Usually, when I post something, I use other articles and respected voices to articulate the message I really want to convey. I suspect that’s the approach that many of us take.
This time, I want to to share the voices of a group of 100% likely voters that will vote in the Florida Dem Primary next month:
Who are we?
- Black
- Economically Middle-class
- College Educated
- Connected through our churches
- Go to church every week
- Culturally conservative (half against gay marriage)
- Fiscally conservative, fiscally progressive (complicated)
- As young as 16 as old as 90
- Loosely organized in our churches under Obama’s Souls to the Polls program established by Organizing for America
What are our most important political issues?
- If you say one negative word about Obama, you become an instant enemy and are banished forever — ask Cornell and Tavis
- You cannot touch ACA
- You cannot privatize Social Security
- We need you to go to church or pretend you love the Lord and don't try to force culturally progressive issues down our throats
- Candidates must have a strong record on guns
- We'll pay fair rates for college...if we can get our kids in; Access is as important as costs
- Candidates can’t piss us off with white-splaining what’s best for us nor assume that we’re in need of social services
- Quit insulting me by thinking black issues are $15-per hour, mass incarceration and food stamps
- One of the fastest ways to piss-off an educated, middle-class voter is to start promising a chicken-in-every-pot
What do we think of Bernie Sanders?
- Another old white man telling us what we need to do or think
- Bernie’s policies have about as much chance of passing as Mexico’s financing of Trump’s wall
- As much as Trump and Sanders are different in their policy goals, they are so similar in their unrealistic rhetoric
- Marched in the 60s like lot’s of liberal kids but done nothing for the black community but throw-out lofty rhetoric during this political season
- Atheist
- Tricking kids with the promise of free tuition
- Insulting our intelligence
- Has totally ignored the CBC and their issues until the last several months
- Cannot name a single piece of legislation that he’s actually gotten passed that targeted our community
- Has not crafted legislation to earmark funds for HBCU’s
- Bernie is also playing what some call the “Tom Game” — that is to play 11th hour “whitesplaining” through a handful of carefully chosen surrogates and other low-level state reps. Problem is, Bernie has been battling for liberal white issues for his full decades-long career but is now just moving beyond his liberal, progressive, secular base to throw rhetoric about $15-bucks an hour our way.
- How about don’t raise my taxes
- We don’t hate Wall Street
- We love the big corporations that hired our nephews as an engineers and and the other ones who are claims supervisor for Nationwide. As I’ve written before, several of our team members work for big corps and we don’t feel the same hatred the many others do
- Bernie has made a very good living doing politics his entire adult life. He’s privileged in that he’s personally benefited from his journey-man career by going to all the swanky fundraisers while depositing the same corporate money as everyone else.
- Most of all, many of his supporters are condescending and arrogant and think they know more than the rest of us about everything. They call black evangelicals who think and vote biblically bigots and racists. There is an arrogant purity to them that Bernie is leading that is turning many of us off.
This post will be dismissed like most of my others by Bernie’s supporters know something special that I can’t possibly know.
Do I speak for Harry Belafonte or the 20-25% of black people who support Bernie? No, we're not monolithic.
However, I am expressing what 288 captains of 66 churches are saying to each other...publicly. Privately, we can't possibly know.
Why are we discussing this today?
Our ballots just came in and it’s time to vote.
Thanks for reading an alternative point of view.