Sen. Bernie Sanders has inspired nation’s youth

I support Bernie Sanders for president because he has spent a lifetime protesting segregation and inequality. He, “just like a tree that’s planted by the water,” in a popular song from the civil rights movement, “shall not be moved.” And we all should back him, I think, because in the past four years he has influenced our nation’s thinking about the matters of our times. Because of Bernie we now speak specifically of $15 an hour in conversations about a national minimum wage.

Hillary Clinton, later in her 2016 campaign against Bernie, began addressing issues he introduced like bringing Wall Street miscreants to justice. We desperately need a leader with his world view as he has extended his passion for human rights to Palestinians who suffer under a Zionist regime in Israel. He’s a champion of addressing climate changes that put the planet in grave danger.

Everyday Bernie engages ordinary citizens in our politics: poor people, previously uninvolved people, people who feel disenfranchised and suspect that their government doesn’t care about them. He accepts money for his campaign mainly from people like them.


My main reason, however, for supporting Bernie Sanders is because I’m an educator who has devoted his life to helping children and young people learn, to think critically, to care about their world — and Bernie has rallied our youth politically, I’d dare say, more than anyone in our history. I will forever remember the 2016 presidential campaign, standing for four hours at the San Diego Convention Center, “feeling the Bern” among thousands of inspired young people.

I could see in their eyes and in their postures that he was helping them understand that the status quo isn’t working for enough people in our country, that to make change we have to go against the grain of what hasn’t been working for the common good. He sold them on the idea that, through a national single-payer health insurance plan, everyone could have their health needs taken care of and that it makes sense for the wealthiest among us to contribute more to the country’s overall well-being.

Bernie exemplifies the kind of speaking truth to power that young people today and in future generations will have to be about if they’re to make a better world — or make America truly great. I can’t help but support the hope he inspires and I wish everyone felt the same.

McCray served 37 years in the San Diego Unified School District as a teacher, vice principal and principal of schools from elementary through high school.

