Bernie Sanders Says Sandra Bland ‘Would Be Alive Today If She Were A White Woman’ – Is He Right?
(Article by M. David)
Following a Texas grand jury issuing their recent decision that they would not bring indictments in the death of Sandra Bland, Democratic presidential hopeful Gov. Bernie Sanders spoke out via a statement on Twitter that there is “no doubt she would be alive today if she were a white woman.”
Geneva Reed-Veal, Bland’s mother, has already made it clear that she is pursuing damages against the Texas Department of Public Safety, State Trooper Brian Encinia, the officer who instigated the traffic stop that eventually led to Bland’s arrest, as well as Waller County and the two prison guards that should have been monitoring Sandra while she was in custody.
“We are not going to allow what they have done in a limited, secret capacity to prevent us from doing what we need to do to get answers for the family,” Cannon Lambert, the attorney for the Bland family told CNN affiliate KPRC.
This is not Sanders’ first time speaking out for Sandra Bland. After police dashcam footage was released in July, Sanders issued the following statement:
“This video of the arrest of Sandra Bland shows totally outrageous police behavior. No one should be yanked from her car, thrown to the ground, assaulted and arrested for a minor traffic stop. The result is that three days later she is dead in her jail cell. This video highlights once again why we need real police reform. People should not die for a minor traffic infraction. This type of police abuse has become an all-too-common occurrence for people of color and it must stop.”
Sanders had also promised Bland’s family that he would “Say Her Name” – which become a national hashtag to name Sandra and female African American victims of police murder.
“What happened to your daughter is inexcusable,” Sanders told Reed-Veal. “We are broken, and this has exposed us.”
CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Sanders, “Do Black lives matter, or do all lives matter?”
Sanders replied, “Black lives matter. And the reason those words matter is the African American community knows that on any given day, some innocent person like Sandra Bland can get into a car and then three days later she’s going to end up dead in jail, or their kids are going to get shot. We need to combat institutional racism from top to bottom and we need major, major reforms in a broken criminal justice system.”
Later, during third and final Democratic debate of 2015, Sanders added an even stronger, more direct statement, that “police officers shouldn’t be shooting unarmed people, predominantly African Americans.”
What do you think about Bernie Sanders and what he has to say about Sandra Bland and police brutality?
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