Saturday saw two events for the Sanders Campaign in Seattle, WA: an afternoon guest speech at an event celebrating the anniversary of Social Security and Medicare and a massive 15,000 person rally that evening.
Unfortunately for Uncle Bernie, an all-too-familiar protest began at his afternoon speech before he could get it rolling. A couple of Black Lives Matter Protesters, led by a Marissa Janae Johnson took the stage, according to a Washington Post Article:
After sharing a few local grievances with the crowd, including school disparities and gentrification in Seattle, the protesters asked for a period of silence to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown being shot and killed during a confrontation with a police officer in Ferguson, Mo.
Event organizers allowed the period of silence, as some in the large crowd booed and shouted for the protesters to leave the stage. Afterward, Marissa Janae Johnson, who identified herself as a leader of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Seattle, asked the crowd to “join us now in holding Bernie Sanders accountable for his actions.” She motioned for Sanders to join her at the microphone.
That's all well and good, except the protesters aren't actually part of the BLM movement.
The protesters are actually members of a group called Outside Agitators 206. You can see the connection here; this is the same "Press Release" as posted on the "Official" Seattle BLM Facebook Page. I am using quotes, because this is absolutely not an "official" page; it was created extremely recently and it seems to me and many others that these two women have co-opted the BLM movement and name to further their own, more extreme message. This is from their About page:
We are the Outside Agitators 206.
First off, we have four points of unity:
- We center Black voices to celebrate and affirm Blackness. We believe that any movement to end anti-Black racism must be led by Black people.
- We believe that everyone has a right to resist their oppressors and what resistance looks like varies for different individuals and different circumstances.
- We don’t directly speak to corporate media, nor do we need them. We are our own voice.
- Fuck the police: As an institution fundamentally rooted in white supremacy and anti-Blackness we reject the police presence in our communities, absolutely. It is our responsibility to hold each other accountable and keep each other safe.
Note particularly the last point. While the BLM movement is, so far, primarily about reforming our far-too-racist and milatarized police forces across the nation, they have not ever been about completely abolishing the police. This sounds to me more like what some are calling a "Black Nationalist" movement which is co-opting the BLM movement and Bernie's events to get more traction. It's unclear if these two protesters are related to those in Phoenix, but speaking as someone who was actually at the NN15 protest, I doubt that.
I'll let you make your own conclusions about the facts, and I've presented my own above. If you are interested in reading some more "Tin Foil" theories from Reddit, I would highly recommend it. I found the discussion amusing, and hell, you might agree with some of it.
I hope you enjoyed my first ever DKos post. I will be posting more in the future, and I wanted to end by saying this: I am a white/Indian BLM sympathizer, and I am seriously concerned with the BLM movement's lack of central organization.