Bernie Sanders

#BlackLivesMatter Protest: Watch the Videos!

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Gov. Martin O'Malley listening to Tia Oso talk about Black Lives Matter and ask what he would do as president.
Gov. Martin O’Malley listening to Tia Oso talk about Black Lives Matter and ask what he would do as president.

I posted the Bernie Sanders segment of the Netroots Nation Presidential Town Hall on Saturday, just hours after Black Lives Matter protesters turned a boring, milktoast political event into a rousing demonstration. The protesters said they didn’t want speeches or a history lesson. They wanted to force the two presidential hopefuls off of their stump speeches and into the reality of black lives by answering the question: As leader of this country, how would you “dismantle structural racism”?

Social media has a way of twisting history. Consequently,  I decided to upload the Martin O’Malley segment of the town hall, which preceded the Sanders segment. Both the O’Malley segment and the Sanders segment appear after the jump. You’ll note that in the O’Malley segment, the protesters clearly ask their question (above) and state that they expect an answer from Sanders also. Jose Antonio Vargas also reiterates that all presidential candidates should be prepared to answer questions on systemic racism and how to stop it.

Sanders had at least 10 minutes to come up with an answer to the protesters’ questions, unlike O’Malley. When Sanders comes out (at the beginning of the second video), Vargas motions to the Black Lives Matter protesters who are still right in front of the stage and suggests that Sanders answer their question first. Sanders dismisses Vargas and the protesters saying, “I’m going to say what I came to say first.” And goes into his stump speech.

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Does Bernie Sanders Have ‘White People Problems’? (video)

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11,000 Sanders supporters filled the Phoenix Convention Center on Saturday, July 18,2015. (Photo by Dennis Gilman)
11,000 Sanders supporters filled the Phoenix Convention Center on Saturday, July 18,2015. (Photo by Dennis Gilman)

Saturday was a day of highs and lows for Senator Bernie Sanders.

In the morning at Netroots Nation, Sanders became visibly annoyed by Black Lives Matter protesters who wanted to hear more than stump speeches from Democratic presidential candidates Sanders and former Governor Martin O’Malley. They wanted to know what President Sanders or President O’Malley would do to end systemic racism in the US. They didn’t get an answer from either candidate.

In the evening– again at the Phoenix Convention Center– Sanders was greeted enthusiastically by a mostly white crowd of 11,000 progressives cheering his economic inequality stump speech. According to news accounts, this was Sanders’ largest crowd to date.

The whiteness of Sanders’ supporters has come up before, but Netroots Nation (NN15) really brought the issue home for me.

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#BlackLivesMatter Protesters Disrupt Netroots Nation Sanders & O’Malley Town Hall

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Senator Bernie Sanders and Journalist Jose Antonio Vargas attempt to quell #BlackLivesMatter protesters at NN15.
Senator Bernie Sanders and Journalist Jose Antonio Vargas attempt to quell #BlackLivesMatter protesters at NN15.

Wow! What just happened?

I was sitting in a big hall with 100s of Bernie Sanders supporters waiting to film a Bernie love fest, but that’s not what happened at the Netroots Nation 2015 Presidential Town Hall with Democratic Presidential candidates Senator Bernie Sanders and Governor Martin O’Malley.

Governor Martin O'Malley answering #BlackLivesMatter protesters.
Governor Martin O’Malley answering #BlackLivesMatter protesters.

About 10 minutes into a softball Q&A session between undocumented journalist Jose Antonio Vargas and O’Malley, approximately 75 Black Lives Matter protesters marched to the front of the hall chanting and completely disrupted the event. O’Malley was talking about how he cleaned up the streets of Baltimore as mayor when the protest started. (Earlier in the event, O’Malley drew boos and stomping from the back of the room; many attendees obviously didn’t agree with his policing policies in Baltimore.)

Protesters chanted the names of black men and women who had been killed at the hands of police– some of whom had been killed in jail. Eventually, NN15 organizers and Vargas gained a bit of control, and O’Malley answered specific questions from the protesters and in the process screwed up by including “black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter” in his answer. (Ouch! Doesn’t he follow the conversations on the Internet? I was sitting at a table with fellow BfAZ blogger Bob Lord. We just looked at each other and shook our heads, “Oh, man. I can’t believe he said that!)

The event continued to spin out of control after Sanders took the stage.

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Blog for Arizona Goes to Netroots Nation!

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Several Blog for Arizona authors will join 100s of progressive activists in Phoenix this weekend for Netroots Nation 2015– Donna Gratehouse, Steve Muratore, Bob Lord, Craig McDermott, and Pamela Powers Hannley. Each year progressive activists meet in a city “with issues”. Last year Netroots met in Detroit. Remember when Detroit had its water crisis? NN14 … Read more

Greek Financial Crisis: The Cruelty of Austerity & The Warning for US

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austerityAusterity means that people is [sic] expulsed of their homes. Austerity means that the social services don’t work anymore. Austerity means that public schools have not the elements, the means to develop their activity. Austerity means that the countries have not sovereignty anymore, and we became a colony of the financial powers and a colony of Germany. Austerity probably means the end of democracy. I think if we don’t have democratic control of economy, we don’t have democracy. It’s impossible to separate economy and democracy, in my opinion.
– Pablo Iglesias, leader of Podemos, Spain’s grassroots anti-austerity movement

Austerity is a lie. It is a cruel economic policy that starves economies, puts people out of work, privatizes public services, closes public facilities, eliminates benefits for the needy, and crushes governments with unsustainable debt. And as Iglesias says above, austerity diminishes democracy because the banks hold the economic power– not the people and the governments they elected.

Greece has been suffering under austerity imposed by the European banks since 2010. Instead of growing the Greek economy, austerity has starved it.

Does this sound familiar? Arizonans should pay close attention to the Greek financial crisis because Governor Doug Ducey is leading us down the same road to ruin.

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