From KOMO News (Seattle):
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was shoved aside by several Black Lives Matter activists and eventually left a Social Security Works rally at Westlake Park without giving his speech.
Sanders was just starting to address several thousand people gathered shoulder to shoulder at Westlake Park when two women took over the microphone.
“It’s about the people, it’s about grassroots movements,” Mara Jacqueline Willaford, Black Lives Matter member said after taking the microphone. “The biggest movement right now in the country is the Black Lives Matter movement.”
Organizers couldn’t persuade the two to wait and agreed to give them a few minutes, prompting boos from some in the crowd.
As Sanders stepped back, the women passionately spoke about Ferguson and the killing of Michael Brown and held a four minute moment of silence.
When the crowd asked the activists to allow Sanders to speak, one activist called the crowd “white supremacist liberals,” according to event participants. Participants also said a Black Lives Matter activist confronted Sanders, stating he needed “to be held accountable”.
Several chants could be heard from members gathered. “I can’t breathe” was chanted out as a Social Security Works rally organizer tried to calm the crowd.
After waiting about 20 minutes, Sanders himself was pushed away when he tried to take the microphone back.
Social Security Works rally organizers pleaded with Black Lives Matter activists to leave the stage and allow Sanders to speak, but the activists remained on stage until the event was forced to end.
Sanders waved goodbye, left the stage with a raised fist salute and waded into the crowd. He shook hands and posed for photos with supporters for about 15 minutes, and then left.
Here’s where things get interesting. From the Daily Kos:
4:36 PM PT: Black Lives Matter has now begun using the hashtag #BowDownBernie
Further quote from activists’ Facebook page:
“The problem with Sanders’, and with white Seattle progressives in general, is that they are utterly and totally useless (when not outright harmful) in terms of the fight for Black lives.”
4:43 PM PT: Update from BLM’s Seattle on Facebook:
Black Lives Matter Seattle
17 mins ·To the people of Seattle and #BernieSanders I am so sorry for what happened today in Seattle. I am a volunteer who just runs this page and I am only just starting to get into the movement. I was unaware of what happened and now that I’ve seen the video I would like to say again that I am sorry. That is not what Black Lives Matter stands for and that is not what we’re about. Do not let your faith in the movement be shaken by voices of two people. Please do not question our legitimacy as a movement. Again I would like to apologize to the people of Seattle and I will be trying to reach out to Mr. Sanders.
5:04 PM PT: To clarify:
The statement by BLM Seattle is not directly affiliated with the national movement. The national movement is proud of its new hashtag, #BowDownBernie, which I for one unequivocally denounce.
And so it goes…
I am sick of coronations. At least with Scrappy Bernie in the race issues I care about are being discussed.
I am nauseated by corporate shills. And I have come to the conclusion that Hillary is one of them. How does trying to neutralize Bernie actually help the cause of Black Lives Matter?
Attention seeking by demonstrators – which I have now seen flare up and then vanish repeatedly over a 50 year period – is something I have come to see as not just meaningless, but harmful, and a form of co-opting what could have been meaningful energy. Disrupting the one candidate who isn’t a bought shill is hardly laudable.
These protesters, probably, in their regular lives are law abiding and normally functioning citizens. However a nerve has been touched, generating an anger that has led to disruptive behavior.
It brings back the “Act Up Movement” that arose after ugly incidents were perpetrated against gay people. I am not making any link between these oppressed human beings, but rather proposing how some people will react to injustice. It also reminds me of the approaches to civil rights of Malcolm X versus Martin Luther King Jr.
The road to welcoming neighborhoods no matter who you are remains elusive, and generates friction instead of examination of the attitudes of one against another based solely on skin color. One thing is certain, a terrible unrecognized injustice exists is not globally accepted. The solution has been to withdraw into ghettos with no social movement to fairly power share control of anyone’s economic, social, and political life no matter what they look like.
No laws will reverse this. It is social attitudes that harbor divisive biases that interferes with a national unity that will make us a stronger nation. In his book “What’s the Matter With Kansas”, Thomas Frank showed the paradoxical sentiments held by residents of Kansas that seemed not to be in their best interest.
There is no thought given to the dismissed talent of our Black county-persons, and what is given up by doing so. The basic human characteristic of tribalism, “sticking to your own kind”, overtakes the harder effort of overcoming centuries old prejudices.
Bernie is on “Face The Nation” today, and we will have to see how he handles questions about this incident. Will he recognize the anger, and see it as a signpost of what needs to be addressed or will he tout his civil rights record that may be interpreted by Afro-Americans as “I have a Black friend” kind of statement?
I suspect that Black people also cringe seeing someone with their phenotype act badly, but they react even worse when the behavior is applied to the whole of the Black population. This is the crux of racism. Black people will condemn such behavior, but it probably drives them crazy when they can not overcome the fallout that sets their already tenuous lives into reverse.
I’m confident that Bernie Sanders will handle this just fine.
The primary effect of episodes like this is to keep America’s pervasive racism in the media spotlight. I think that’s marvelous, and exactly what should happen. Because I am confident that my primary candidate is NOT racist (beyond the unconscious system racism that infects every American white), I am confident that he will handle this just fine. If I were an adviser to the campaign, I would suggest framing this as an expression of the pain shared by ALL blacks in the US. I see no harm in the candidate expressing a degree of impatience about missing an opportunity to speak to supporters. I would encourage the candidate to say something along the lines of:
The pervasive racism of today’s American culture is the problem, not the disruptive behavior of these protesters.
I was happy to see that Bernie finally has a page on “racial justice” on his website: https://berniesanders.com/issues/racial-justice/. I think the frames of “political violence” (on voter disenfranchisement) and “economic violence” (on poverty/inequality) are important and complement the discussions of legal and police violence.
And I also think that his new press secretary seems like a great hire and look forward to reading this:
It’s because of the BLM activists that he’s talking about these issues more, and that’s a major positive development.
Bernie’s new statements on race (https://berniesanders.com/issues/racial-justice/ – same link that jcohn88 posted) are powerful. Had he come out with them sooner, he might have avoided these rally disruptions, but as it stands I am impressed with how promptly he responded.
This is grassroots activism – just because someone is the best candidate does not mean you do not continue to hold them accountable. The #blacklivesmatter community applied pressure and got results. And Bernie is a stronger candidate for it.
Corporate Media has a news blackout on his candidacy. It’s easy to understand why. He’s the only one running who is a threat to the power of corporations and the .01% that own them.
Really? I keep seeing stories about rallies with a lot of people attending … how is that a blackout?
I watch Morning Joe and other news programs daily. It’s all Trump and Hillary. NO Bernie.
They report on Sanders a lot, including having him on the show.
Even the tea partiers who showed up at health care “Town Hells” in 2009 did not take over events this way. Security should have escorted these people out post haste. Plus, why have they decided to target Sanders of all people, who I believe marched with MLK? It’s not his fault he has represented what may be the whitest state in the union all these years. Politically, I can’t imagine this helping their cause.
I think Bernie missed an opportunity to show a Reagenesque “who paid for this microphone” moment and show some backbone which he needs to demonstrate if he wants to be commander-in-chief.
Bernie has negligible support among non-white Democrats (9% vs 22% among whites, per slightly stale WaPo poll) He desperately needs to bump his numbers here if he’s going to have a chance. Even if he’s going to ignore Black voters, which is a stupid strategy anyway, coming across as tone deaf on racial issues will erode his support among his far-left base. While the optics certainly could have been better than what happened, having Black Lives Matter folks removed by security would have been an unmitigated disaster.
Have they noticed yet that the only black candidate is a Republican?
Even Jeb sounds more in touch with police reform than Carson does.
I think they’ve noticed the only tokens so far are Republicans.
…but said candidate has also called them out for focusing too much on race.
Carson was ignored at the debate.
Clarence Thomas is perhaps the worst Supreme Court justice in memory (although Mr. Scalia is working hard to wrest that title from him). Hopefully even Republicans can admit that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, even though she is a woman. In the 2012 campaign, the GOP also put forward Herman Cain (another black man), and Michelle Bachman (another white woman). None of these examples advance the cause of battling racism or sexism.
The GOP seems to have a knack for providing media access to total looney-tunes based primarily on their gender or race. That strikes me as racist, sexist, or both.
I like the idea of having Thomas on the court simply because when he is criticized (or praised) it most often is preceded by “conservative justice Thomas” not “Black justice Thomas”. Like him or hate him for his ideas not his ethnicity.
Not every “Black” can be a Jackie Robinson, society needs Pumpsie Greens also.
I agree that there must be a place in society for our Pumpsie Greens.
That place is NOT the Supreme Court.
but like SCOTUS, there are a finite number of spaces in MLB. SCOTUS has 9, MLB (in 2015) has 25 x 30 = 750.
In any grouping, there will be some individuals who are better, some who are worst. Even if the grouping is the best set of people for that task, there will still be a gradient.
Pumpsie Green was a great baseball player. Any player who makes it to MLB is great (or really, really, really short). Pumpsie had to be even better, because he was overcoming the Sox’s color barrier.
Every SCOTUS has to have a 9th best justice, by definition, a Pumpsie Green. I just wish that SCOTUS’ 9th best man was better at law than Pumpsie was at baseball.
An “all lives matter”, broken windows and stop and frisk true believer whose city erupted in violence over Freddie Gray not mattering to too many in power there. Apparently, Seattle’s BLM movement said it wasn’t their group that protested, while some national advocates have come out and endorsed Sanders. Not sure why they are going after him and giving O’Malley, Hillary, and all of the Republicans a pass. In two and a half hours the GOP debate went over a plethora of issues, including Trumps tweets, but managed to neglect this one. And apparently that’s okay with some BLM advocates because we can’t fight capitalism and racism at once?
…since he has been the Mayor of a city with a substantial black population, many of whom I suspect supported him. He has thus it would seem been closer to these issues than any of the other candidates.
Not the Christian Science Monitor, I guess.
jconway succinctly described O’Malley’s record in this regard — and it’s not very good.
O’Malley is the only candidate who has actual experience with urban issues such as this as a big city mayor and usually Dem candidates ultimately get the support of African Americans in partisan races. Note that I did say “on paper”.
you kept using the word “better.” His proximity to “these issues” stems from his having exacerbated them during his term as mayor.
…that I would “expect” him to be better, not that he was better. I was not familiar with his record and made no assertions. Can’t I shoot the breeze a bit without people jumping down my throat?
The black vote was split two ways, he consolidated the white vote and got enough of the black vote to be able to win. This quote from the Post article on his victory is instructive
Hard to argue the criticism of O’Malley and the policing he backed that led Gray’s death isn’t justified.
See guys, THIS is how you follow up and fill in gaps in a dialogue, rather than copping and attitude.
Actually, no, it isn’t.
1. At the founding of our country, black people were a form of wealth so valuable and productive that other cotton producers around the world were put out of business by the economic “efficiency” of slave labor. Punishment was brutal and physical. Education was prohibited.
2. After emancipation, there was no land reform. Czarist Russia did better than that. Those who had been so instrumental in developing the land and whose labor had been stolen received none of it. If you think of this as a simple matter of equity, it is appalling that treasonous rebels retained land and those who had worked it so hard got none of it.
3. After a brief period of Reconstruction, organized official terror and confiscatory use of taxation and state power ensured that blacks remained poor and coerced to work plantations — even as they were the majority of the population in a number of southern states. Negotiation for wages was prohibited. Payment occurred after harvest and protesting that payment was too meager was a quick ticket to lynching. Credit was never granted. Poverty was enforced as policy.
4. In the first part of the twentieth century, there was a large migration of blacks from Jim Crow South to urban areas in the north. Segregation was enforced. Blacks were forced to live in less attractive to districts, forced to live apart from whites, and forced into substandard housing.
5. In all four of the previous stages, the situation of black Americans was described as a consequence of their innate characteristics. In the modern stage, we have the left-over effects of the enforced poverty from all the previous periods. Blacks have less wealth. Due to segregation, a black person is less likely to know someone with wealth. Due to the ongoing prejudice, black people are less likely to be given the benefit of the doubt whether that is in keeping discipline in kindergarten, job applications, or police stops. We approach a society in which the only social services African-American communities receive are police services — and with the expected consequences.
The result is that we truly have a system wherein a rising tide does not raise all boats. Economic egalitarianism is insufficient.
…especially if we make sure that all communities and constituencies benefit.
He has specific plans to address specific issues of systematic racism. what doesn’t make sense to me is protesting the one candidate who has been the most forceful on these issues since day 1. The 1% likes systematic racism since it pits the working class against itself, always had and always will. That doesn’t mean affirmative action, programs exclusively tailored for black advancement, inclusive housing, or criminal justice reform to end racially disparate policing aren’t on the table or are swept aside by a focus on economic justice.
If anything, we won’t have economic justice without racial justice and vice a versa. They have been linked since slavery, and the way to solve one is to solve the other. To the extent that BLMs protest allows the media to paint Sanders as a racist candidate and marginalize him, we lose the only voice in this primary articulating solutions to both problems whike recognizing the link.