About 20 people gathered together last night at the Foxcroft Club House in Midlothian for one of the many grassroots efforts going on around the country to support Vermont Democratic Senator Bernie Sa
About 20 people gathered together last night at the Foxcroft Club House in Midlothian for one of the many grassroots efforts going on around the country to support Vermont Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders. The liberal candidate has thrown his hat into the ring for the 2016 presidential election up against the more widely-known Hilary Clinton, who continues to lead dramatically in polls.
Sanders live-streamed his speech through his website to the watch parties, sometimes held in private residences, to discuss the issues he backed, what he was going to do for the country, and what needed to be changed.
According to the broadcast, about 100,000 people in 3,500 locations in every state were involved in the grassroots campaign for Sanders.
“Enough is enough” was the slogan of the night.
Sanders’ speech covering education, healthcare, and wages came off like a little like a giveaway special from the Oprah Winfrey Show. [Paraphrasing] ‘You get free tuition!’ ‘Medicare for all’ ‘Everyone who makes minimum wage should get a raise to $15!’
The room bursted into applause at each of those statements.
It’s yet to be seen if he can back up what he’s promised, but he seems like a nice guy and he did make some interesting points on race relations in this country.
Check out the speech and decide for yourself below.
According to the Bernie Sanders grassroots events campaign website, there were 57 support groups held in Virginia last night. Most of the meetups were in Northern Virginia.
Supporters of Sanders gathered in homes, clubs, and other places around Richmond last night.
Groups met in Oregon Hill, Manchester, Midlothian, a home on Grove, Carver, and The Fan. All together according to the event pages about 125 people in the Richmond area gathered to watch and discuss the live-streaming broadcast.
John Fink of Midlothian was among the group at the Midlothian meetup. Fink, 37, is a fast food employee and also works part time for a substance abuse non-profit organization in Richmond.
He said he’s mainly supporting Sanders for the increased wages that he’s promising.
“He wants equal rights for all people, increased minimum wage and he’s supported by workers and not big money and that’s important to me,” Fink said. “Many more individual people are supporting him right now and he’s had the same stances that he’s had for around 40 years that he worked up in Vermont I just don’t think there’s anybody else that has a plan for what they’re saying.”
Jodie Felice and her husband Don organized the Midlothian event. Felice, 66 is a retired history and German teacher who lives in the Midlothian area. She had quite a bit to say about Sanders and all of his issues.
“He’s not a talking-head saying what this group or that group wants to hear in order to get elected,” Felice said. “He comes from a working-class background and has always supported unions, a living wage, and helping one’s neighbor rather than relegating the less fortunate to the gutter.”
Felice said she supports him cause of his history with the civil rights movement in the 60’s and how he has consistently worked against racism and broader equality.
“The bills he has supported as a Representative and Senator have always rallied in favor of equal pay and equal rights for women, the environment, education, veterans rights and care, expanded health care for all and the refitting of our century-plus old infrastructure to a standard that grows us as a nation economically and socially and against the unbridled power of banks, corporations and Wall Street that work against the individual citizen,” she said.
Felice was initially favoring a female candidate, but has since changed her mind.
“I’m sensitive because Mrs. Clinton did not do a good job as secretary of state,” Felice said. “I started paying more attention, looking at her interviews and they’re non-answers, we don’t need a run-of-the-mill politician in a skirt just because she’s called a woman.”
It will be 18-year-old Josh Palmer’s first time voting in the next election. He’s a part-time bagger at Kroger in Midlothian and was very concerned with education and hopeful that Sanders can make changes with college tuition to make it more affordable for students.
“If we’re trying to find something that’s going to affect me the most it’s education, my family is well off, we’re slightly above middle class. My dad has a GI bill so I don’t have to worry that much but there’s millions and millions of people who can’t go to college because they can’t afford it,” Palmer said.
Palmer plans to go to John Tyler for a year then transfer to the University of Virginia and thinks if college were cheaper, people could use that money to put towards other things.
“All this debt people are being put in for their education they could be putting it toward houses and cars,” he added.
A Quinnipac University poll released today shows that in a hypothetical general election match-up, Secretary of State Clinton would get 55 percent of Democratic vote nationwide, with 17 percent for Sanders.
But Sanders did beat out Republican frontrunner Donald Trump 45 – 37 percent.
Bush edges out Sanders 44 – 39 percent and Walker slips past Sanders 42 – 37 percent.
