New Jersey’s Powerful Grassroots Peoples Organization for Progress Takes
Bernie Sanders to Heart
with
Larry Hamm,
veteran activist, Chairman the People’s Organization for Progress
POP has rarely departed from a
long-standing policy of not supporting candidates for office and engaged in
a rigorous debate and careful consideration before reaching its position on
how to relate to the 2016 presidential election. POP’s Chairman Larry Hamm
acknowledged the struggle of Bernie Sanders to date to build support in
urban communities, specifically with Black and Latino voters. “It did come
up and it will continue to come up, but the fact remains that many of his
basic positions will benefit black people,” said the activist. “Single payer
healthcare, raising the minimum wage, affordable college, rebuilding
crumbling infrastructure. Although those specific platform planks may not
be addressed specifically to African-Americans, black people know that they
will benefit from those things.” Sanders, who had a campaign rally stopped
by young Black Lives Matter activists, has by far, the most left leaning
stance on all of the issues, especially the economic and racial justice
issues that matter most to the organization. “Bernie Sanders is the first
self-described socialist to ever have gotten this
close to the Presidency of
the United States,” said founder and chairman Lawrence Hamm. “While we
should be deeply concerned by how Republican candidates like Donald Trump
and Ted Cruz have taken the Republican Party so far to the right, we, on the
left, should be just as active as they are and should give serious
consideration to how the Sanders campaign could possibly take the Democratic
Party from the center right to the left,” said Hamm. PlusFormer Secretary of Labor Robert
Reich
Six Responses to Bernie Skeptics
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