View from the left—the Black Lives Matter movement and 2016

Daily Kos Staff

Saturday July 25, 2015 · 11:00 AM PDT

2015/07/25 · 11:00

Demonstrators protest outside of the Baltimore Police Department's Western District police station during a rally for Freddie Gray, in Baltimore, April 21, 2015. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Baltimore on Tuesday to protest the death of the 27-yea

We are watching something fascinating—the maturing of an impassioned and unapologetic movement unfolding in the midst of a presidential election cycle.

Black Lives Matter activists officially introduced themselves into the 2016 arena when they interrupted former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and then Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at the Netroots Nation conference in Arizona last weekend. Neither O'Malley nor Sanders fared well, but Sanders, who has grown accustomed to rather large and adoring crowds, really missed the moment.

Sanders threatened to leave the stage as demonstrators demanded that he repeat the name of Sandra Bland, a black woman who died in a Texas jail cell this month. Then he canceled a series of meetings he had scheduled with some of the activists following his appearance — something they found out only when campaign manager Jeff Weaver showed up in Sanders’s stead.

By midweek Sanders was tweeting out responses to the recently released Sandra Bland video.

It would be very hard to imagine a white middle class woman being treated in the same way as Sandra Bland was.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) July 22, 2015

Clinton, who did not attend the Netroots Nation conference, has not done much better with the emerging movement. While appearing at black church last month just five miles away from the cite of the Ferguson protests, she used the phrase "all lives matter"—words many Black Lives Matter activists find an offensive trivialization of the unique violence black Americans face.

But part of what makes this emerging movement so exciting is that we are watching it go through an evolution that other progressive movements have gone through in recent years. It's a maturation of activists outside the Beltway taking back their voice from the inside-the-Beltway crowd, no matter what their party affiliation or whom they claim to speak for.

Head below the fold for more on the emerging movement.

Democratic strategist and consummate insider Donna Brazile, for instance, tried to defend Clinton against her detractors.

#HillaryClinton was telling a story about her mother, she's also said "we can stand up together & say 'yes Black lives matter.' Stop hating!
— Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) June 23, 2015

But this week, Brazile was singing a different tune.

“While it’s inconvenient, or it makes some people uncomfortable, we can’t go back,” said Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who has taken heat in recent weeks for defending Clinton against criticisms from some Black Lives Matter activists. “Politicians need to tune in.”

It's reminiscent of the way LGBT activists, infuriated over the passage of Proposition 8, began to challenge the DC-based groups like the Human Rights Campaign. In 2010, the grassroots group GetEQUAL offered a key counterbalance to the establishment that helped clear the way for passage of "don't ask, don't tell" repeal.

DREAM activists provided the same insurgent force within the immigration movement. Originally in 2009, the Beltway immigration groups were focused exclusively on passing comprehensive immigration reform—something President Obama had promised to do his first year in office. But that legislation never even a got a vote in the 111th Congress. Instead it was the DREAM Act, pushed by the grassroots energy of the Dreamers, that logged a successful vote in the House but fell short in the Senate. But that effort paved the way for Obama to announce the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program for Dreamers during his 2012 reelection bid.

The 2016 candidates have now had time to adjust to the tactics and strategies employed by LGBT activists in Obama's first term and the Dreamers, who hounded Clinton as she campaigned for Democrats in 2014. The aggressive pro-immigration stances that Clinton adopted during her first immigration roundtable along with the fact that her campaign hired a prominent Dreamer, Lorella Praeli, suggest that she not only listened, she made adjustments.

Clinton, O'Malley, and Sanders are all listening to the Black Lives Matters movement now. The question is, which of them will adjust most quickly to the new facts on the ground?

And perhaps more importantly, where will the Black Lives Matter movement lead the country over the coming years?

View from the left—the Black Lives Matter movement and 2016

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