5 things to know about Bernie Sanders

By Samuel Smith, Deputy Managing Editor Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Widely circulated photo claims to show Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders at the Selma March. However, fact-checkers believe the photo to be of someone else who simply resembles a young Sanders. | (Photo: Facebook / Keith Strickland)

5. History of political activism

During his college years at the University of Chicago, Sanders was a civil rights activist and was a member of the Young People’s Socialist League.

In 2016, the Chicago Tribune republished a picture of a 21-year-old Bernie Sanders being carried off by police officers during a civil rights protest in August 1963.

Sanders was arrested and charged with resisting arrest, found guilty and fined $25, according to the newspaper.

According to Mother Jones, Sanders coordinated a sit-in against segregated housing and attended the 1963 March on Washington.

Politico reports that Sanders graduated in 1964 with a political science degree and got married. Sanders and his then-wife moved to Vermont and bought property. Sanders and his wife spent the next few years living on the property before the marriage ended in 1966.

After that, Sanders bounced around between Vermont and New York. In Vermont, Sanders worked for a nonprofit helping people register for food stamps. In New York, he worked as a hospital aid and as a preschool teacher.

According to Mother Jones, Sanders dabbled in carpentry, which he was reportedly terrible at doing, and worked as a freelance journalist.

Around 1970, Sanders discovered the Liberty Union Party, which was an informal coalition of left-leaning parties seeking to end the two-party system, stop the Vietnam War, raise the minimum wage and enact more regulations on corporations.

With the help of the party, Sanders twice unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate and governor in the span of five years. Sanders would go on to become the Liberty Union Party party’s chairman.

In 1981, Sanders ran for mayor of Burlington, Vermont. He won as an Independent candidate with 43.83% of the vote. His win gained national attention as the narrative emerged that a “socialist” won mayorship in Vermont.

According to some reports, Sanders’ mayoral election victory at the age of 39 was his first real steady paycheck, despite having worked odd jobs before his career as an elected politician began.