Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders
Bernard "Bernie" Sandersis an American politician, serving as the junior United States Senator from Vermont since 2007. Sanders is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history. He has always caucused with the Democratic Party, which has entitled him to committee assignments and at times given Democrats a majority. Sanders became the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee in January 2015; he had previously served for two years as chair of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. He publicly identified...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth8 September 1941
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I have a long history in fighting for civil rights. I understand that many people in the African-American community may not understand that.
Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Campaign are standing up and fighting the important fights that have to be fought.
I am a fierce supporter of Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and gay rights in this country.
Even in South Carolina, as badly as we did, and we did very badly, we won the votes of people 29 years of age or younger. The future of the Democratic Party, the future of this country is involving young people in the political process, getting them to stand up for their rights.
We are not going back. Not only are we not going to retreat on women's rights, we are going to expand them. We are going forward, not backward.
I believe strongly that we can protect our people without undermining our constitutional rights and I worry very, very much about the huge attacks on privacy that we have seen in recent years -- both from the government and the private sector. I worry that we are moving toward an Orwellian society, and this is something I will oppose as vigorously as I can.
In my view, a corporation is not a person. A corporation does not have First Amendment rights to spend as much money as it wants, without disclosure, on a political campaign.
We are going to fight to pass the long over-due Equal Rights Amendment.
If you ask me about my views on the environment, on women's rights, on gay rights, I am liberal. I don't have a problem with that at all. Some of my best friends are liberal.
I have friends and supporters in the Human Rights Fund and Planned Parenthood. Hillary Clinton has been around there for a very, very long time. Some of these groups are, in fact, part of the establishment.
Black lives, of course, matter. I spent 50 years of my life fighting for civil rights and for dignity, but if you don't want me to be here, that's OK. I don't want to out-scream people.
I'm very, very worried about the invasion of privacy rights that we're seeing not only from the N.S.A. and the government but from corporate America, as well. We're losing our privacy rights. It's a huge issue.
Clearly we must do everything we can to protect our country from the serious potential of another terrorist attack, but we can and must do so in a way that also protects the constitutional rights of the American people and maintains our free society. We can do that without living in an Orwellian world where the government and private corporations know every telephone call that we make, every website we visit, every place we go.
I think my experience at the University of Chicago, working in the civil rights movement, working in the peace movement, working with community organizations, did a lot to influence the politics that I have.