Bernie Sanders Is Going to Mississippi to March With Workers This Weekend

Excerpts:

It’s part of a new wave of demonstrations and organizing drives linking workers’ rights and civil rights.

By John Nichols

The fight is on against the Trump agenda in places where it matters most—in towns like Canton, Mississippi, population 13,189. So that is where Bernie Sanders will be headed on Saturday.


The senator, who joined union picket lines as a presidential candidate, is marching now with southern autoworkers.

Organized by the Mississippi Alliance for Fairness at Nissan (MAFFAN), a coalition of civil-rights leaders, clergy and labor activists, the march is being backed by the new national Good Jobs Defenders coalition, which includes the Change to Win, the Communications Workers of America and National Nurses United unions, Bend the Arc Jewish Action, Patriotic Millionaires, CREDO, and the Our Revolution movement that grew out of the Sanders campaign.

“There is a war on workers in America today, and we must stand up and fight back against companies that are willing to sacrifice the rights and safety of their workers to turn a profit,” says Joseph Geevarghese of Good Jobs Defenders, who objected to the used of federal dollars to aid multinational corporations that depress rather than raise wages. “When those companies are receiving billions in taxpayer dollars to operate, the federal government should intervene to guarantee good jobs, living wages and worker rights from companies we as taxpayers are subsidizing.”

The March on Mississippi is part of the new wave of marches, rallies, protests and organizing drives that will not merely resist Trump but also resist the austerity policies of national politicians like House Speaker Paul Ryan and the failed economic policies of Republican governors who attack unions and living-wage initiatives. Linking activists together, the movement message declares: “Workers’ Rights = Civil Rights!”


Danny Glover says the disconnect between Nissan ads promoting the car company and the reality of what happens in its Canton plant brought him to Mississippi to march with the workers and Sanders. “Nissan spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year marketing itself as a socially responsible carmaker, even going so far as to brag about its appeal to African-American car-buyers. Yet behind the scenes, the company is violating the rights of the African-American workforce that makes those cars,” says Glover. “We’re speaking out because Nissan can’t have it both ways, and it’s time for car dealers and customers alike to understand the product they’re selling and buying doesn’t fit the image of what Nissan claims it’s producing.”

It is also time, says Sanders, to stand with Southern workers as they struggle for their rights. “What the workers at the Nissan plant in Mississippi are doing is a courageous and enormously important effort to improve their lives,” explains the senator, who joined union picket lines as a presidential candidate and who has kept on marching since the election.

https://www.thenation.com/article/bernie-sanders-is-going-to-mississippi-to-march-with-workers-this-weekend/