Keep the faith in Labour says Bernie Sanders’ campaign chief

Nina Turner calls for a bold ‘black agenda’ to fight for racial and economic justice.

Ex-Ohio senator inspires Labour conference-goers

THE CO-CHAIR of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 US presidential campaign has called for black communities in the UK and US to network more closely to fight for racial and economic justice.

Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator, made the call at the Labour Party conference this week.

She said that activists must be bold in pushing for a ‘black agenda’ rooted in love of self in order to advocate for policies that uplift everybody.

Turner spoke to The Voice by the seafront in Brighton and insisted that Labour remained a vehicle for change.

She said: “I firmly believe there has to be an inside and outside game. There should be some people who say I’m gonna fight the good fight on the outside. 

“But you got to have people on the inside because ultimately, but he talks about love and power and how it goes together. 

“If you just got love, that’s kind of sentimental and weak. And if you have power without love, how you gonna govern, or serve that which you do not love?”

Turner’s leadership, alongside that of her mentor, Dr Cornel West, helped propel Sanders to within grasp of being the Democrat nominee for US president before being pipped to the post by Joe Biden.

Sanders is now chair of the powerful Senate budget committee in Capitol Hill and is credited with inspiring the president to purpure progressive economic policies.

Biden passed a $1 Trillion infrastructure bill for green energy and high speed internet and is determined to make billionaires pay their fair share in tax.

The president appointed a union leader as his Labor Secretary and is pursuing a pro-workers’ rights bill and delivered a speech on his plan to tackle racial injustice.

By contrast, Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer has faced criticism for not setting out his vision for addressing structural racism in Britain.

Leftwing critics of a rule change on shortlisting future leadership candidates said it would be more difficult for an MP of colour to get on the ballot.

In a 12,000 word Fabian essay published before his party conference, Starmer did commit to a Labour government to introduce a Race Equality Act.

Turner, who was invited to Britain by Tribune magazine and the communication workers union CWU, said: “We have similar struggles. What happens over here happens over there in my home nation. 

“The stories I’m hearing here sounds just like the stories I hear in my very own community.

“Every gain that we have made, we have picked up allies and co-conspirators along the way who were not black, but make no mistake about it our liberation when we get it comes by our hands.

“Brother Frederick Douglass once said, power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has been never will.”

“So we must force change to happen. But it always is going to start with us. So they need to go and form that Black Caucus in the [UK] parliament. What’s wrong? get it done!”

Turner welcomed Biden’s speech on racial equity but said the president needed to go further.

“The racism that plagues the United States of America, and the UK, and hell, for that matter, 99% of the European nations, it is systemic, and it’s generational. And so we do need the courage of world leaders to deal with anti-blackness.

“We have the George Floyd Act that we can’t even pass [in the Senate]. African Americans vote over 90% for the Democratic Party, we are the most loyal base, and you mean to tell me with the Democrats in control, we can get the Act passed?”

“So it is necessary for the black community to have a black agenda. To say whether you’re Democrat or Republican, you must deliver for black people, or you don’t get our vote.”

Comments Form

2 Comments

  1. | Lord Martin Keen

    nioce news!!! ecxiting times!

    Reply

  2. | Chaka Artwell

    African Americans and Her Majesty’s African-heritage Subjects require their own self-funded political party and political lobby.

    The U.S. Democratic Party and England’s Marxist Labour Party merely used African-heritage people as urban voting fodder.

    It is time to challenge and stop this Left-wing political abuse.

    Reply

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