Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke in unusually personal terms Saturday night about how his fight for the poor has been spurred by his own childhood, saying that there was “constant tension” between his parents over money.
“What I learned at a very young age was when you’re a kid and hear your parents yelling at each other it’s a very difficult and confusing thing,” the Democratic presidential candidate said at a forum at a Brooklyn Unitarian church, three days ahead of the crucial New York presidential primary.
That experience, Mr. Sanders said, makes him understand—and want to relieve—the financial struggles of families today who worry about paying for health care and college.
The Vermont senator has described his agenda countless times, but unlike other politicians, he rarely draws on his own experience, and certainly not in the raw personal way he did Saturday.
He began by recounting that his father, who worked most of his adult life as a paint salesman, had emigrated from Poland at age 17.
“For him, making the kind of low salary he made…was pretty good,” Mr. Sanders said. It was a steady income, he said, but: “My mother was born in this country and her dreams were bigger.”
He said she yearned for what everyone in his Brooklyn neighborhood called a “private home,” meaning a house, not the small apartment the family rented.
“That was a dream,” he said. “She died at the age of 46. She never achieved that dream.”