#BlackLivesMatter

Black lives matter

#BlackLivesMatter Protests Call for End to Structural Racism…Again (video)

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Two black men– George Floyd of Minneapolis and Dion Johnson of Phoenix — died on the same day at the hands of law enforcement officers. In the video, Floyd says he can’t breathe as a white officer pins him to the ground with his knee. Why is that even an approved tactic for police? There is no video of … Read more

“I Am Not Your Negro” film coming to the Loft Theater

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I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO STARTS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17 at Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd. Tucson Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature! Free Loft Member Screening on Friday, February 17 at 7:30pm. Click here for details!  “In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project,Remember This House. … Read more

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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