Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders may be hard at work trying to win the presidency, but he hasn’t lost touch with his roots. On Wednesday, he joined striking Verizon workers at their picket line outside the company’s headquarters in New York.
He told the cheering crowd:
“I know that going on strike is not something that’s easily done. I know there’s going to be a lot of pain involved. I want to thank you for standing up to the outrageous greed of Verizon and corporate America.”
According to Reverb Press, the workers were striking because:
“the company failed to renew their union contracts which had expired over eight months ago while the corporate giant allegedly fought to cut pensions benefits and change rules so they could outsource more labor and take more jobs out of America.”
Sanders is currently battling Clinton for their shared home state of New York, and though he’s currently down in the polls, an awkward racist gaffe by the Clinton campaign and a few key endorsements might just propel him to victory.
One such endorsement came from New York’s Public Transit Union, who championed Sanders as someone looking out for the rights of workers.
“Brothers and sisters,” TWU president John Samuelson said in a statement, “there is no doubt that America needs a jolt, New York needs a jolt, working families need a jolt and business as usual politics are not going to give us the jolt that we need. TWU has been fighting for transport workers for decades. In Bernie Sanders, we see a kindred spirit because Bernie Sanders has been fighting for American workers his entire life.”
“At a time when our middle class is disappearing,” said Sanders, “when we are seeing almost all new income and wealth going to the top one percent, when we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of almost any major country on earth, John is right: it is too late for the same old, same old establishment politics.”
Video: Sanders at the Verizon Picket Line
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