporation acting in concert with a political campaign by paying someone to make a candidate's case just like a super PAC coordinating with a candidate when doing campaign advertising? (Just a thought.)
#BlackLivesMatter #CornelWest #BakariSellers #HillaryClinton #BernieSanders #BringThemToHeel #AndersonCooper #MassIncarceration #PrisonReform #WallStreeDemocrat
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