Bernie Sanders to join Nissan march

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will join more than 1,000 protesters Saturday as they march outside a Nissan plant in Mississippi to demand a union.

The March on Mississippi is just the latest protest sweeping across Nissan plants in the South.

The Nissan protesters are complaining about what they see as civil rights abuses and mistreatment of black workers at the Japanese automaker’s plant in Canton, Miss. The protesters say about 80 percent of the plant’s 5,000 workers are African-American.

{mosads}These workers are “trying to build cars and a future for themselves,” said Cornell William Brooks, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who is also attending the protest.

“Nissan has union representation at 42 out of its 45 plants around the world,” Sanders said in a statement. “The American South should not be treated differently. What the workers at the Nissan plant in Mississippi are doing is a courageous and enormously important effort to improve their lives.”

Actor Danny Glover will also march with the protesters.

“Powerful corporations like Nissan are the poster child for America’s rigged economy,” Glover said. “Nissan’s arrival in Canton promised good jobs for the community, but instead the company has committed rampant safety and health violations and denied its workers their basic right to vote for a union free from fear and intimidation.