"Bernie Sanders Discovers His Inner #BlackLivesMatter"--Interesting Read
Bernie Sanders Discovers His Inner #BlackLivesMatter
by Evan McMorris-Santoro
BuzzFeed News Reporter
The man who put up a defensive front against black protesters at Netroots has discovered he has a record that appeals directly to their issues.
HOOKSETT, N.H. — This time, when Bernie Sanders got a direct question about what he can do to assist the growing Black Lives Matter movement, the Vermont senator was ready.
“As a white ally, what should we start doing tomorrow?” asked a young woman in the large and overwhelmingly white crowd at a town hall, held at Southern New Hampshire University. “In terms of political revolution?” she added.
Without a beat, Sanders ticked off the kind of focused answer that eluded him at Netroots in June. He spoke of fighting against the “absurdity” of the number of minorities in prison.
He took direct aim at police.
There’s nothing especially new about Sanders publicly questioning police tactics or railing against the American prison infrastructure and its outsize impact on young men of color. But after a careful listening tour with activists after the brouhaha at Netroots, a person familiar with Sanders’ thinking said the self-described Democratic Socialist learned he had to do more to tell his story to a movement uninterested in Civil Rights Movement nostalgia or being lectured to about the enduring economic divides that are the heart of Sanders’ campaign message.
So now, Sanders is trying to retell his story for a new audience.
On the campaign trail across six stops in New Hampshire this weekend, that meant a careful reading out of the names of black Americans who have died either at the hands of police or in police custody and are mentioned often by #BlackLivesMatter activists. The Sanders source said the candidate is as moved by these stories as anyone — when he was told a speech he had already scheduled in Texas was situated just 60 miles from the county jail where Sandra Bland died, he mentioned her death in his speech. A few days later, he told a crowd in Washington that Bland would not have died if she were white.
That kind of rhetoric has continued on the trail, and ramped up before the mostly white crowds in New Hampshire. At a stop in Exeter, Sanders said the police “were responsible” for Bland’s death. Throughout the weekend, he added mentions of Samuel Dubose to his stump, speaking repeatedly of his death as well as that of the half-dozen or so others.
“The police must be held accountable,” Sanders said at the SNHU stop.
Sanders supporters argue this is no pander. It’s Sanders being Sanders now that he understands the contours of a protest movement that clearly caught him off-guard at Netroots, they say. There, he responded to a #BlackLivesMatter disruption of a town hall event by chastising protesters that he had “spent 50 years fighting for civil rights and dignity.” That did not go over well among activists looking for specific, actionable solutions for ending the phyisical risk for black Americans that the activists say is caused by white supremacy.
Sanders is now trying very hard to project that he gets it. And that he always has gotten it.
So Sanders has tweaked his stump speech by digging around into his record.
While mayor of Burlington, he said at one stop, he helped to create a community policing program like the ones now popular nationally among political leaders hoping to foster a better relationship between police and the people they serve. When executed properly, Sanders said in his last stop of the tour, police “are not seen as oppressors.”
Militarized police, “like the ones we saw in Ferguson,” Sanders said in a repeated line, are a danger to black lives and must be curtailed. Sanders has been talking about that since the fires in the Missouri town raged on TV in August 2014.
The private prison industry, long a Sanders target, gets a prominent mention in all of his stump speeches now, and is tied directly to a criminal justice structure that he says unfairly targets blacks.
But everything still comes back to the economic message. More than one month before Netroots, Sanders gave a speech about unemployment called “Youth Unemployment and Dr. King’s Dream,” which centered around a 51% black youth unemployment rate he found in a study he commissioned from the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute. (The figure has come under some scrutiny from fact-checkers.) The figure is now a central part of Sanders’ economic messaging as he talks about better jobs and better wages.
The billionaire class, which Sanders has forever said is stealing the country from the working Americans, is also one of the forces continuing to create a racial divide in the country, Sanders often argues.
Sanders is very careful to reach out to #BlackLivesMatter in every speech. He stops, reads the names off his printed notes, and says “Black lives matter” aloud often. He speaks of racism, he speaks of police. The Netroots protesters were heard, his team insists. Their cry is his cry.
“We have made progress,” Sanders said at the Exeter stop, “but we should all be aware that in terms of racism in terms of sexism, in terms of homophobia, we still have a long way to go.”
Sanders said that #BlackLivesMatter was a movement for all races to embrace.
MORE..GOOD READ AT.............
http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/bernie-sanders-discovers-his-inner-blacklivesmatter#.xdDPgZJnZ
= new reply since forum marked as read
now let's see if it sticks....
as has been the usual case during this run-up to primaries. Hillary and billieboys racist dog whistles during 2008 campaign will NEVER be forgiven by me and many, many others. And you're right, she is politically adjusting and apologizing, for votes strictly, I'm sure. But she's putting it out there. Concerning that RW creepublican meme about HRC and being a young creepublican, hell the darling of the progressive crowd now, Dr. E. Warren, was a creepublican, many years before seeing the light. She is still somewhat standoffish in her demeanor to us little people. Not her politics, her demeanor. And there is hardly a mention of that anywhere. But she's not running for POTUS, is she?
You all are going to be sniping, touting, whining, cajoling when it comes to the candidate you prefer. I really don't give a damn anymore, when it comes to this forum. Too much undercover racist ideology has seeped into this so called liberal and progressive forum since, let's just say, the murder of Trayvon Martin. I've watched THAT evolution. And neither BS, HRC or any present candidate started speaking forcefully on racial injustice until black frustration boiled over in Ferguson and Baltimore. And that only when the flames rose up and the smoke spread to the nostrils of the privileged. Then they started scrambling to give lip service to black concerns and a lot here started giving the usual white privileged meme used by the RW, "what's wrong with those people", "why are they burning and rioting, oh my, oh my" completely and purposefully ignoring what's behind this level of black frustration at a system that continues to institutionally and systemically oppress POC and now, the poor. But the poor don't 'know' it because they are constantly told by fox snooze who is causing their problems....
Sandra Bland had to die under extremely suspicious circumstance, for our liberal and progressive candidates to start touting their bonifieds in this ongoing and quietly submerged race war going on in Amerikkka. Oh yeah it's played down by the koch bros and moonie RW media control, but people out here in the streets know what's going on. Have no doubt in your mind. To all the privileged that started whining when #BlackLivesMatter interrupted our great liberal and progressive candidates, you're a sad bunch. But I know why you started whining just as I know why you don't really stand with POC against the systemic and institutional racism that is lethally entrenching itself, AGAIN, in ameriKKKan culture. Amerikkka is a nation that is truly returning to it's roots.
So have fun and continue on. The democratic party has my vote, whether I'll be holding my nose when pulling the lever is still to be seen. All these so-called liberal and progressive candidates still have a way to go to garner the kind of support my current POTUS got in TWO elections and well deserved I will say. Especially after watching his fight of 6+ years against the open racists and undercover racists of this system who have made it hard for him because of precisely one reason only...his skin color. Talk about wasting a valuable asset? But amerikkka has been doing that since the first genocide of native-Americans. The RWracist obstruction of President Obama started on inauguration 2008 and hasn't stopped since. Where was Bernie in defending Obama? HRC? O'Malley? The DNC? When the RW were trying to kill, politically and literally, President Obama and his family...yeah, I remember a small incident where the creepublicans posted where Obama's daughters were vacationing with their mother...small bit but very telling as to the hate of white privileged people for my POTUS. Never happened with a white POTUS. Anyone want links? Go find em, the net is full of them. My memory is like that goddamn elephant of the RWracist Party.
So snipe and tout. You provide me with a lot of entertainment and amusement. Please continue, "evolving"..... but I've seen nothing so far in 250 years worth of evolving, hell devolving is going on.
I expected his response to BLM to be heartfelt and thoughtful. I like it when my expectations are met.
K&R
I don't care how many OPs are created, how heartfelt, how pleading, how informative, how well thought out............
Black folks have been TELLING you how they feel over and over and it matters naught to some of you.
It's getting quite 
That's their perogative. That they deny the truth and double down on their denial is a sign of their selfishness.
I'm a Sanders supporter already but want the black community to see him as a viable option.
I hope this person doesn't have to deal the reason #blacklivesmatter, NAACP or any other civil rights group exists.
Usually with this type, that's what it takes to see the light.
so try that bullshit elsewhere. as i said, you cannot have one without the other. mlk and malcolm x agreed. so, 
is the problem? classic b.s., spread by a bunch of clinton supporters. she was a goldwater girl when bernie was protesting segregation. to her credit, segregation was key to her evolution to the democratic party...good on her. maybe she will not have a sistah souljah incident.
except because a few people say it is a problem? really...the most liberal person in the race is a "problem" because he didn't...what?! is the faux outrage of the day regarding sanders that has not been manufactured?
I surrender, you win.... 
nothing I will be party too, though....... 
