Feel the Bern connects with the young black voters.
Via US News:
The daughter of Eric Garner – the unarmed African American man who died after a New York City police officer put him in a chokehold – has recorded an ad for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
In the ad, Erica Garner, 24, praises the Vermont senator’s activism and his attention to the myriad criminal justice and civil rights issues affecting African Americans, including the #BlackLivesMatter movement partly inspired by Garner’s death.
But her support for Sanders contradicts that of Eric Garner’s mother, who endorsed Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ front-runner in January. It also mirrors a generational split between younger black voters who side with Sanders, and older ones who prefer Clinton.
The four-minute spot, titled “It’s Not Over,” shows Erica Garner with her young daughter, at home and taking her to school, and marching in twice-weekly protests in honor of her father. Eric Garner’s death was ruled a homicide but a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo.
“She just learned about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King,” Erica Garner says of her daughter in the ad. “I had to explain to her that it’s not really over.”
Garner casts herself as at the forefront of of modern-day version of the civil rights movement King led, and describes Sanders as the candidate whose actions and values are most in line with her own.
“This is what mommy is. I’m an activist I’m the same thing Martin Luther King was. He fought for our rights,” she says. “That’s the same thing I’m doing in honor of her pop-pop.”