Actress Rosario Dawson and filmmaker Spike Lee rallied with thousands of Sen. Bernie Sanders supporters in New York on Thursday, where the pair ripped Sanders’ chief presidential rival Hillary Clinton and urged attendees to vote even though the political process is “rigged.”
Dawson, who also introduced Sanders at a rally in San Diego last week, began her speech by slamming Clinton for implying that the Vermont senator doesn’t care about women or women’s issues.
“Today I heard some obfuscating of facts,” the 36-year-old Sin City star told the roughly 15,000 Sanders supporters in attendance at St. Mary’s Park in the Bronx.
“There is this rumor that’s being perpetuated that Trump talking about abortion and punishing women and doctors for it, that somehow, Bernie Sanders was saying that that wasn’t an important issue, regardless of the fact that he’s always stood up for women’s rights, equal pay, equality, and is pro-choice, which the other Democratic candidate very well knows,” Dawson said.
“There’s this rumor out there that because [Sanders] is saying that we’re giving Trump too much time on the airwaves, and we need to stop feeding into that hate and talking about the issues, that somehow that meant that he doesn’t care about women’s issues,” the actress continued. “Shame on you, Hillary.”
“Sorry, hold on, let me watch my tone,” she joked, referring to the Clinton campaign’s warning to Sanders earlier this week that the frontrunner would not debate him again unless he changed his “tone.”
Later on, Dawson invited filmmaker and relatively new Sanders supporter Spike Lee to the stage, who cautioned the crowd that he is not a “public speaker.”
“Look, we all know this thing is rigged, as the Senator’s talked about many, many times,” the Chi-raq director told the crowd. “It’s rigged. As Rosario said, they don’t want to see us together.”
At Sanders’ San Diego rally last week, Dawson blasted the Democratic National Committee and its chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, for what she called the Party’s blatant support of Clinton in the primaries.
“Deborah Wasserman Schultz said the reason superdelegates exist is specifically to push back against grassroots organizing,” she told the San Diego crowd last week, who appeared to boo at the mention of Schultz’s name. “So we need you now more than ever. We need to you to spread the message and talk about our future.”
As Breitbart News has reported previously, the Sanders campaign has feuded with the DNC in recent months, and sued the Party in December after it blocked the Vermont senator’s access to a critical voter database.
Sanders currently trails Clinton by a significant margin in the primaries due mainly to Clinton’s near-total support from Democrat Party superdelegates, who may vote for any candidate they choose regardless of state voting results.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday found Clinton with a significant lead over Sanders in New York, which holds its primary April 19.