A Pakistani-American speechwriter Faiz Shakir, is said to be the author of Bernie Sanders’ fiery speech on Sunday, The Print has reported.
Democratic presidential candidate for the US Elections 2020 Bernie Sanders in his speech expressed deep concerns over India’s “unacceptable” seizure of Kashmir and called the United States (US) to intervene for a peaceful resolution of the dispute.
According to the reports, many believe that Bernie’s campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, is the one who actually wrote Sanders’ Kashmir speech.
Born to Pakistani immigrants in the US, Shakir has been deeply immersed in the world of activism and has managed to cultivate several important connections in the Democratic Party.
He went on to study at Harvard and Georgetown Universities, and over the past decade, Shakir has developed a stellar resume by working with some of the biggest Democratic legislators and top-notch think tanks and civil liberties advocacy groups.
After completing his education at prolific institutions, Shakir began working as a legislative aide to former Florida governor, Bob Graham. He then went to work as a junior staffer in the 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign.
Following Kerry’s campaign, Shakir joined the liberal think-tank and advocacy group Centre for American Progress (CAP) in 2005 and worked there as a policy advisor.
Later that year, Shakir helped CAP launch a news website called ThinkProgress, and worked there as the website’s editor-in-chief between 2007 and 2012. He helped turn it into a platform that garnered a lot of acclaim for its reporting on climate change.
After his stint at CAP and ThinkProgress, Shakir joined prominent Democratic legislator Nancy Pelosi’s team as the “director, new media”. Pelosi is currently the majority leader of the US House of Representatives (lower chamber).
After his stint with Pelosi, Shakir went on to work with esteemed Democratic Senator Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader between 2007 and 2015.
In 2016 when Shakir joined Sanders’ presidential campaign team, he drew a lot of anger from his former boss Podesta, who was then managing Clinton’s campaign.
After Sanders failed to win the Democratic primaries, Shakir joined civil rights advocacy group American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as its political director.
Over the past two years, ACLU has been at the helm of legal and political resistance against the United States President Donald Trump’s policies, especially the “Muslim immigration ban”. ACLU is a major advocacy group and has over 12,00,000 members and more than $100 million at its disposal.
Following Trump’s immigration ban, ACLU helped raise $24 million and Shakir played a big part in it. ACLU had also filed a lawsuit against Trump’s executive order, which led to a temporary stay on Trump’s immigration ban.
