Actor Danny Glover gave an impassioned speech at a Bernie Sanders in Greenville, S.C., Sunday night, about the “historic campaign” the Vermont senator has launched for president.
“It’s amazing to know, that not only are you building a movement, but you’re building a movement right in the face of a presidential election,” Glover said. “We’ve never had that opportunity before. We’re going to change this country! Every single one of us!”
The “Lethal Weapon” star opened his address with a bewildered mutter of “what a moment, what a moment,” before asking the crowd, “Don’t you feel the bern?”
He then touched on South Carolina’s history of helping emancipated slaves “taste freedom,” and how “young civil rights workers for he first time came and had integrated meetings” in the state.
That led into a few words about the current state of South Carolina’s African-American population.
“We know that one-fourth of this state lives in poverty,” he said. “We know that the incarceration rates, even though African-Americans represent 30 percent of the population, they also represent three-fourths of those incarcerated. We know that, that’s the reality. We want to change that. That’s what this movement is about.”
Glover then began to mention Sanders directly.
“We have a statesman, we have a public servant, who has been that [change] all his life,” he said. “From the mayor, to the Congress, to the Senate, he has been there, working. It’s not about the time that you spent, it’s about the substance you make out of the time that you spent.” The crowd roared in agreement at that last line.
He went on to discuss that the only way to get Sanders elected and to enforce change will be through “continued … sustained engagement,” before finally bringing the Democratic socialist onto the stage.
“Let me bring him to the stage, because certainly, he belongs to us, and he belongs to us right now,” Glover said. “And we got to work as hard as we can for the next president of the United States.”
