Harry Belafonte Endorses Bernie Sanders

Civil rights activist and entertainer Harry Belafonte has revealed that he endorses Sen. Bernie Sanders for president. He met with Sanders in New York the day after Sanders overwhelmingly beat Clinton in the New Hampshire primary.

The message was conveyed through a video made by Sanders’ campaign.

“I think he represents opportunity,” says Belafonte in the video. “I think he represents moral imperative. I think he represents a kind of truth that’s not often evidenced in the course of politics.”

He asks his viewers to “consider and reconsider” what Sanders offers. He elaborates that Sanders “offers us a chance to declare unequivocally that there is an America, that there is a group of citizens that have a deep caring for where are nation goes and what it does in the process of going.”

What adds to the conviction of this already touching video is that Belafonte has often been critical of politics from both parties, even of Obama’s.

“Now we come to the moment when he has failed the test. There’s no question that he has a failing grade in the way he’s handled his platform,” Belafonte said in 2011. “Absent in the arsenal of possibilities is a moral compass.”

Sanders has historically polled poorly among black and Latino voters. Yesterday, he appeared on MSNBC stating, “If you look at my record I have one of the strongest civil rights records in the United States Congress and I have been fighting for those ideas from my first day when I was in the House of Representatives working with the Black Caucus,” he said.

Other strong voices in the civil rights activism sphere have also expressed their approval of Sanders, like Ta-Nehisi Coates who said he would be voting for Sanders last Tuesday. Clinton, however, has the endorsement of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.