February is not an auspicious month for a presidential campaign to seem to snub the African American community. Especially not in the Southeast, where just days from now over 8.5 million voting age blacks in seven states with outsized black populations (Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, Louisiana, North Carolina and Mississippi) will have the first opportunity to show us all just how well Senator Sanders is succeeding in winning away Secretary Clinton’s traditionally strong support among black voters.
National polling suggests Sanders’ inroads are, thus far, modest in the extreme: yesterday’s NBC poll finds Clinton topping Sanders, nationwide, by large double-digits among both black millennials (64% to 25%) and their elders (73% to 16%). Facing such a deficit, Sanders will need all the African American friends he can make if he is to have any realistic chance at the 582 delegates at stake in these seven southern states early next month. But more than merely a delegate count is in jeopardy here: Sanders very momentum — that without which a candidate is nothing — so recently won in a well-fought battle in lily-white New Hampshire, is about to face its first real test in the wider, more colorful world. Democrats of all races will be watching closely because, increasingly, as black voters go, so goes the Democratic party, and the nation.
And so it was, last week, that Kossacks of many persuasions and colors watched in stunned disbelief as a Sanders campaign official disparaged, and — worse yet — intentionally sabotaged a beloved icon of the modern civil rights movement in the southeast, and a dear friend of the Daily Kos community — NC-NAACP president, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber — by casting aspersions which Barber was moved to publicly brand “a damn lie!” while calling out Daily Kos by name.
The still-fresh wounds from the incident in question are, for me personally, still too painful to probe deeply, but I do owe the unknowing reader at least an outline of the incident here.
The Moral March on Raleigh: What It Is, and Why It Matters
The now-traditional mid-February Moral March on Raleigh, organized by the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP and led by its president, Dr. Barber, is an important annual celebration of hope over hate, a gathering in the streets of the many clans of progressive humanism in the name of fusion politics, a binding together of friends and coalitions, and a loud, proud, undeniable statement to North Carolina’s Republican ne’er-do-wells that we — those who stand on the side love — are still here, still fighting, and growing stronger every day. Annually it brings tens of thousands of progressives of every sort together — gays, straights, the unfortunate and the fortunate, labor, the churched and unchurched, blacks, whites, Latinos, American Indians and Asians, environmentalists, women’s rights advocates, voting rights activists, and many more — to march shoulder to shoulder on the state capitol.
What Happened Last Week
Last Friday evening (the night before this year’s march, on Valentines Day), Daily Kos user Cook For Good (whose public profile identifies her as Raleigh resident Linda Watson, a “Bernie volunteer” and past executive director of the Wake County Democratic Party) posted what can only be called a crazed screed of a diary here at Daily Kos (now removed, but still cached by Google if you have the stomach for it):
At the HKonJ Mass Moral March last year. I've been uninvited this year.
Yesterday I woke up to a shocking email from the State Coordinator for North Carolina for Bernie Sanders. It put the brakes on three weeks of work organizing to bring Bernie supporters together for HKonJ, the Mass Moral March, tomorrow. Aisha Dew wrote: “Please take down all HK on J events from social media. Rev. Barber does not want us to attend the event. He asked us to take the event down off of all social media.”
[….]
Boom. Don’t come.
When Reverend Barber asked us to not come to the march, we just shifted that energy to a Day of Action in Raleigh. Aisha came up with this graceful way to uninvite people to the march: “Knock for justice instead of march for justice.”
[emphasis added]
Hundreds of Kossacks flagged this filth. But not before the damage was done: Watson re-posted her damn lie to (of course) Reddit, tweeted it (since deleted) on her Twitter account, shared it on her Facebook account (ditto) and, astonishingly, even blogged about it on her professional web site (ditto again) — ruling out any reasonable possibility that this was a hack job. Within hours Watson’s story went viral across North Carolina, as Reddit-fired conspiracy theories so often do. In keeping with Watson’s assertion that campaign coordinator Dew scheduled an alternative event to conflict with the march, the event calendar on the Sanders campaign’s website still lists a “Raleigh Day of Action” as an “official event” for the same time, date, and city in which the march went on.
The assertion by state coordinator Dew, as reported by Watson, that “Rev. Barber does not want us to attend the event” was, as Rev Barber thundered from a podium the next day at the march, “a damn lie!” What is true is that NC-NAACP has a long-standing and well-known policy against providing political candidates with a forum for their campaign messaging. Only Bernie supporters’ campaign signage and tee shirts were unwelcome at the march; Bernie supporters themselves most certainly were welcome with open arms (contrary to Dew’s alleged email).
Amateur volunteer Watson, inflamed by her enthusiasms, may perhaps be forgiven for her inability to grasp the distinction between signage and bodies. But political pro Dew cannot be similarly forgiven for her amateurish and damaging misrepresentations.
Neither Dew nor Watson have responded to my invitations to relate their side of the story for this article.
Where do we go from here?
The damage is done. Attendance at this year’s Moral March on Raleigh, variously estimated at 5,000 to 8,000, was down significantly from years past. Hard feelings abound — likely among those Bernie supporters who still know only half the story; probably too among hard-working march organizers; and, I know for certain, among myself and my fellow Kossacks who have worked so hard, for so long, to forge a bond of fellowship between Daily Kos and NC-NAACP. In the words of our own LamontCranston in his comment in another diary:
The most difficult aspect of what happened yesterday [...] was that we attended the rally by traveling there in the van that the Mitchell/Yancy county N.A.A.C.P rented. It was awkward knowing what transpired, and sitting in that van for the four hour trip back as they also heard and knew what happened, and looked at us with a questionable gaze: What made it even worse for me personally was that I was sitting next to the President of the N.A.A.C.P. chapter who was on stage with Rev. Barber and heard his words from there, but who is also my neighbor and friend from my town where I live. [….] How do I face these folks in my local chapter now with all of them knowing that I am, and have been, and will be affiliated with DKOS, while also a dues paying member of my N.A.A.C.P. chapter?
Of course, Lamont will survive. I will survive (though I still flush with embarrassment when I see my dear NC-NAACP friends). Most certainly Rev. Barber and the NC-NAACP will survive; nothing can stop them.
But will Sanders’ campaign survive early March’s southeastern primaries? Those who do not possess a deep understanding of the Southern black community, the latter-day voting rights movement, and the black church in the South (i.e., possibly the majority of Sanders supporters) may not be able to fully appreciate the damage Sanders’ campaign here suffered, in an instant, with the uttering of the fully justified words “it’s a damn lie” from one of the most respected American civil rights activists and moral leaders alive today (and also perhaps the single most politically influential black man in the South).
The question of where we go from here remains largely unanswered for now, as that ball is squarely in the Sanders campaign’s court — but Sanders’ national press office did not respond by press time to my request for the campaign’s comment, and particularly for an answer to this important question:
What, if anything, is the Sanders campaign now doing to repair the breach which this affair has created between itself and one of the preeminent civil and voting rights organizations in the South, the NC-NAACP? Has Sen. Sanders reached out to Rev. Barber? To Daily Kos? I would love to be able to report that much-needed fence-mending is underway.
Certainly no one accuses Senator Sanders himself of having any role in, or even any before-the-fact knowledge of, last week’s Valentines Day Massacre. Nonetheless, its fallout inevitably redounds upon his good name (however undeservedly) and thus, unavoidably, upon his campaign. The optics of the Valentines Day Massacre play into all the most unfortunate memes his opponents attempt to saddle him with, including an insensitivity to African Americans’ experience, and a body of hot-headed followers who, in their political naivete, too often accomplish more harm than good.
Up until the moment those fateful words...“It’s a damn lie!”...were uttered, such reflections upon Senator Sanders himself would have been entirely undeserved. But with each passing day thereafter (now four, and counting) that his campaign, and he himself, continue to meet this affair with head-in-the-sand silence, the candidate seems to become ever more deserving of that fallout. Leadership, in the form of healing words, is clearly called for: a public expression of regret offered to Rev. Barber and to Daily Kos, along with words of instruction to his followers emphasizing bedrock support for the important principles of fusion, not fission, politics.
Senator Sanders, you may have once marched with King, but do you still march with us today?
Only you can repair this breach.
Postscript
The Moral March on Raleigh is, incidentally, an important fundraising event for the NC-NAACP, as donation buckets are circulated throughout the crowd — a crowd which, this year, was much diminished. Whichever candidate you support, you can help make that right by donating online to support this wonderful organization’s massive voter registration and get-out-the-vote projects in the battleground state of North Carolina — projects which benefit us all.