Most African-Americans prefer Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton

The problem is, most of them just don't know it ... not yet ... because Bernie does not have the same name recognition as Hillary does, who is world famous. But the more the black community gets to know Bernie, it appears the more they like what he has to say.

Updates: Feb 11, 2016: Harry Belafonte Endorses Bernie Sanders for President. It should also be noted: In wasn't all the MEMBERS of the Congressional Black Caucus who just endorsed Hillary Clinton >>> it was their superPAC that did. As Bernie would say, “HUGE difference!” Hillary Clinton’s Congressional Black Caucus PAC endorsement was approved by a board awash in Lobbyists Update: Ta-Nehisi Coates Is Voting for Bernie Sanders - Despite the Senator's Opposition to Reparations [May I add, neither did Obama or Hillary] February 4, 2016: Per CNN -- The former head of the NAACP, will endorse Bernie Sanders. January 29, 2016: Update from NBC News: The eldest daughter of Eric Garner, the black man who died in 2014 after a New York City police officer placed him in a prohibited chokehold, endorsed Bernie Sanders for president on Friday. January 25, 2016: Justin Bamberg, Walter Scott's lawyer, switches support from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders after getting to know Bernie better. January 15, 2016: New Poll -- Clinton in South Carolina is plummeting. Last month Clinton had a 36-point lead over Sanders — that lead has been cut nearly in half. January 13, 2016 - The Nation endorsed Bernie Sanders. They only endorsed twice before: Jesse Jackson in 1988 and Obama in 2008 December 10, 2015: (Washington Post) "This week Bun B became the latest prominent voice from the hip-hop community to endorse the 74-year-old senator from Vermont in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination." [Sanders also picked up Killer Mike, Lil B and Scarface.] Sanders is also trying to make inroads through religious and community leaders, as evidenced by his visit this week to the Baltimore neighborhood that was home to Freddie Gray."   December 7, 2015 (The Nation by Raina Lipsitz) Hillary Clinton is not entitled to black votes: "The Democratic front-runner should stop taking African-American voters for granted. The more people become familiar with Bernie Sanders and his policy positions, the more popular he has and will become." (Older updates are in the comments section below)

The Democratic presidential candidate, the Independent Senator Bernie Sanders from the State of Vermont, met with Dr. Bernice King, daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during a visit to the King Center last Monday on November 23, 2015 in Atlanta, Georgia. (AP photo/David Goldman)

The Atlanta Journal Constitution‎: "Bernie Sanders trumpets Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy in Atlanta". In the video below is rapper Killer Mike introducing Senator Bernie Sanders at his recent campaign rally in Atlanta. You can watch Bernie's speech in Atlanta posted here. The next day Shaun King writes for the New York Daily News: "Why rapper Killer Mike's endorsement of Bernie Sanders matters".

But the general public doesn't hear much about these events for Bernie Sanders, because the TV news stations mainly covers almost everything Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump has to say. I'm guessing that Republican candidates (with only 1% in the polls) probably gets more coverage on Fox News than Bernie Sanders gets on CNN or MSNBC. So at least it's a good thing we now have the internet, because just after the Atlanta rally the Huffington Post wrote:

The Clinton campaign's worst nightmare is coming true. Watching "Run the Jewels" rapper Killer Mike introduce Bernie Sanders in Atlanta was one of the most powerful and inspiring moments of this election. Shattering the notion that Sanders only appeals to white liberals, The Huffington Post writes that Killer Mike cited Sanders' stance on the Voting Rights Act, health care, education and ending the war on drugs as reasons to vote for Bernie Sanders. Everyone from Rolling Stone to POLITICO wrote about the event, including a video in The Washington Post titled "Killer Mike calls Bernie Sanders the next president of the United States" ... While pundits have no problem placing 45 million African Americans and 54 million Latinos into a poll number indicating Hillary Clinton leads among these voters, the overlooked reality is that people can't vote for someone they don't know. [More here]

But the African-American and Latino community ARE getting to know Bernie better, and the more they hear him, the more they like him. And that might be a reason why the DNC chairperson has limited the Democratic debates to only 6 during this election cycle — specifically to keep minorities (and everyone else) from knowing Bernie better (to unfairly benefit Hillary).

But when African-Americans do get to know Bernie Sanders better (like at the recent Presidential Justice Forum) they like him — they really like him. After the forum their straw poll showed that Bernie beat Hillary by a whopping 42 points — 65% to 23%.

As I asked in another post: "Who has the longest and strongest history for advocating civil rights?"

While at the University of Chicago, Bernie Sanders threw himself into activism for civil rights and economic justice by volunteering and organizing. He railed against the college’s housing segregation policy by participating in Chicago’s very first civil rights sit-in. He became a leader of an NAACP ally called the Congress of Racial Equality at a time when most civil rights activists were black. In 1962 he was arrested while demonstrating for desegregated public schools in Chicago. He once walked around Chicago putting up fliers protesting police brutality. Sanders had worked for a meatpackers union and marched for civil rights in Washington D.C. with Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1964, Hillary Clinton had volunteered to campaign for the Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in the U.S. presidential election. Goldwater was against FDR's New Deal, but fortunately (no thanks to Hillary), Goldwater lost to the Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson by one of the largest landslides in history. As President, LBJ designed the "Great Society" legislation upholding civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to education, the arts, urban and rural development, public services, and his "War on Poverty". Civil rights bills signed by Johnson banned racial discrimination in public facilities, interstate commerce, the workplace, and housing; and the Voting Rights Act banned certain requirements in southern states used to disenfranchise African Americans. With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the country's immigration system was reformed and all national origin quotas were removed. (During that same time while in college, Hillary Clinton served as president of the Wellesley Young Republicans.)

[* The Clinton administration in the 1990's actually made life more difficult for African-Americans with their policies of the "War on Drugs", "Welfare Reform" and "Bankruptcy Reform" — policies that Bernie Sanders was against. Read " The Clinton Fallacy: Did blacks really make big economic gains during the '90s?]

Despite the media's 24/7 fear-mongering (texting while driving is far more deadly than ISIS), according to two different Gallop polls, terrorism is near the bottom of the list as to what most concerns Americans (white and black). According to recent Gallop polls, the top problems that blacks see facing the country are race relations and unemployment, while whites most often cited dissatisfaction government and the economy in general. (Click on the images below to go directly to the polls.)

St. Helena Island is off the coast of South Carolina and is one of the poorest locations in the United States (and maybe inhabited with people more concerned about economic terror), and comprises a mostly African-American population of 8,800 people. Last Sunday more than 600 people packed into a historic cabin on this small sea island to hear Senator Bernie Sanders speak for one hour.

Sanders has spent more time in South Carolina than the other two Democratic candidates, devoting 10 days to the state this year compared to Hillary Clinton’s eight and Martin O’Malley’s six. That's because Sanders has been trying to get his message out to the Africa-American community, specifically in South Carolina — because this State turns out a vote that is 65% black — where Hillary Clinton currently has an overwhelming advantage in the polls — mostly because of her name recognition, and just the fact that she's also a Democrat. (Whereas, Bernie is still relatively unknown to many).

If the descendents of Civil War-era slaves on a tiny island off the coast of South Carolina were not all that concerned about ISIS, should they be preached to about terrorism? Or should a presidential candidate mostly address their most primary concerns when making a speech to them?

A recent Washington Post (WaPo) article — a paper owned by the libertarian Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos — sharply criticized Bernie Sanders for not mentioning foreign policy to the people who came out to see him on St. Helena Island — people who may not be all that concerned about foreign policy, but more so about race relations and jobs. The WaPo headline read: After Paris, Sanders sticks to script — and it doesn’t say much about fighting terrorism:

The omission Sunday was striking, given the marked shift in tone of the presidential race in the week and a half since the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and injured more than 350. Many of the Republican candidates have recast their pitches altogether, and the other Democrats, including former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, have pushed their plans for defeating the Islamic State to the top of their agendas ... The post-Paris-attacks Sanders campaign looks remarkably similar to the pre-Paris-attacks Sanders campaign. During a four-day swing through South Carolina and Georgia that ended Monday, the candidate said little about fighting terrorism unless asked by a journalist or audience member.

The WaPo, like the rest of the media, has been distracting us from other issues by fear-mongering on terrorism. But if you read the entire WaPo article, you'll learn that Sanders has already mentioned a lot about ISIS and terrorism in a previous speech at Georgetown University. And he also mentioned ISIS at the first Democratic debate and at the second Democratic debate. He also mentions this on his website, in news interviews, at his campaign rallies and on the floor of the Senate.

So the WaPo is miserably wrong. Bernie hasn't been making "striking omissions" on the subject of terrorism: he just also focuses on other issues, such as racial justice, jobs, wages, college tuition, immigration, women's rights, veterans and Social Security (among other issues).

But while speaking to the audience in South Carolina, he was addressing issues that MOSTLY CONCERN African-Americans. And after you sift through the "journalistic opinion" and the "cherry-picked" information in the WaPo article, it's actually very complimentary to Senator Sanders (whether it was intended to be or not).

By contrast, a Wall Street Journal headline reads: Many GOP voters favor Trump, despite limited foreign policy credentials. (Not every President has had strong foreign policy experience before being elected. And don't presidents usually seek help from foreign policy "advisors"?) The Salon's headline reads: Bernie Sanders’s Refreshingly Sane Foreign Policy (Bernie has spoken often on foreign policy; he just has a less "hawkish" approach than Hillary Clinton).

But the mainstream media wants uninformed and misinformed people to rely on their bold headlines and short sound bites for most of their information, keeping them "dumbed down". To get all the information, sometimes we have to have the extra time to seek it out — and sometimes bloggers also have to really "dig" for it to get the whole truth — the way paid professional journalists are supposed to dig for the facts for their stories (and not put a political spin on the story just to please their bosses at the top).

Of course, this one mention here in this one blog post is but only one small example out of the many, and is just the tip of the iceberg. All along, all throughout the major media, they do this to influence our politics and government. In the case of the 2016 presidential election, the media would prefer a "moderate" blue Republican (or Republican LITE) such as Hillary Clinton or a "moderate" red Republican, such as Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio to be elected (someone who will always take their orders from the donor class — also known as their puppet masters).

And what can be said for Black voters can also be said for Latino voters regarding "what most concerns them". It may not be foreign policy, but immigration. Talking Points Memo: Hillary Clinton pledges to stop using phrase "illegal immigrant".

Because just like black votes, Hillary also wants Mexican/Latino votes too ... and she will do and say anything to get those votes to be the next U.S. President. One poll shows 60% don't trust Hillary and 62% say she'll "do anything" to be president — as CNN's moderator eluded to in the first Democratic debate — for political expediency.

Senator Bernie Sanders said that if elected president he would take executive action to allow undocumented immigrants who’ve been in the United States for at least five years to stay in the country without fear of being deported. Here's his Fair and Humane Immigration Policy.

The Washington Post reports:

Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley issued a far-reaching immigration plan over the summer, while Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has articulated several of the same principles in speeches and proposals on her Web site.

Yes, we can always count on the mainstream media to be sure to give Hillary her share of credit — even though, if one checks out their websites, they'll find Martin O'Mally's and Bernie Sanders's are far more comprehensive and offer more details than Hillary Clinton's. And when the media is not ignoring Bernie Sanders, they never bring to light that most of Hillary's "progressive" ideas originated from Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — true progressives (not fakes). [Editor's note: The author reserves the right to resend that last statement if Elizabeth Warren endorses Hillary Clinton.]

It should also be noted that many Africa-American politicians (like other establishment Democratic politicians, as well as civil rights leaders such as Jesse Jackson), haven't endorsed Hillary Clinton because they think Hillary will do a better job than Bernie Sanders on civil rights, racial injustice, jobs and wages. It's because they believe she is more "electable" than Bernie Sanders, and fear losing the Presidency to a Republican — even though most polls show that Bernie Sanders can also win a general election against GOP candidates, sometimes by wider margins than Hillary. (Personally, I also suspect that many of these establishment politicians either expect a favor from Hillary if she is elected, or they feel they owe her a favor and/or their loyalty from past co-operative efforts. Which is total B.S.)

(Below) Awesome hip-hop "Feel the Bern" campaign song by Tony Tig

Bernie Sanders Most Recent Press Releases...

Sanders Statement on Laquan McDonald - November 25, 2015
https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-statement-laquan-mcdonald/ 

Sanders Introduces ‘Families First’ Immigration Plan - November 24, 2015
https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-introduces-families-first-immigration-plan/ 

Sanders Visits King Center - November 23, 2015
https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-visits-king-center/ 

In South Carolina, Sanders Makes Case for Family Leave, Social Security - November 22, 2015
https://berniesanders.com/press-release/in-south-carolina-sanders-makes-case-for-family-leave-social-security/ 

Sanders Gains Ground in New Polls - November 22, 2015
https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-gains-ground-in-new-polls/ 

Sanders Calls Criminal Justice Reform the Civil Rights Issue of the Century - November 21, 2015
https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-calls-criminal-justice-reform-the-civil-rights-issue-of-the-century/

Other Related Notes:

• Bernie Sanders is the only presidential candidate of all the Democrats and all the Republicans who isn't a millionaire (and he doesn't have a super PAC).
• Hillary's alma mater has a small band of Bernie Sanders fans: The Wellesley Students for Bernie Facebook page now has 275 members and counting (compared with 815 in the pro-Clinton student Facebook group). Many said their support for Sanders put them in the minority in their social circles, but they did not feel moved by the former Secretary of State, despite living in the dormitories she once resided in and studying in the classrooms where she learned.
• Most Iowa Democratic voters like Bernie Sanders more — but they're still voting for Hillary Clinton (just like the labor unions?)

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Bernie2016