A major Democratic donor who introduced Bernie Sanders at a fundraiser Saturday night once said he wanted the South to secede from the rest of the United States.
Guy Saperstein introduced the 2020 Democratic candidate and senator for Vermont at the Mezzanine Night Club in San Francisco for an event attended by actor Danny Glover, the left-wing academic Cornel West, and Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.
Saperstein, 75, a former president of the Sierra Club and a member of the left-wing group Democracy Alliance, wrote in a 2014 Google group that “it would be 100% fine with me if the South was a separate nation, pursuing its own priorities and destiny.”
He continued: “For more than 100 years, the South has been dumbing down national politics, tilting the country in a conservative direction, supporting militarism, all while demanding huge financial subsidies from blue states.”
When asked to clarify his comments by Wisconsin news outlet Media Trackers, Saperstein said: “Secession would be a gradual process, giving any blacks who felt threatened time to relocate,” he said before adding that blacks in the region could “relocate” should they fear discrimination in the new Southern nation.
“The ones who relocated would do much better in their new environments,” he said.
In 2014, other progressives in the group chastised Saperstein for his remarks, saying they were “lunatic.” Activist Ryan Clayton responded to him: “Calling for secession is technically sedition — if we’re going to call out right-wing nutjobs for saying lunatic things like this, then we should be equally prone to chastise our own allies for saying so.”
[Also read: Sanders says he would have beaten Trump in 2016 if he’d been the nominee]
