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1.7 Million People Tune in to Sanders' US Inequality Town Hall

  • Senator Sanders greets students outside the U.S. Capitol during walk-outs in support of stricter gun laws in Washington.

    Senator Sanders greets students outside the U.S. Capitol during walk-outs in support of stricter gun laws in Washington. | Photo: Reuters

Published 20 March 2018
Opinion

Sanders said the discussion sought to highlight the problem of economic inequality, a matter “corporate media” has failed to discuss.

Senator Bernie SandersEconomic Inequality in America town hall reached 1.7 million viewers Monday night, who tuned in to listen to Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and economist Darrick Hamilton discuss the decline of the middle class and the rise of oligarchy in the United States.

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The panel discussion, broadcasted by The Guardian, NowThis, The Young Turks and Act.tv, took place at the Capitol Visitor Center Congressional Auditorium in Washington, D.C. According to Sanders the discussion sought to highlight the problem of economic inequality, a matter “corporate media” has failed to discuss.

Before the town hall Sanders had published an op-ed in The Guardian entitled “The corporate media ignores the rise of oligarchy. The rest of us shouldn’t.” On Monday Sanders reiterated his call to private media: "start paying attention to the reality of how many people in our country are struggling economically every single day."

Other guests included founder of the anti-poverty Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise Community Development, Catherine Coleman Flowers, Vice President of the United Auto Workers, Cindy Estrada and political scientist Gordon Lafer.

Together, they discussed the steady decline of union representation in the private sector, which Sanders said had decreased from over 40 percent in the 1950s to seven percent today. On this subject Elizabeth Warren praised unions for having built the United States middle class, stating “it’ll take unions to rebuild America’s middle class.”

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They also talked about the harmful role of unlimited financial campaign contributions to U.S. democracy.  

Moore questioned if the U.S. is a democracy, arguing “we cannot call this a democracy if all we get is to go and vote,” and he targeted the Democratic party for presenting itself as the party of working people, while contributing to the collapse of the middle class. “If they are not going to do the job… let’s get somebody else,” Moore concluded.

For Moore, part of the solutions is to talk about the Democratic party because “we need a party that’s going to be there for the people, for the working people.”

Hamilton emphasized racial inequality and how it cuts across economic status in generating worse conditions for African Americans. Hamilton argued universal policies for access to health care or college must take into account historical “racial segregation.” 

Sander’s efforts aim to create a joint political platform to work against the structures in inequality in the country through expanding social security, a single-payer healthcare system, revising the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling which allowed unlimited political contributions, raising the minimum wage to US$15 nationwide, and expanding access to tuition-free higher education.

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