Watch the Bernie Sanders Town Hall on Inequality in America (Video)
"We need to ask the hard questions that the corporate media fails to ask: Who owns America, and who has the political power?" says the senator from Vermont.
Bernie Sanders hosted a national town hall on income inequality Monday before a live audience in Washington, D.C. He discussed “the 40-year decline of the middle class and possible solutions to the growing crisis of income and wealth inequality in America” with movie director Michael Moore, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and economist Darrick Hamilton.
“This is a groundbreaking event, the kind you wouldn’t see on the major networks, and it should be a very interesting discussion,” Sanders said before the event.
He partnered with The Guardian, NowThis, The Young Turks, and Act.tv to raise awareness of the town hall, which was livestreamed across the social media platforms of Sanders, Warren, Moore, The Guardian, NowThis, The Young Turks, Act.tv and BuzzFeed. More than a million people watched.
On Friday, Sanders published an op-ed in The Guardian titled “The corporate media ignores the rise of oligarchy. The rest of us shouldn’t.”
Sanders wrote:
The rapid rise of oligarchy and wealth and income inequality is the great moral, economic, and political issue of our time. Yet, it gets almost no coverage from the corporate media.
How often do network newscasts report on the 40 million Americans living in poverty, or that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major nation on earth? …
How often has ABC, CBS or NBC discussed the role that the Koch brothers and other billionaires play in creating a political system which allows the rich and the powerful to significantly control elections and the legislative process in Congress?
Sadly, the answer to these questions is: almost never.
The corporate media has failed to let the American people fully understand the economic forces shaping their lives and causing many of them to work two or three jobs, while CEOs make hundreds of times more than they do. Instead, day after day, 24/7, we’re inundated with the relentless dramas of the Trump White House, Stormy Daniels, and the latest piece of political gossip. …
We need to ask the hard questions that the corporate media fails to ask: who owns America, and who has the political power? …
Unless we understand the reality of life in America for working families, we’re never going to change that reality.
Watch the “Inequality in America” town hall in the video above.
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