[S]en. Bernie Sanders said he will “try to do better” in reaching out to racial justice leaders in Vermont in response to criticism that he has fallen short in representing the state’s minorities during his long political career.
“Well, you know, I’m sorry to hear that and I will try to do better,” the independent lawmaker said in response to a question about concerns voiced by African-American leaders in Vermont that he had done little to stay in touch with them.
“I think if anyone looks at my record here in Vermont and nationally on issues of racial justice, I think it’s a pretty strong record and will continue to be,” he said.
In an interview recorded Tuesday and aired Wednesday morning on Waterbury-based radio station WDEV, Sanders also responded to claims from a leading campaigner for racial justice that the senator was “focusing on economic justice at the expense of racial justice.”
Sanders said issues of economic and other types of inequality often hit African-Americans and people of Latin American heritage especially hard.
“You cannot also ignore the fact that youth unemployment in the African-American and Latino community is sky-high” and “that when you look at our jail population, which is the highest in the world, that is disproportionately African-American and Latino as well.”
The comments came during a short but wide-ranging interview that also touched on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, how such meddling might be avoided in the future and the government’s role in guarding against abuses on social media platforms.
Sanders’ comments came ahead of a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, where he was a featured speaker Wednesday at a rally commemorating the 50th anniversary of the fatal shooting in that city of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. He was scheduled to attend another King-related event Wednesday evening in Jackson, Mississippi.
Sanders has been unwilling to comment on any plans he might have to make a second bid for the White House in 2020. To do so, he likely would seek to round up more support among African-Americans than he received in the 2016 primary contests against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton won an overwhelming share of the black vote in primaries, receiving more than 80 percent of votes among black voters 45 and older. Sanders had a slight edge among black voters 29 and younger, but they also came out in the lowest numbers as an age group.
The poor showing was blamed in part on his failure to reach out to minorities during his career as a national politician, a criticism that has been echoed by minority leaders in Vermont, the whitest state in America, with an estimated minority population of about 5 percent.
Sanders made headlines on the campaign trail in 2015 for an awkward encounter with Black Lives Matter protesters at a town hall in Arizona calling for him to address racial injustice.
“Listen, black lives of course matter, and I spent 50 years of my life fighting for civil rights, and for dignity,” Sanders told the crowd, according to reports. “But if you don’t want me to be here, that’s okay.”
He later asked the protesters for advice while simultaneously defending his own actions on the issue.
“I want some ideas, as somebody who was arrested 50 years ago fighting for civil rights trying to desegregate schools in Chicago, who spent his whole life fighting against racism, I want your ideas. What do you think we can do? What can we do?” he said.
As Sanders prepared on Wednesday to travel south for the King commemorative events, leaders of color in his home state lamented that he had seemed less eager to attend events important to them in Vermont.
Curtiss Reed Jr., executive director of the Brattleboro-based Vermont Partnership For Fairness and Diversity, said in an interview that Sanders had received an invitation to an annual conference held this past November at the Putney School that included leaders of color from around Vermont.
Neither the senator nor any member of his staff attended the conference, titled “Vermont Vision for a Multicultural Future,” Reed said. He described Sanders’ comments Wednesday as “a step in the right direction” and said he would welcome a chance to meet and talk with Sanders.
Mark Hughes, director of the group Justice for All, which like Reed’s has taken up racial profiling by police as a key issue in Vermont, said he differs from Reed on some key issues, “but I agree with him about Bernie Sanders.”
Russian influence and Facebook
On Russian influence on the 2016 election, Sanders said: “Their goal is to divide this country up, and to try to create antagonisms and hatred between different groups of people. My suspicion is what happened is that at the end of my campaign, when it became apparent that I wasn’t going to be the Democratic nominee, what they attempted to do is to reach out to people that they felt were my supporters and to tell them not to vote, or not to vote for Clinton or to vote for Trump, and trying to say really hateful and really ugly things about Secretary Clinton.”
Sanders concluded, “I don’t suspect it had a major impact” on the outcome of the election. He said Russia’s efforts to disrupt the U.S. political system likely would continue, but said one step toward addressing that problem was a $380 million appropriation in the recently passed federal budget bill. The money will go in grants to states to help them purchase more secure voting machines, conduct post-election audits and improve election cyber security training.
Sanders also addressed the epidemic of bad information that has appeared on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and suggested, without offering specifics, that the government may need to step in with some form of regulation.
“We have entered into an entirely new world with Facebook and Twitter … and we have not figured out a way to combat the very negative effects that some people can have on those platforms,” he said.
Asked whether this meant government intervention or citizens becoming more aware of these effects, he said, “No, I think government does have a right. You know, this is an issue I should tell you that is being discussed very vigorously in Congress right now, and I’ll be part of that.”
Asked what government’s role might be, Sanders said, “that’s a longer story than I think we have time for.”
