New Sanders ad features Eric Garner’s daughter
Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign released an ad Thursday featuring the Eric Garner’s daughter urging voters to “believe in a leader like Bernie Sanders” and giving an emotional account of her father’s death.
Eric Garner died on Staten Island after a New York police officer put him in a chokehold. His death spurred national protests against police brutality.
{mosads}Garner’s daughter, Erica — who endorsed Sanders last month — starts the ad discussing her life since her father died and how she has become an activist in honor of him.
She talks about her 6-year-old daughter, who is also featured in the ad, and how her father’s death has affected her.
“Recently, she just learned about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King,” Garner says over video of her and her daughter sitting together.
“She asked me did Rosa Parks not give up her seat for a white man and I said yes,” Garner says. “She said but those are in the old days, right mommy?
“And I had to explain to her that it’s not really over. This is what mommy is. I’m an activist.”
Garner says she’s fighting for her rights, the same way that Martin Luther King Jr. did, in honor of her dad.
“No one gets to see their parents’ 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.”
Through her protests, she says, she’s trying to tell her dad’s side of the story, that he was a loving and caring man who was murdered.
“I’m never giving up, I’m never going to forget. And I don’t want the world to forget what happened to my dad,” she says.
The ad then shows a clip of Sanders saying that young black men being “beaten and been killed, unjustly” is unacceptable. It shows Sanders calling for police officers to be held accountable for breaking the law.
“I want to see an America where when young black men walk down the street, they will not be harassed by police officers, they will not be killed, they will not be shot,” Sanders says.
“That’s why I’m for Bernie,” Garner says.
The ad comes at a time when rival Hillary Clinton has been garnering the endorsements of black leaders and lawmakers. The Congressional Black Caucus PAC voted this week to make its endorsement of Clinton official.
Clinton will also be joined by the mother of Sandra Bland next week at a voter mobilization stop. Bland, a black woman, was found hanged in her prison cell after being pulled over and arrested in a routine traffic stop, leading to allegations of police misconduct.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed..