Bernie Sanders Unveils Moving New Ad With Eric Garner’s Daughter
Bernie Sanders‘ presidential campaign released a stirring video from supporter Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner. In 2014, Erica’s father died after a New York police officer put him in a chokehold. Garner was unarmed.
The four-minute ad opens with Garner detailing the importance of her family and it also features her daughter. “This is what mommy is, I’m an activist,” Garner says she explained to her daughter in the clip. “The same thing Martin Luther King was. He fought for our rights, this is the same thing I’m doing in honor of her pop-pop.”
Later she reflects on her father’s death. “No one gets to see their parent’s last moments, and I was able to see my dad die on national TV,” she says. “They don’t know what they took from us.”
For a year, she says she’s been protesting every Tuesday and Thursday. “I feel like a representative for people throughout this whole nation because I’m doing this, I’m speaking out,” she says.
Garner refers to Sanders as a “protester” as well and says he’s not afraid to “go up against the criminal justice system.” The video includes clips from Sanders where he speaks out against racially charged police brutality. “It is not acceptable to me that we have seen young black men walk down streets in this country be beaten and be killed unjustly,” Sanders says.
On Thursday, Hillary Clinton picked up the endorsement of the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, as Mashable reports. Both campaigns’ prominent endorsements have come before South Carolina’s February 27th primary, where the black vote is a critical factor. As Bloomberg reports, 14 of its 46 counties report registered voter populations that are more than half white.
In a post on Erica Garner’s website, she stated she and her team had full creative control of the video. “The senator didn’t reach out to me all of a sudden because he needs help with Black people,” she wrote. “He didn’t put out a press conference announcing that we would be working together. He didn’t force me to frame my support of him around a subject matter that special interest groups that support him can get behind.”