Sanders lets Black Lives Matter activists kick off LA campaign event, gets

Sanders said he’s focused on issues like trade and Wall Street reform, and doesn’t plan to lodge the same kinds of complaints about Clinton’s personal style that many Republican presidential contenders have. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., lifts his arms in celebration as he speaks at a rally, Sunday, August 9, 2015, at the Moda Center in Portland, Ore.

2016 democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders’ LA rally drew a massive crowd to the Los Angeles Sports Arena on Monday night.

The NNU is the first national union to endorse Sanders, who has been building momentum among more progressive Democrats.

Last month Clinton picked up an endorsement from the American Federation of Teachers.

The AFL-CIO didn’t endorse anybody for the November 2016 presidential race after its government council met lately.

Announcing the endorsement, members of the nurses’ union pointed to Sanders’ record of seeking a single-payer health care system through the expansion of Medicare, his work to challenge Wall Street’s role in the economy and his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. In fact, I can’t think of many personalities who have been attacked for more reasons than Hillary Clinton. The speeches were closed, but provided the candidates with an opportunity to pitch themselves to the large union organization.

In a questionnaire Clinton filled out and submitted to the AFL-CIO earlier this year and obtained by Reuters, Clinton laid out a broad litmus test for the pact, but did not say whether she was for or against it yet. “She is so poll-driven, I felt sorry for her. I felt sorry for her sitting in that room”, DeMoro said.

“This land does belong to you and me, it belongs to all of us and not a handful”, Sanders said to members of National Nurses United who were at the site and also listening by phone and web. And he said that our paltry health care system is a global embarrassment.

Sanders said Monday he envisions a “grassroots movement of millions of people“, noting he already has more individual contributors – with an average contribution of $31 – than any other candidate. “We have to change the health care system in America and we have to change boldly and fundamentally the priorities of this nation, so that every American can experience the right to live with dignity and so that not all of our wealth is going to the top 1 percent“.