Thousands of New York City residents came out to see presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speak in the South Bronx March 31. Sanders had announced he would be speaking in the South Bronx only a few days before the event took place but the announcement soon went viral and the campaign is now reporting that over 18,000 attendees showed up. The event marked the first time a presidential candidate has visited the South Bronx in decades.
Liberation News went to St Mary’s Park in the South Bronx where the rally was being held to talk to supporters of the Sanders campaign and get a sense of just how and why this campaign has attracted so many people.
We arrived two hours before the event was scheduled to start and there were already hundreds of people lined up. One young organizer we spoke to said the first attendee had come at 5 AM and since then people had been trickling in. We wanted to interview a diverse group of people from different nationalities, ages and genders and had the most trouble finding folks who looked to be over 40-years old. The crowd was overwhelmingly college age, non-white New York City residents.
One young African American CUNY student we spoke to told us that the political revolution Sanders is talking about is about “getting rid of the status quo.” Throughout our interviews many people repeated this same belief. Another African American first-time voter we spoke to told us that he thinks “Socialism is a misunderstood system” and categorized socialism as “a very good political system” that “benefits everyone equally.” Some people we interviewed told us that they did not know much about socialism but that if it meant more opportunities for education, healthcare and peace that they would be interested in learning more.
As a way to talk to people who were thinking about socialism members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation held up a sign asking people to take an “Are You a Socialist?” quiz which proved to be very popular. The questionnaire asked participants to either agree or disagree with 14 declarative statements such as “We should use the $1 trillion U.S. military budget to meet people’s needs instead of waging endless wars for Empire,” or “NYC residents should have control over what gets built in their neighborhoods instead of private real estate developers and greedy banks.”
Many people were surprised that anyone would disagree with most of the statements while others were surprised that they agreed 100 percent with the questionnaire and proudly wore the red “I Am a Socialist” buttons we gave them after the quiz. Another quiz participant thanked the comrades from the PSL for giving her the quiz because she felt she came away knowing more about what socialist politics were about because for her the word had been totally “demonized”.
Spike Lee, Rosario Dawson and Residente from Puerto Rican hip-hop duo Calle 13 came out to support Bernie Sanders, who didn’t come out to speak until hours later. The most anti-imperialist words of the night came from Residente of Calle 13. The rapper spoke about the need for Latinos to remember the legacy of Henry Kissinger in South America and also called for the freedom of Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera. Residente said that voting for Hillary Clinton (who considers Kissinger a close friend) would be “an insult to yourself” and also “an insult to those who suffered and were disappeared” during the U.S.- backed military regimes of Latin America that Henry Kissinger had a hand in orchestrating.
