The daughter of Eric Garner, a New York City man who died after being held in a chokehold by a police officer in Staten Island in 2014, has endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
“I think we need to believe in a leader like Bernie Sanders,” Erica Garner says in a Bernie Sanders campaign ad released Thursday.
Garner appears in the ad with her 6-year-old daughter, who she says recently learned about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. in school.
“She asked me, ‘Did Rosa Parks not give up her seat for a white man?’” Garner says in the video ad. “She said, ‘But those are in the old days, right, Mommy?’ And I had to explain to her it’s not really over.”
She then explains that she is like those activists in honor of her daughter’s “pop-pop.”
The ad shows clips of Eric Garner being put in a chokehold, as well as the protests that occurred in the city following his death. Erica Garner was actively involved in those protests and the movement against police brutality.
“I’m behind anyone who’s going to listen and speak up for this,” she says in the ad. “There’s no other person that’s speaking about this. People are dying. This is real. This is not TV. We need a president that’s going to talk about it.”
The clips that follow show Sanders speaking out against police brutality.
“It is not acceptable to me that we have seen young black men walk down streets in this country, be beaten and be killed unjustly,” the senator says in one.
Garner says she believes Sanders is a protester and that he is not afraid to go against the country’s criminal justice system. The ad concludes with Garner’s endorsement of Sanders.
“That’s why I’m for Bernie,” she says.
