Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) joined a chorus of politicians Monday calling for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina state capitol grounds.
“The flag is a relic of our nation’s stained racial history,” he said in a statement. “It should come down.”
Sanders’ comments follow last Wednesday’s deadly shooting of nine parishioners at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Photos posted online of the alleged perpetrator, Dylan Roof, show him posing with the Confederate flag and other racially charged imagery. Since 2000, when it was removed from the Statehouse dome, the flag has flown above a nearby monument to Confederate soldiers.
“The tragedy in Charleston, as terrible as it is, has given the people of South Carolina an opportunity to finally turn a page on our past,” said Sanders, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination. “The flag belongs in a museum.”
Sanders was hardly the first to issue such a call. His campaign issued a statement on the matter Monday afternoon only after word leaked that two prominent South Carolina Republicans — Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a fellow presidential candidate — would do the same later that day.
Seven Days asked Sanders’ campaign last Friday and again Monday morning whether he believed the flag should be removed. The campaign did not respond.
On Sunday, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who is also running for the Democratic nomination, called for the flag’s removal in a San Francisco speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has not weighed in on the matter recently, though in 2007 she said that Americans “should have one flag that we all pay honor to.”
The issue has gained political resonance in part because South Carolina plays host to the second presidential primary contest. Sanders was scheduled to speak in Charleston on Sunday, but he canceled the trip after last week’s shooting.
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Everything Paul Heintz writes about Bernie Sanders has a snarky undertone. What gives? Is Seven Days now a conservative news outlet?
@ Burlingtongirl
A good political reporter’s job, and the sign of a responsible newspaper, is that they are critical of EVERY politician and question everything. Paul has every right to be, and should be, as critical and questioning of Sanders as you would undoubtedly expect him to be of George Bush. I expect my source of local political reporting NOT to be an unthinking, uncritical, unanalytical cheerleader for any of our elected officials, whether that’s Leahy, Sander, Shumlin or the lowliest local official. Regardless of party affiliation of political philosophy. If anything, 7D has a liberal bias, not a conservative one.
It seems that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a political journalist’s job is. And it seems that you think that if someone questions Bernie they’re automatically conservative. Huh?
Do you only want to hear adoring and uncritical reports of your beloved Bernie? Then just read his press releases and skip real news media. Or read old Peter Freyne columns for his sycophantic adoration of Bernie in these very same 7D pages. Thankfully, what we have now in Paul Heintz is a vast improvement over that.
Yeah, your headlines are ridiculous. He ‘follows GOP lead’ yet both he and O’Malley made their statements before the GOP leaders that you referenced. You aren’t being neutral at all, every headline and article that I’ve seen you write about Bernie is snarky at best, but more likely biased. Perhaps you have your finger in the wind.
There seems to be this on-going misunderstanding of what that flag really is. It is emphatically NOT the flag of the Confederate States of America. It is emphatically NOT the flag of the Seceded State of South Carolina (nor of any other seceding State). That specific flag, ironically, NEVER FLEW at all in South Carolina – until it got adopted as an out-runner flag on Toyota pick-up trucks owned by wanna-be god-ol’-boys and other assorted morons.
The flag you are all referencing is known as the “Stars and Bars,” and was the regimental battle flag of a small military unit of Northern Virginia. It was flown ONLY by that regiment.
it was the State Flag of nobody. It was never adopted as the Flag of the Confederacy. It never flew outside the battlegrounds of Northern Virginia (some question remains if it made it into Pennsylvania in the Confederate Army incursion there, but other than that, it was flown in places such as the Battle of Manassas).
Just because yahoos fly it from pick-up truck fenders does not make it the “Confederate Flag.” Do try to understand that, folks.
The flag, was flown by treasonous traitors, who fired in and in, their own country. So, whatever southern state flew it then, it was while they were doing THAT… You ignore the fact that they too were embracing slavery so that’s beyond representational of that issue you neglected to mention, wolfganger.