EAST LANSING, Mich.— Bernie Sanders made an impassioned appeal to black voters at Michigan State University’s Breslin Center basketball stadium in East Lansing Wednesday evening.
“This campaign is listening to the African American community,” the Democratic presidential candidate told a crowd of approximately 10,000 enthusiastic supporters in this college town just outside Detroit.
The line, which was followed by a statistic on incarceration rates among black males in the U.S., was one of many that signaled a not-so-subtle attempt by Sanders to amp up his appeal to African-American voters after he overwhelmingly lost them to Hillary Clinton on Super Tuesday.
Clinton nabbed 1,052 Democratic delegates during sweeping wins in five Southern states with large African American populations—reigniting concerns about Sanders’ ability to attract black voters and prompting pundits to predict the coming demise of Sanders’ underdog campaign.
But the longtime Vermont Senator defiantly vowed to keep going Wednesday, and made clear in Michigan that that he’s not ready to give up the Democratic nomination—nor the black vote—without a fight.
It was a decision that no doubt delighted Sanders supporters, many of whom waited for hours in the biting Midwestern cold to show that they, too, are still feeling the Bern.
“We want to be part of the revolution,” said 34-year-old Amanda Billings. Billings and her husband Nathan, both decked out in Bernie t-shirts and pins, drove an hour and a half from Hubbardston, Mi., for Wednesday’s rally. They stood outside for more than two hours and managed to secure a prime spot on the stadium floor.
“We want to see change,” said Billings, who handles workmen’s compensation for a local insurance company. “We want to see smaller people’s voices count, not just people who have money they can throw around to make decisions.”
From left: Nicole Bowen, Amanda Billings, and husband Nathan Billings, showed their support for Bernie Sanders in East Lansing, Wednesday March 2, 2016. (Photo: Caitlin Dickson/Yahoo News)
With less a week left before the Great Lakes state’s democratic primary, it makes sense why Sanders chose to kick of this latest attempt to court black voters in Michigan, home of the city with the highest percentage of African Americans in the country. Drivers in the Detroit metro area Wednesday could hear director Spike Lee endorse Sanders in presumably the same radio spot that aired in South Carolina ahead of that state’s primary last week.
Yet Sanders’ rally didn’t take place in Detroit, but in East Lansing, a college town where black people make up just 6.8 percent of the population. And while there were certainly a variety of minorities, including African Americans, in attendance, the demographics of the crowd seemed to reflect East Lansing’s overwhelmingly white majority.
The throngs of dedicated fans hardly needed warming up—rising to their feet in excitement on several occasions before the event started, only to find that the stray cheer or round of applause heard from ahead did not signal Sanders’ appearance.
Before he finally took the stage, Sanders was preceded by 20-year-old activist Ja’mal Green, who has helped organize recent protests against police violence and corruption in Chicago. Green touted Sanders’ involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and professed confidence in the Senator that, as president, he would work to bring justice to the families of victims of police brutality, rattling off now well-known names like those of Eric Garner and Sandra Bland.
By Caitlin Dickson.
Culled from Yahoo News.
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