Biography

Son of Dorothy "Dora" (Glassberg) and Elias Ben Yehuda Sanders. His father was a Polish Jewish immigrant whose family died in the Holocaust. He moved to the US from Slopnice, Poland, in 1921. Bernie's mother was born in New York, to Russian Jewish parents.

In the summer of 1963 he was found guilty of resisting arrest during a demonstration against segregation in Chicago's public schools and was fined $25.

Congressman from Vermont, 1991-2007. For most of his tenure he was the only independent in the House of Representatives.

Sanders, who is Jewish, became the first non-Christian person to win a major US party's presidential primary when he won the New Hampshire Democratic primary in 2016. He's not the first person of Jewish descent to win a primary though, as three previous winners, Barry Goldwater in 1964 and John Kerry and Wesley Clark in 2004, all have Jewish ancestry but their families had converted to Christianity.

Mayor of Burlington, the largest city in Vermont, 1981-89.

Finally, let's understand that when we stand together, we will always win. When men and women stand together for justice, we win. When black, white and Hispanic people stand together for justice, we win.

Let us wage a moral and political war against the billionaires and corporate leaders, on Wall Street and elsewhere, whose policies and greed are destroying the middle class of America.

What the American people want to see in their president is somebody who not necessarily can win every fight, but they want to see him stand up and fight for what he believes, take his case to the American people.

Here is what the practical impact of "Citizens United" [an extremely controversial US Supreme Court decision bout campaign financing] means. What Citizens United means is that corporations pour hundreds of millions of dollars into television ads, radio ads and other forms of advertising to defeat those candidates who stand up and take them on.

What Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is really not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do who make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don't break the kneecaps of those who can't pay back, they still are destroying people's lives.