I'm disgusted! Disgusted with the treatment of the most progressive candidate to run for high office in this country since Eugene Debs polled nearly 920,000 votes from his Atlanta prison cell in 1920. Even after becoming defensive at being suddenly interrupted by protesters at a speech in Phoenix in late July, Bernie Sanders did his homework on the current crisis of urban police brutality against African-Americans and repeatedly spoke out later as the only candidate up to that point to do so. But still he was interrupted by protesters in a disrespectful and rageful manner on Saturday afternoon in Seattle's Westlake Park. Such behavior would never have been visited upon any other candidate Democrat or Republican. And it is egregiously harmful to the only progressive candidate in the race who has a proven record on issues of concern to African Americans and all People of Color.
Sanders has given several speeches concerning Black youth unemployment, the highest of any demographic in the country. In early June he cosponsored the Employ Young Americans Act with House Rep. John Conyers, an African American representative from Michigan which would commit $5.5 billion in federal money to employ and train mostly young minority urban youths.
On a visit with Rep. Conyers to the HOPE project in Washington DC, a training program to educate and employ thousands of young African Americans in the IT field, Sanders declared his support for the effort and once again spoke out against the over incarceration rate of young Black men. Sanders declared;
"So, let me be very clear: in my view it makes a lot more sense to invest in jobs, in job training, and in education than spending incredible amounts of money on jails and law enforcement." He then broached the issue of incarceration;
"According to the NAACP, from 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people," he said. "If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. This is an unspeakable tragedy."
Immediately, upon the release of the video taken by the squad car camera that recorded the event in which Sandra Bland, a Black motorist in Texas, was pulled over and subjected to beatings by police, Sanders had this response;
“This video of the arrest of Sandra Bland shows totally outrageous police behavior. No one should be yanked from her car, thrown to the ground, assaulted and arrested for a minor traffic stop. The result is that three days later she is dead in her jail cell. This video highlights once again why we need real police reform. People should not die for a minor traffic infraction. This type of police abuse has become an all-too-common occurrence for people of color and it must stop.”
In several speeches over the past month since this occurrence Sanders used his campaign to talk about police brutality against Black folks and what he would do to stop it. Sanders has hired an African American woman as a campaign press secretary and his campaign has officially released a racial justice platform in which he deals with such issues as;
"...different forms of violence against people of color in the United States: physical violence from law enforcement and extremist vigilantes, the political violence of voter suppression, the legal violence of the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, and the economic violence of crushing poverty. Sanders lays out several proposals to address each form of violence, from passing “ban the box” laws to prevent hiring discrimination against people with criminal records, to outlawing for-profit prisons, to restoring the gutted protections in the 1965 Voting Rights Act."
The Sanders Campaign was amended to include a detailed and ambitious racial justice platform which has received the approval of many in the Black Lives Matter movement. It does seem that the platform was cobbled together in a hurried fashion after the second major interruption but Sanders had been considering the problems of Black youth for years and was bound to come up with such a platform anyhow.
Bernie Sanders was the only candidate of all of them, Democrat or Republican, to have a history as a Civil Rights activist in the 1960s. He marched with Martin Luther King well before many of the current BLM activists were even born. I know that it annoys many people to hear this but after Saturday night's rude and uncalled for interruption it bears repeating. The speakers would have surely been given a platform had they asked for one before the proceedings. The rude and hostile attacks on Bernie were in appropriate and wrong. He was treated as if he were actually insensitive and indifferent to the concerns of Black folks. In fact, he has long shown that he is among the most committed to serving the interests of People of Color and all those seeking justice.
At the evening speech in Seattle Bernie reiterated his populist agenda to defend Social Security, seek a $15/hr federal minimum wage, support paid leave for new parents and an end to unequal pay for women, important things we can all support. But in his afternoon speech in Westlake Park he was interrupted by two women from BLM one of whom vowed, "If you do not listen … your event will be shut down.” Interesting that this kind of Chutzpah was never demonstrated at any of Hillary's campaign rallies. I find it somewhat belligerent. I also find belligerent and unnecessary the fact that even after the crowd respectfully observed a brief silence for Michael Brown, the protestors began to rant on about "liberal white supremacy," which is absurd, and then called for Bernie to be held "accountable for his actions." What actions are these? The protestors were the ones who deprived Sanders of his right to speak, not the reverse.
I believe that Sanders has more than adequately addressed their concerns. I believe Sanders' actions to be laudable. He is the only candidate that even cares about the fact that nearly five dozen unarmed African Americans have been killed either during arrests or while in police custody. No one else is even discussing it or has released a comprehensive and workable plan to deal with it as president. This is entirely unjust.
It is clear that parts of BLM are targeting the Democratic Party which makes me wonder a lot about who some of these individuals really are. Some have vowed to hound Sanders all along the campaign trail. Many have expressed total disgust with the Democrats but present no viable alternative (except movement politics which is supposed to work together with party politics). What sense does it make to only go after Sanders who is really BLM's only friend in Washington.
Who else has spoken out on these issues? In a policy speech back in April Hillary Clinton lamented the rash of police killings of unarmed Black Youth calling it problem that "tears at our soul" but made no real policy recommendations or vowed an sort of positive action. The Black Caucus overwhelming helped to defeat a measure by Alan Greyson (D-FLA) last year in the wake of the racial tension in Feguson after the killing of Michael Brown that would effective end the 1033 program which is credited with the militarization of local police departments. Beginning in 1997, the Pentagon began selling surplus hardware to local police departments more appropriate to the battlefield than to big city patrol beats. The Black Caucus opposed the measure with 27 votes and 5 abstentions leaving only 8 supporting votes. The Michigan Black Caucus led an effort in April calling for investigations into the excessive use of force by the police in the State of Michigan and for the termination of officers found guilty of misconduct. A resolution was passed which identifies certain cases and calls for immediate action. This is an important step. But more needs to be done in producing a comprehensive plan to deal with the issue. The Black Caucus needs to form a coherent and unified policy position to deal with the issue. Why single out Bernie Sanders when he seems to be so ahead of everyone else on this problem?
In the aftermath of Westlake Park, Sanders has unveiled a "racial justice platform" and along with it a declaration of his commitment to racial justice. In a recent policy statement, unique among all the candidates standing for election in 2016, he asserts “We must pursue policies that transform this country into a nation that affirms the value of its people of color.” Bernie then goes on to call the names of some of the people of color who were killed by police over the last year. He then breaks down and notes four categories of special kinds of violence faced by blacks and Latinos in America today not faced in the same way or to the same extent as whites. These are—physical, political, legal and economic forms of violence. I do believe that Bernie gets it. It's time for some of the BLM movement to admit that they made a mistake in their harsh judgement, attitude and treatment of Sanders and to join with him in our long struggle for racial, social and economic justice.