BY: EDITORS

Bernie’s 50-year track record in activism for civil rights and marginalized peoples spans a fantastic breadth of issues. From being arrested in 1962 for protesting public-school segregation in Chicago, to condemning both Iraq wars and voting against marginalizing policy, like the USA PATRIOT Act—contentious for violating the privacy of, and racially profiling, Muslim and Arab-Americans—when no one else would (almost literally: it was passed with a 98-2 vote in the Senate). Even in high-school, Sanders ran a campaign advocating an increase of scholarship funds for Korean war orphans.

Sanders’ speeches, his campaign videos, do not offer the traditional political elevator-pitch—the candidate sitting cross-legged beside a fireplace cradling a puppy or kitten. Sanders’ campaigns land with emotional force, and not simply because they are well shot or air-tight rhetorically. They’re impactful foremost because they’re true. Because Sanders has the track record to justify a campaign video with the emotional velocity of Erica Garner’s powerful words.

Garner says “He’s not scared to go up against the criminal justice system. He is not scared.”