Bernie Sanders Once Compared Vermont Workers to Black 'Slaves'

[Scurrilous]

Link to tweet

As the leading member of a self-described “radical political party” in the 1970s, Bernie Sanders repeatedly compared Vermont workers to enslaved black people.

<snip>

"In recent weeks, Sen. Bernie Sanders has criticized his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination for having too much “baggage” to win the diverse coalition needed to defeat President Donald Trump in November. But as the Vermont independent tops national polls for the first time, newly unearthed baggage from his own decades-long political career could call his own past statements and judgment into question.

As the leading member of a self-described “radical political party” in the 1970s, Sanders repeatedly compared Vermont workers to enslaved black people, according to archival interviews obtained by The Daily Beast. In one 1976 conversation, Sanders told a local newspaper that the sale of a privately held mining company by its founders harkened back to “the days of slavery, when black people were sold to different owners without their consent,” and compared the service economy to chattel slavery.

“Basically, today, Vermont workers remain slaves in many, many ways,” Sanders said in another interview in 1977, in which he compared the burgeoning service industry in the nearly all-white state to the enslavement of black Americans at the nation’s founding. “The problem comes when we end up with an entire state of people trained to wait on other people.”

At the time, Sanders was the chairman of the Liberty Union Party, a Vermont offshoot of the socialist People’s Party. The future senator and presidential hopeful had run for statewide office as the party’s nominee twice—once for the U.S. Senate in 1972, and once for governor in 1976, when he garnered 6 percent of the vote. Those bids were unsuccessful, but the message in the interviews was not dissimilar from that of his 2020 presidential campaign, with an emphasis on working-class solidarity and the disruption of a corrupt political elite enabled, he said in the 1976 article, by “a handful of billionaires [who control] the economic and political life of the nation.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-once-compared-vermont-workers-to-black-slaves?ref=home&via=twitter_page

[George II]

1. And he said Biden had "too much baggage"?

[Demsrule86]

2. He can't be the nominee...and I don't think he will be.

[Thekaspervote]

5. Biden has baggage..a back pack... bernie has a steamer trunk...or 2

Borrowed from another great DUer!!

[George II]

6. Yeah, that came from a great DUer, thanks!!

(me!)

[Thekaspervote]

7. Oh!! Well then thank you... it's certainly one of the greats!!

[boomer_wv]

9. These are wise word...

Enterprising men quote em...

Dont act surprised you guys, cause I wrote em.

Lol

[BannonsLiver]

15. He's got more than United Airlines and Samsonite combined.

[highplainsdem]

3. Oh Bernie...

[still_one]

4. Oh, the sensitivity!!!!!!

[BeyondGeography]

8. Bernie and many of his supporters remind me of so many over-the-top booze-fuelled collegiate rants

We, for the record, weren't ready to be put in charge of anything.

[highplainsdem]

11. Exactly. Wannabe-revolutionary college kids.

And as I recall the ones who were stoned sounded just as bad as the ones who were drunk.

It could be so painful to listen to if you weren't stoned or drunk.

[betsuni]

10. K&R

[Gothmog]

12. Yeah, sanders is being vetted to some limited degree

There is a ton of material on sanders but it is nice to see some limited vetting

Link to tweet

[TCJ70]

13. This is not new language for anyone...

...as the idea of being wage slaves has existed for quite some time. What'll the next fake outrage be?

[Scurrilous]

17. Clueless class-based claptrap.

Take a hint from the tweet, it's why I posted it. "Just. . . .don't defend this. "

[TCJ70]

20. You're welcome to look into the history of the phrase...

...and you might find it's very appropriate in this discussion. Here's a excerpt and quote from Frederick Douglass:

The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job. However, later in life he concluded to the contrary, saying "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other".

Feel free to read more on the subject, and historical comparisons drawn, here. It's not new...and has apparently been around as far back as Cicero in Rome.

[Scurrilous]

39. Uh, huh.

Link to tweet

[TCJ70]

41. Twitter drama doesn't get to erase history.

Also, I’ll take the word of an actual former slave over anything anyone says on Twitter anytime.

[Scurrilous]

42. Well he's dead...so good luck with that.

Just be careful out there equated a paying job with slavery.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

18. Conflating the concept of a "wage slave" and racist human chattel enslavement as it existed before

emancipation is lazy and offensive.

[TCJ70]

19. Not really...

...the comparison has existed since the 18th century or even further back. As I said...this isn't a new concept.

[BannonsLiver]

14. What was that AOC was chortling about recently?

Something about running as if the internet didn't exist?

[Scurrilous]

16. They're going to wish it never existed when this is over.

[Cha]

25. Exactly.

[Tom Rinaldo]

21. Some over heated rhetoric 45 years ago in defense of workers?

This is supposed to be a major hit on Sanders? Sure our public dialog on racism has evolved over the decades and overt comparisons of actual slavery to other forms of oppression are now more widely understood to be racially insensitive, but this comment from 1976, spoken midway between Bernie Sander's being arrested in Chicago in the 60's at a civil rights demonstration and his being one of the only white elected officials in America endorsing Jessie Jackson for President in the 80's, this is supposed to be a major turn off? I just don't see it effecting the votes of virtually anyone in a 2020 General Election, except perhaps helping establish Bernie's career long dedication to fighting for the rights of ordinary workers of every race..

[Scurrilous]

22. Everybody loves Bernie.

#ILikeBernie because he allowed Martin Luther King to march with him on Selma. - Chris Evans.

Polling 20% among black voters....shouldn't be affected a bit by comparing waiters in Vermont resorts to slaves.

[MH1]

32. It shows that the young Bernie had no f*cking perspective about slavery

To compare crappy employment - which has things that are fair to complain about - with slavery, exhibits a stunning lack of concept of what slavery was. OR the willingness to employ extreme rhetoric to make a point. The first will not endear him to the AA community, and I expect they don't care about it being a few decades ago, but of course that is up to them. The second will not endear him to the moderates that we will need to win the GE.

[aikoaiko]

23. Its an analogy and by definition the two things are not the same -- but share some quality.

That's how analogies work

[Tiggeroshii]

27. +1

Thanks for the level headed response, Aiko!

[Voltaire2]

30. the op reeks of desperation

'wage slave' is a commonplace description of the relationship between labor and capital in a modern economy.

[Scurrilous]

34. Something reeks alright.

Brooke@brooketorious
·Replying to
@magi_jay

Maybe the socialist movement in America should reconsider using the term “wage slavery,” given our whole history with slavery and lack of reparations. Just spitballing here...


Andy@trtx84
Replying to
@magi_jay

It feels like the natural evolution of the language they use.

Throw around the phrase "wage slavery" enough and white people are going to start thinking of themselves as actual slaves.


Ted S. Raicer@tdraicer
·Replying to @magi_jay
and
@PelosiSquadNine

I don't know. I wasn't in Vermont back then. Maybe they were selling white husbands and children away from their wives and mothers? Plus picking cotton in Burlington in January is probably pretty brutal.


Texas Y’all@texasdemyall
·Replying to
@magi_jay

This was the most jarring part of this. As though if the owners had the consent of the slaves it would have been OKAY?

As though negotiating the sale of a company is in any way similar to negotiating the sale of a HUMAN F*CKING BEING.


JT Thompson@JThomp1881
·Replying to
@magi_jay
and
@ag_due

But hey...there is a picture if Bernie in the 60s at a Civil Rights rally once...so...
Obviously he is the expert of all things slavery..

WylieDeeds@DeedsWylie
·Replying to
@magi_jay

Knock me over with a feather.

Brocialist White saviour can't keep his mask on.


I could go on but...and don't to forget to yell the rigged DNC derp when Bernie loses primaries in every state in the
South.

Link to tweet

[Cha]

24. Good god.

[Cha]

26. Only Slavery is Slavery.

[Scurrilous]

35. ...

[writes3000]

28. It was almost 50 years ago. I won't hold this against the man. I get the intent of his point.

I very much doubt he would use the same comparison today.

[tirebiter]

29. Trump wouldn't have to commited an impeachsble ofense

To get ths stuff. That's a big fucking deal as a wise man One said

[tishaLA]

33. In today's edition of "Things White Folks Say"....

[Cha]

45. Yeah.

[Gothmog]

37. Who is surprised by this?

[Scurrilous]

38. Not me.

Last edited Fri Jan 24, 2020, 12:58 PM - Edit history (1)

Should Bernie Sanders Have Used the N-Word to ‘Critique Racism’ in His Book?

<snip>

"Independent Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ campaign defended the candidate’s use of the uncensored n-word in a 1997 book, a defense that many people aren’t buying. Was it appropriate, and was Sanders “critiquing racism,” or excusing it?

The passage from Sanders’ 1997 book “Outsider in the House” was first surfaced by The Daily Caller — itself a hotbed of white nationalism that was founded by Fox News host and white supremacy-denier Tucker Carlson — and contained two uses of the uncensored n-word in quotation marks.

In the portion that the site quoted, Sanders wrote:

“For a hundred years, the white workers of the South were the most exploited white workers in America. They were paid the lowest wages, they endured the worst working conditions, their housing was abysmal, their kids went to the most backward schools, and very few could send their children to college. But what did they have? They were given ‘niggers’ to hate and look down on, ‘niggers’ who couldn’t vote, drink at their water fountains, use the same bathrooms, or sit up front in the buses or movie theaters.”

Sanders campaign National Press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray defended the passage in a statement by saying that he was “critiquing racism” with “a recounting — and criticism — of the Republican strategy that was infamously described by GOP strategist Lee Atwater in 1981, which involved using racial bigotry and epithets to demonize people of color.”

That defense is factually ahistorical — Sanders was describing the Jim Crow era, whereas the Southern Strategy was a political response to the ostensible end of legalized Jim Crow — but it tracks philosophically."

https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/should-bernie-sanders-have-used-the-n-word-to-critique-racism-in-his-book/

[SidDithers]

40. ImPoSsIbLe!!!!nt

Sid

[Blue_Tires]

43. All of a sudden his playing grabass with Joe Rogan makes a lot more sense

[Cha]

44. It's all reprehensible