I wrote about Sierra Blanca a week ago. I said then and I’ll say now, when you run a campaign predicated on giving power back to the people and fighting special interests, that should include all people.
Paul Wellstone fought on the Senate floor for this poor Latino community to have amendments added that would give this poor town the ability to sue the powerful interests that wanted this toxic dump placed in their community.
Sanders voted to strip those amendments in conference.
The bill passed and the dump was approved. It was eventually killed by the State of Texas, but that still doesn't absolve Sen. Sanders from at least supporting the Wellstone admendments. Wellstone said his amendments would have given this poor community a “fighting chance” against “environmental racism.”
Eoin Higgins has a piece up today on CounterPunch that mentions Sierra Blanca. I've quoted some parts of the piece. If you want to learn more, check out my diary or head over to Shakesville for even more information about Sierra Blanca.
There was no excuse for Sanders to turn his back on the less fortunate, who didn't have political clout. This poor Latino community needed people like the late, great Paul Wellstone fighting for them. They could have used Bernie Sanders as well, but the Sanders revolution never showed up for Sierra Blanca.
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www.counterpunch.org/…
A delegation from Texas reached out to Sanders and tried to reason with him, citing the environmental and human degradation the waste site would create. They thought they would get an empathetic response from the nominal socialist.
They were wrong.
Sanders’ reply was curt, abrupt, and final:
“My position is unchanged and you’re not going to like it.” When asked if he would at least visit the proposed site in Sierra Blanca, he said: “Absolutely not. I’m gonna to be running for re-election in the state of Vermont.”
The real costs of generating nuclear energy for Vermont, Sanders made clear, would be borne by a small, poor, majority-Hispanic community in Texas. The politically powerless people of Sierra Blanca- where the median income is only $10,500– were chosen to bear the toxic burden of Vermont’s electricity.
Sanders’ callous indifference to the political impotence of the constituents of Sierra Blanca is telling. Not only does it show that the now Senator from Vermont doesn’t practice what he preaches when it comes to issues of economic inequality, it also shows blunt ignorance on privilege, race, and class.
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Update:
When Tad Devine was working as a strategist for then Presidential candidate John Kerry, they actually attacked Howard Dean on Sierra Blanca. Wow!
lubbockonline.com/...
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry on Wednesday criticized the environmental records of fellow Democrat Howard Dean and President Bush, accusing the former governors of striking a deal in the 1990s to ship nuclear waste to a poor Hispanic town near El Paso.
Kerry said Dean, when he was Vermont governor, signed a compact in 1993 with Maine and Texas to send nu clear waste to Sierra Blanca, a plan opposed by civil rights groups.
"He clearly reflected an insensitivity to that community," Kerry said during a campaign stop at a housing project.
Kerry, of Massachusetts, criticized the decision to "dump nuclear waste into a poor community far away from where you live because you can do it. I think George Bush was wrong and I think Howard Dean was wrong."