Bernie Sanders announces he'll be making a targeted effort to engage with black communities:
Bernie Sanders has come a long way since Black Lives Matter activists shut down his speeches in Phoenix and Seattle.
Popular Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is reaching out to the black community by promising to address police brutality, an issue many other candidates have been slow to address.
“We plan to take our message to the community and so you will see me getting out soon around the country speaking in Black communities, telling people about my life history and my message like the fact that I have one of the strongest civil rights voting records in the Congress,” Sanders said in an interview with EBONY magazine.
“Many white people are not sensitive to the kind of abuse that African Americans, especially younger African Americans, receive at the hands of police officers and police departments,” Sanders continued. “I think for most whites their experience with the police has been good or neutral because they don’t interact with the police as much as those in the black community.”
Sanders went on to say that police should be a part of the community, rather than inspiring fear.
“We need to demilitarize local police departments so that they do not look like occupying armies,” Sanders said. “We want police departments that look like the communities they are serving… If the community is a minority one, the police department should reflect that reality.”
