Hundreds crowded the southern half of Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis Monday afternoon, as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) spoke on jobs and the economy.
“What we are doing here in Indianapolis, is what should be happening in every state of this country,” Sanders exclaimed in the campaign style rally on the steps of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. “That is people standing together and demanding an economy that represents all of us and not the top 1-percent!”
At the rally put together by “Good Jobs Nation”, Sanders hit on a variety of topics from the economy and jobs, to free public college and a $15/hour minimum wage. He even touched on the events that happened in Charlottesville.
Sanders criticized President Trump for not outright condemning the acts of white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.
“There are no two-sides of that story,” Sanders continued. “There is no equivocation. Nazism, white supremacy ,anti-Semitism, is not what this country is about and we need a President that can bring us together and not divide us up.”
Sanders spoke briefly on healthcare, saying that it’s time to “guarantee healthcare to all people are a right, not a privilege.”
Among the other speakers at the rally was former United Steelworkers Union president Chuck Jones, who gained national attentions for his feud with then President-elect Donald Trump. Trump criticized Jones’ leadership of the union on Twitter and placed a lot of blame on him for hundreds of jobs being outsourced by Carrier and Rexnord to Mexico.
Jones recognizes that unemployment rate in Indiana is at a record low, but says that a lot of the jobs that are being had, aren’t paying enough to sustain a livable life-style.
“There’s jobs out there,” Jones says. “A lot of them you have to ask, ‘Do you want french fries with that?’ Some of them are warehouse jobs, paying $12/hour.”
Jones says for employees at Carrier and Rexnord who are being laid off and having to find jobs elsewhere, $12/hour won’t cut it. That’s because those workers were making around $22/hour.
“When your salary is cut in half, that’s when you start losing cars, homes, and in some instances it gets even worse than that,” Jones adds.
