Sunday, July 19, 2015

Live-blogging the Houston Bernie Sanders rally

20:27 Sanders brings up racism, and one person starts shouting "Black Lives Matter". Some congratulatory throat-clearing about electing Obama and color of their character. Then name-checks Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice. Calls for police to be held accountable, to be "part of their community, not oppressors in the community".

20:17 "All of us have a moral responsibility to ensure that the planet we leave our children and grandchildren is habitable."

20:06 Overturn Citizens United.

20:04 Wall Street, To Big To Fail, Glass-Steagall, break up the big banks.

20:01 Calls for 13 million infrastructure jobs.

19:53 Pivot to "family values": legally guaranteed paid medical and family leave, paid sick leave, length of work weeks, paid vacation.

"Forcing women to return to work five days after childbirth is the opposite of a family value."

19:50 Sanders calls current minimum wage a "starvation wage" and calls for $15/hour. "It is not a radical idea in America that if a person works 40 hours a week then they should not be in poverty." Calls on men to fix the gender wage gap.

19:46 Unemployment, underemployment, and youth unemployment (17-25). Breaks down stats by race. "We are turning our backs on an entire generation. And if you think this is unrelated to the millions in prison, you would be mistaken."

19:43 "This campaign us singlehandedly sending a message to the billionaire class, and that message is, you can't have it all. You cannot combine to ship jobs to China when millions here need work."

19:38 Apparently the issue portion of the speech starts now. Go figure. First up: income inequality.

19:37 "I want you to tell your working class Republican friends and coworkers about the Republican budget. Ask them about cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Ask them about cuts to Pell grants. Ask them about WIC. Ask them about outsourcing jobs. And then ask them about tax cuts for the top two-tenths of a percent."

19:34 "I have taken in virtually every powerful special interest in this country, and many if them hate my guts."

19:31 "Fifty state strategy". "You cannot be a national political party, claiming to represent working families, and leave untouched half the states in the nation."

19:28 "People ask me, why on earth are you coming to Texas? My answer: I do know that this is a conservative, Republican state, and that's exactly why I'm here."

19:27 Sanders takes the stage.

19:25 Cummings hit labor, TPP, environment hard.

19:15 Claude Cummings vice president of the Communication Workers of America, gives introduction.

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* All quotes are paraphrases.

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