Hello everyone! Aside from the Sunday Morning Bobblehead Thread, I haven't been doing a lot of posts here on C&L. Reason being that I have been working at my new job as Video Production Manager for the online news site, Opposing Views. I am producing video content for their website and it's very news and politically centered content. We're covering the 2016 Election of course and we're also filming campaign events in Los Angeles. We'll soon be shooting stories taking place outside of LA which is where we are based out of.
As you know, Senator Bernie Sanders (D. VT) did a huge campaign kick off live stream and we were invited to cover a grassroots meeting after the live stream for the group, Bruins For Bernie, a UCLA students group. We plan to continue following the Sanders campaign. Sanders will be visiting Seattle and Portland soon and we hope he visits LA very soon. Please do watch the video above and we will have more videos soon. To stay up to date, please do Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Below is the transcript:
Presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, launched the first ever campaign kickoff event via live stream to over 3,000 watch parties across the country.
"To the best of our knowledge, there has never been a political online organizing effort this early in a campaign which evolved over one hundred thousand people in thirty five hundred locations in every state in the United States of America and that's pretty impressive and I thank you all very much for making that happen."
Sanders has been hitting the campaign trail speaking to huge crowds across the country. The Democratic candidate has been running on an populist platform that includes raising taxes on the rich, tackling income inequality, a single payer health care system, investing in America's crumbling infrastructure, debt free college, breaking up Too Big To Fail Wall Street banks and serious campaign finance reform. He also discussed America's growing racial tensions and police brutality, referring to the recent case involving Sandra Bland's arrest and death in a Texas jail.
"We are tired, we are tired of seeing black women yanked out of a car, thrown to the ground, assaulted, put in handcuffs and then sent to jail and die three days later in the case of Sandra Bland for what crime? She didn't signal she made a left turn and we're seeing that all over this country. Enough is enough, we have to combat institutionalized racism in the United States of America."
We had the privilege to attend the live streaming event held by Bruins for Bernie, a grassroots group composed of UCLA students who are dedicated to helping get out the vote for Senator Sanders.
"With Bernie, he says what he believes, he says things like it is and he's not ashamed to say it. And he doesn't back track. He's just an incredible person. He's a really incredible person. For the past fifty years he's been consistent in all his views, he's never once "evolved" he's never once flip flopped, he's never wobbled."
Their plans include utilizing social media to spread information about the campaign, getting their fellow students registered to vote and reaching out to Latino and minority voters to help build a strong coalition of support for the Senator from Vermont.
"We're really thinking about accessibility. A lot of our family members, especially our older family members, maybe not older, but a lot of them are more comfortable with Spanish so were thinking, you know, finding video clips or finding ways to translate this information would be really fantastic. That would be really helpful with them understanding for themselves what he stands for and what he plans to do for them"
The grassroots attendees also expressed their support for Sanders on some very key issues:
"There's college tuition, there's his combination of I think foreign policy spending versus infrastructure spending and investing in jobs in America. Because at the moment, what are we spending, thirty three trillion dollars on military and we're spending the next more twelve hundred combined on our military and I think Bernie's idea is chop some of that off because we don't need all of it and invest that in employing millions of Americans."
The Sanders event was even able to win over a few older Democratic voters who were leaning towards supporting Clinton.