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The photographer speaks out. "John Lewis, Bernie Sanders, “What is the Truth?”
From his website:
John Lewis, Bernie Sanders, "What is the truth"
Usually this blog gets from twenty to forty people a day looking at it. 47,851 have visited this site since we posted the pictures I made of young Bernie Sanders two days ago. They came looking for the truth. Three major news organizations have used a photograph I made of young Bernie Sanders as a twenty year old student at the University of Chicago to attack his campaign and to denigrate his early place in history.
In 1962, a few months before I made the pictures of Bernie as an early civil rights activist, I made another picture of another young man sitting quietly in the back of a church in Cairo, Illinois. I have published that in my book, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. I knew who John Lewis was when I saw him that morning because of his unparalleled bravery as a freedom rider. The year before we met, the Freedom Rides had made John Lewis a hero to all young, caring and politically engaged students. I was one of them, and I’m sure Bernie was another. It was 1962, over fifty-three years ago.
Bernie chose to organize in the North. I went south. I became the principle photographer of the southern civil rights movement, John Lewis’s roommate in Atlanta, and a paid staff member of the SNCC. In 1962 there were very few white northerners that went south. In many ways SNCC did not want them to come. Integrated groups in the deep South seemed to incite violence. Finally, in the summer of 1964, SNCC and CORE recruited students from the North, and a thousand, mostly northern whites came to Mississippi. Within days, just as Freedom Summer began, three were murdered. Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner, and James Chaney. They were taken into the woods and lynched. Goodman and Schwerner were both from New York City. They were both Jewish, as I am. As Bernie Sanders is. Since the time of Roosevelt there had been a real effective political alliance between African Americans and Jewish Americans. The children of immigrants that had fled lands where they had been persecuted and discriminated against as a despised minority identified with and fought for the rights of American blacks. It was a natural and powerfully affective alliance.
.....The worst thing about Congressman John Lewis’s embrace of the Clintons and his attack on Bernie Sanders is that John Lewis is a pacifist. It is one of his most endearing and courageous qualities. Congressman Lewis never votes for a military appropriation. He is one of only four or five congressmen, out of five hundred, that votes this way. His Christmas card shows John and his friend the Dali Lama, touching heads and praying in Peace. He means it. John told me “war is outmoded”. John is right. But the crushing “politics as usual” of the Democratic Party has John supporting Hillary, who is a Hawk, and attacking Bernie Sanders, who is a much more peaceful politician.
In the last campaign when Hillary ran against President Obama, John supported Hillary. I was fishing on the Hudson when I reached John on my cell. “John” I said, “You’ve got to switch. You can create the first black president of the United States.” John said he’d been getting a lot of calls and there would “be an announcement soon.” A week later John switched his support to Barack Obama.
Danny Lyons makes clear his support of Bernie Sanders, but he shows his respect for John Lewis as well.
I understand Time Magazine is still not taking his word for who's in the picture. Looking for that link now.
41 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
like why wouldn't a reporter for a high profile newspaper call the freakin photographer to check
the good thing is everyone he does interview supports bernie for pres!
If Bernie is being advised to ignore this, he needs new advisors.
rocktivity
and the photog DID do his job right, his photo was just captioned badly!
rocktivity
I hope he doesn't drop it.
