Actor Mark Ruffalo officially endorsed Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election race.
Ruffalo appeared in a campaign video shared on Sanders’ YouTube page Wednesday. The endorsement comes days after Ruffalo called for an “economic revolution” on Twitter. Ruffalo’s endorsement was originally reported by Fox News.
“The key issues that most of the leaders in the field are either espousing or working around the edges are health care, not taking money from big corporations and PACs, fighting climate change, some sort of debt relief for college students [and] free education,” Ruffalo said.
“People considered those things to be pie in the sky in 2016, right? Now they are the norm because Bernie stood and walked into those, into those issues that he knew were the right issues for the American working class,” he continued. “So I proudly and humbly throw my support to Bernie Sanders.”
Ruffalo went on to say that he grew up in the factory town of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and that contributes to him feeling like he knows Sanders. (RELATED: Mark Ruffalo Says America Needs An ‘Economic Revolution’)
“I grew up in those working-class neighborhoods where my neighbors worked at American Motors or Anchor Hocking or Anaconda Brass,” he recalled. “I saw those companies closed down and I saw my community devastated. The thing about the working-class people that I grew up with was they had a real kind of moral center to them.”
“I think that’s partially why Bernie resonates with me because he feels like those people,” he added. “I believe in him and he is the people that I grew up with. He is those working-class people and I know that he’s got their backs because that’s who he is.”
This isn’t the first time Ruffalo has shown his support for Sanders. The “Avengers” actor was also a fan of the Vermont senator in the 2016 election, before he lost the democratic nomination.