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Bernie Sanders Speech At CWA Endorsement - Sanders Wins CWA Union Endorsement - 12/17/15

00:24:42
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The Communications Workers of America endorsed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for president Thursday, giving a shot in the arm to his campaign against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton has secured the bulk of organized labor’s support.

Mr. Sanders on Thursday also won the backing of Democracy for America, a progressive group that led an unsuccessful effort to draft Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren into the presidential race. In addition, the Sanders campaign said it crossed a key fundraising threshold.

The CWA’s endorsement is the third and biggest Mr. Sanders has received from a national labor union, providing him thousands more grass-roots activists who can turn out voters at election time. With 700,000 members in telecommunications, media, and airlines, the CWA’s size far outstrips that of the nursing and postal unions that endorsed Mr. Sanders in recent months.

By comparison, Mrs. Clinton has received more than a dozen endorsements from national labor unions, whose membership rosters account for well over half of the nation’s 14.6 million union members. She has received recent nods from the giant and politically influential Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees -- one of the largest public-sector unions in the country.

In endorsing Mr. Sanders, “CWA members have made a clear choice and a bold stand,” union President Chris Shelton said Thursday. “ Bernie has called for a political revolution – and that is just what Americans need today,” Mr. Shelton said.

The union said a clear majority of members chose Mr. Sanders, who is “the candidate that they believe will fight for working families the most,” Mr. Shelton said. He said that includes tackling “corporate greed;” taking on big banks and Wall Street; fighting against “job-killing” trade deals; and pushing for debt-free higher education.

While union membership has fallen over many years, organized labor still factors significantly in turning out voters and volunteers during election cycles. Unions also spend heavily on elections—largely in support of Democrats—in amounts that can total hundreds of millions of dollars in election years.

“We are going to win this election and we are going to transform America,” Mr. Sanders told an audience at CWA headquarters Thursday. “We have an enormous amount of support at the grass-roots level,” he said.

Still, the candidate faces a big challenge in winning union votes from Mrs. Clinton, a candidate many union members see as more electable even if they view Mr. Sanders’s agenda more in line with organized labor’s.

While Mr. Sanders acknowledged the importance of having campaign money in a national election, he said grass-roots activists “can be more important than money

Language: Русский
Video runtime: 00:24:42
Author: My Zx
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