Actresses and staunch Bernie Sanders supporters Rosario Dawson and Shailene Woodley aren’t necessarily prepared to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, even after the Vermont senator endorsed her and called for unity at the party’s national convention earlier this week.
In an interview with The Young Turks at the DNC, Dawson said that the convention’s treatment of former state Sen. Nina Turner — whom Sanders had asked to speak but who was then apparently disinvited from speaking — showed that the Democratic Party is still grappling with deep divisions between supporters of the two candidates.
“There’s a lot of talk about unity, but we’re not feeling it, we’re not seeing it, it’s not being really reflected to individual delegates I’ve spoken to,” the 37-year-old Sin City star told TYT’s Cenk Uygur. “People have spent a lot of money to be here, have gone into debt to be here, who are representing voters, and a lot of voters didn’t even get to be counted, and just wanting to make sure that that’s part of it so we’re not just saying unity but trying to build it.”
Dawson said that the thousands of internal DNC emails leaked by WikiLeaks last week exacerbated the suspicion among many Sanders supporters that “there isn’t integrity there.”
“It has not been a fair fight,” the actress told TYT. “It’s been an ugly fight. The DNC leaks just showed this weekend that there was a willingness to be anti-Semitic in order to push back against Bernie Sanders. That’s big, and that’s not being acknowledged.”
Dawson and Woodley were among the most vocal Sanders supporters in Philadelphia for this week’s Democrat convention.
In a fiery speech in front of Sanders delegates on Monday morning, Dawson said that the Democratic National Committee should not just expect supporters of the Vermont senator’s campaign to simply “fall in line” behind Clinton, whom she called a “follower” and “not a leader.”
Dawson reiterated that sentiment in her interview with TYT: “I think it’s important that [Sanders supporters’] votes are earned and not just expected to be delivered.”
Other celebrity Sanders supporters critical of Clinton’s campaign include Susan Sarandon and Danny Glover, who attended a rally in Philadelphia on Sunday to raise awareness on climate change issues.
In an interview with TYT at the rally, Sarandon called the DNC’s email leak “disgusting.”
“Nixon resigned when they broke into the headquarters,” Sarandon said. “And now you find all this tampering going on, and I know there are lawsuits and things. I think we really have to ask what’s happened to us, in terms of what we’re willing to sacrifice to get our person in. What does it really say about us if this goes by unattended?”
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum