Bernie Sanders Pledges Support For Clinton As His Supporters Gather To Protest

Bernie Sanders supporters prepare to march through downtown on the first day of the Democr
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Lee Stranahan

PHILADELPHIA — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is set to keep his pledge to support presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on the floor of the DNC, but a group of thousands of his supporters gathered outside City Hall are restless for him to fight.

The comments supporting Clinton came in a speech to his delegates amid a chorus of boos. Then his supporters inside the convention hall began chanting “we want Bernie.”

Meanwhile, a huge contingent of thousands of Bernie Sanders supporters and other far-left activists were on hand at noon at Philadelphia’s City Hall, preparing for a march scheduled for later in the day.

As during yesterday’s march, there is a notably smaller police presence here in Philadelphia than there was at Cleveland’s Republican National Convention. In Cleveland, large groups of police officers, including contingents from other states, were visible multiple times on every single block. The crowd outside City Hall only contained a scattered amount of law enforcement officers, all of whom were local to Philadelphia or Pennsylvania.

There was a generally upbeat, festival mood among the gathered activists, representing a variety of causes from marijuana legalization, to environmentalism, to anti-TPP.

When asked what they want to hear from Bernie Sanders at his speech tonight during the Democratic National Convention the general consensus was they would like to hear him speak out against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, but also hear him take on presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and the DNC. One man was blunt:

There was no visible support for Donald Trump among the pre-protest crowd, with most of the activists holding out hope that a floor fight at the DNC would result in a Bernie nomination, with many taking the fallback position of supporting Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

The pre-march crowd included a notable contingent of socialist, revolutionary communist, some bearing red flags representing socialist revolution.

The recent WikiLeaks dump of approximately 20,000 internal emails from the Democratic National Committee has deepened a fissure within the party, and brought new hope to Sanders supporters that the candidate would disavow his endorsement of Hillary Clinton and either make a third-party run or support Stein.

Others seemed more concerned about the looming threat of Donald Trump, who has pulled ahead of Clinton in some recent polling and who clearly stands to benefit from the chaos on the Democrat side.

It remains to be seen how Bernie’s supporters on the street will respond to his continued support of the Clinton-Kaine campaign. Sanders said that he wanted to start a political revolution. The question now is: can you control the revolution that he started?

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