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Monday, August 10, 2015

Let's talk about Social Security and Wealth Inequality so we won't have to talk about #BlackLivesMatter




As you know by now, some Bernie Sanders supporters have their Knickers in a Knot because those uppity BlackLivesMatterSeattle women disrespected him by interrupting his speech on Social Security to a packed audience.  What happened next was an organized  ,and pathetic attempt to attack the messenger because that's just what they do when they want to marginalize and discredit legitimate concerns.  After all who wants to talk about Black Lives and how they don't matter?

Here is what some (not to be confused with all) Bernie Sanders don't understand, no one is attacking Sanders, or his long Civil Rights record, we are attacking what he chooses to talk about,  to be honest, I see a pattern here, when African Americans try and get the so called liberal/progressive candidate to address our issues we told to STFU, STFD, stop whining, and support Bush, I mean, Obama, I mean, Bernie, or else.
Because here’s the thing – what’s powerful about these interruptions from Black women is less how it has changed the tone of the Democratic campaigns and more about what they have exposed in the White left.
I see these protests as less about the individual candidates themselves and more about how their White base refuses to center Black lives and Black issues. It’s notable that White Bernie supporters, who consider themselves the most progressive of us all, shouted down and booed Black women who dared to force Blackness into the center of White space.
Because let’s be honest, every Bernie rally is White space.
Never mind the fact those uppity Black Lives Matter Seattle women succeeded in making Bernie Sanders previously unknown racial justice platform known.
The activists who interrupted Sanders’ speech in Seattle over the weekend said his “blatantly silencing response” at the Netroots Nations conference in July — when he reacted to an interruption from Black Lives Matter by threatening to leave instead of listening to their message — as their motivation. The Seattle leaders blasted both Sanders and his supporters for failing to show concern about the forces harming people of color in their own community, from the school-to-prison pipeline to police violence to gentrification.
Yet Sanders has not been the sole target of protesters. Activists also shouted down former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) at the Netroots Nation conference in July, demanding he and the audience acknowledge the recent death of Sandra Bland in police custody. Instead, he replied: “Black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter.” He also presented a history of his record as mayor of Baltimore that conveniently left out the zero tolerance policing that disproportionately targeted residents of color.
Eye am going to admit, I was leaning towards supporting Bernie Sanders until his supporters showed their true colors (pun intended), and I was reminded of this blog by Paul Street on Black Agenda.com

Bernie Sanders doesn’t understand the history and contemporary workings of race in the United States, and cannot, therefore, grasp the economics of race, either. His campaign lacks “a forthright acknowledgement of the special, vicious super-exploitation, torture and oppression experienced by Black America.” He virtually ignores housing apartheid and mass Black incarceration, and lets U.S. militarism off the hook for stealing resources.
And then there is this blog written by Bruce Dixon, accusing Bernie Sanders of Sheep Dogging for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016. 
Vermont senator and ostensible socialist Bernie Sanders is playing the sheepdog candidate for Hillary Clinton this year. Bernie's job is to warm up the crowd for Hillary, herding activist energies and the disaffected left back into the Democratic fold one more time. Bernie aims to tie up activist energies and resources till the summer of 2016 when the only remaining choice will be the usual lesser of two evils.
 Where to go and what to do?
The Democrats hope the Black Lives Matter movement, like the Occupy Wall Street movement, will disappear amid the hype of the coming election season. “The Democrats have mounted a systematic cooption-repression response that will intensify as the election season – and Black cities – heat up.” The Democrats understand that, for the movement to succeed, their party’s power over Black America must be broken.
"until this country values all lives equally, it is both reasonable and indeed necessary to specify the lives it seems to value less."~Charles Blow

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