By Doug Porter
The Big News this morning (Hey, it’s August!) is a poll showing Senator Bernie Saunders leading by six points over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.
This news has got be some sweet irony for Sanders supporters, coming the day after the high priests of polling at FiveThirtyEight.com declared “The Bernie Sanders Surge Appears to Be Over.”
Today I’ll take a look at the Bernie Sanders candidacy, warts and all. While the campaign appears to soaring in some circles, a significant cry of “Hey, wait a minute!” has emerged. How the man and his campaign deal with #BlackLivesMatter may be the real Big News of 2015 politics.
#FeeltheBern
There can be no doubt about it. The candidacy of a socialist Senator from Vermont has sparked a ‘movement’.
This term conveys more than enthusiastic support for his political program; it’s an emotional response to a landscape seemingly devoid of hope for the future. Movement means a connectedness with others bridging the gaps of alienation and solitude in modern society. The “Feel” in the hashtag/slogan is as important as the candidate.
Other candidates have tapped this reservoir of angst in the past. In my lifetime I’ve seen Eugene McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Ron Paul and Barack Obama benefit from it to some degree. It’s a larger-than-life sense that, no matter what anybody says, [fill in the blank] will find a way to do the right thing.
A story in today’s Washington Post noting that over 100,000 people have attended rallies for Sanders gives a sense of the momentum his supporters believe will power the candidacy past the naysayers and gatekeepers of the established order in the Democratic Party.
The overflow crowds showing up to hear Bernie Sanders these days are a testament not only to his current popularity and the campaign’s social-media savvy but also to the promotional abilities of an alchemy of like-minded interests: progressive activists, labor unions and even Sarah Silverman.
The comedian took to Twitter to let her nearly 6.7 million followers know she would be at a rally for the Democratic presidential hopeful here Monday. That event drew an estimated 27,500 people — about five times as large as any crowd that has turned out for Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“Bernie always seems to be on the right side of history,” Silverman told the boisterous audience at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, noting that the 73-year-old was a civil rights activist in the 1960s, supported gay rights in the 1980s and strongly opposed the Iraq war before most other Americans.
The Los Angeles Rally for Bernie
More than 27,000 people attended the Sanders for President rally on Monday in Los Angeles. Hillary Clinton’s largest event to date drew 5,500 people. I doubt that any of the other candidates from the left could draw 500.
Here’s a snip from the Los Angeles Times coverage of Monday’s rally:
They stood in a line that stretched for blocks around the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, eager for a glimpse of the star attraction: a sometimes cantankerous 73-year-old with unruly white hair and a populist message.
“Feel the Bern!” they chanted. “Bernie! Bernie!”
The object of their desire was Bernie Sanders, a presidential candidate whom pundits give no chance of winning the nomination but who has touched a nerve in what has otherwise been a low-key Democratic contest.
The crowd boomed in agreement as Sanders took the stage for an hour. He talked about criminal justice reform, income inequality and immigration. He railed against Wall Street greed and laid out his plan to raise the federal minimum wage and make public universities tuition-free.
Glowing press accounts of the campaign’s energy always include the obligatory “pundits say he doesn’t have a chance” disclaimer. Maybe I missed the memo.
And, predictably–if you understand how this is a Movement–his supporters take to social media to complain about what they see is a lack of coverage.
It reminds me of the Ron Raul campaigns, both in the style of the coverage and the naivete of the fan base.
An Irresistible Force Meets…
A few weeks ago activists associated with the Black Lives Matter movement disrupted the Netroots annual gathering of liberal and progressive activists in Phoenix Arizona. They took the stage during what was supposed to be a forum featuring Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, demanding answers about what the candidates would do to stop the deaths of black people at the hands of police.
Both candidates squirmed a bit, with Sanders offering to leave the stage and O’Malley falling into the rhetorical trap of saying “All Lives Matter,” a term frequently used by apologists for law enforcement misconduct.
What was more significant was the reaction of many in the the crowd: anger and disgust.
How dare ‘these people’ disrupt our program! Don’t they know we’re the only allies they have? Yadda, yadda.
The immovable object, being [mostly] black women of #BlackLivesMatter who believe they are fighting for the lives of their families, sent the irresistible force of white progressive activism into a tailspin.
Imandi Gandi, writing at the Angry Black Lady Chronicles, described it this way following the disruption of a Sanders appearance before a pro-social security rally in Seattle:
The last few weeks have exposed some real ugliness in the progressive movement, ugliness that has been simmering just below the surface for a long time, but which, due to Black women’s increasing recognition of our political power coupled with leadership in the #BlackLivesMatter movement and unapologetic commitment to dismantling white supremacy, has erupted into a fountain of White Progressive™ racism.
She goes on to elucidate on the actions of various supposedly Progressives towards Black activists in recent weeks.
Sanders’ fanatics have been viciously harassing Black people on Twitter and Facebook for weeks now—ever since the #BlackLivesMatter activists stood up during the presidential town hall at Netroots Nation and demanded that Sanders provide substantive answers about what he would do about the epidemic of police violence in the Black community.
In the wake of that protest, Sanders supporters took to Twitter to condescend, patronize, and belittle Black people, talking to us as if we are stupid and don’t know what’s best for us, and therefore should listen to our White Progressive ™ betters lest we usher in a Trump presidency or a Clinton presidency or whomever is the Boogey Man du jour.
These supporters have twisted and perverted what is a movement about the liberation of Black people and turned it into a weapon to be used against us. They threaten to withdraw their support in protesting state violence against Black people. One Twitter user frankly told me that he was sick of #BlackLivesMatter and would actually vote for people who will “put you in your place.”
Sanders Reacts Like a Grown Up
To his credit, Sanders has responded, issuing a Racial Justice Platform and including speakers from black and immigration rights groups in his Los Angeles program.
The Sanders platform starts out:
We must pursue policies that transform this country into a nation that affirms the value of its people of color. That starts with addressing the four central types of violence waged against black and brown Americans: physical, political, legal and economic.
Whether or not his supporters can catch up to the man remains in question.
Let’s return to Angry Black Lady Chronicles:
None of this would have happened if not for the #BlackLivesMatter protesters.
The #BlackLivesMatter activists are changing the political conversation. Black women are flexing our political muscles. And it is obvious that Bernie Sanders and the progressive infrastructure is listening.
The only people who continue to stalwartly refuse to listen are his fanatical supporters.
They stubbornly continue to claim that the protests are stupid and counterproductive despite clear evidence to the contrary, and they express their displeasure in rhetoric steeped in racism and misogynoir.
But…But…But… What About Hillary?
The other big candidate in this race for the Democratic nomination has her own set of baggage, mostly in the legacy of mass incarceration from the nineties.
She also has the history of actual working relationships with Black social (Deltas, etc) and civil rights groups.
But her day is here. A group of activists zeroes in on a Clinton rally in Keene, New Hampshire this week.
From the New Republic:
…the activists found the entrances closed by U.S. Secret Service who said the venue was at capacity. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who was in contact with the five activists, later told the New Republic that the activists were eventually let into an “overflow room.” Following the event, Clinton met with the group for about 15 minutes in a private meeting that they claim turned contentious at times, and featured Clinton giving unsolicited advice for the direction of the movement.
The group’s remarks and questions varied a bit from the script they prepared, which focused on criminal justice policies Clinton had supported while her husband was president, but not in tone. “I asked specifically about her and her family’s involvement in the War on Drugs at home and abroad, and the implications that has had on communities of color and especially black people in terms of white supremacist violence,” Yancey told me in an interview after the meeting. “And I wanted to know how she felt about her involvement in those processes.”
Asked whether Clinton actually proposed policies in the meeting, Jones said, “Not that I recall, no. In fact, I know that she didn’t because she was projecting that what the Black Lives Matter movement needs to do is X,Y, and Z—to which we pushed back [to say] that it is not her place to tell the Black Lives Matter movement or black people what to do, and that the real work doesn’t lie in the victim-blaming that that implies. And that was a rift in the conversation.” Jones said that the meeting concluded without any aggression, and that the meeting was “respectful.”
More to Come on Sanders, Clinton and the Rest of the Democrats
I’m sure to get emails and comments about what wasn’t covered in this column. There are policy and position differences to be discussed. And we will.
Trust me, I’ll have lots more to say.
Here’s where I stand at this moment in time…
My heart yearns for Bernie, but my head says the nominee should be Clinton. My sense of history says that its a good thing for the issues related to racism to come to the fore, especially at this point in the campaign.
Pragmatically speaking, the votes of Black women are the ones who’ve made a big difference if not THE difference in recent presidential campaigns. Any political party wanting to succeed in the 21st century is going to have to confront issues of injustice fostered by racism.
The racism of the 21st century is not embodied by gap-toothed yahoos flying the battle flags of the Confederacy; it’s about mass incarceration, economic deprivation and the lack of a way out of a world where people of color are instinctively seen as “the other.”
Like I said, I’ll have lots more to say.
On This Day: 1992 – Negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement—NAFTA—were concluded between the United States, Canada and Mexico, to take effect in January, 1994, despite protests from labor, environmental and human rights groups. 1994 – Major league baseball players went on strike rather than allow team owners to limit their salaries. The strike lasted for 232 days. As a result, the World Series was wiped out for the first time in 90 years. 2004 – The California Supreme Court voided the nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages that had been sanctioned in San Francisco earlier in the year.
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Doug Porter
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Bernie Sanders’ message is finally getting through to a mass audience. Everything he has had to say for a long time has made perfect sense to any thinking person in this country. It’s just that hardly anyone was listening. Now a lot more people are listening and he’s changing the conversation in this country. Hillary is so much more mainstream. Bernie is leaving the mainstream behind and in pied piper fashion bringing a lot of people with him
I too thought Bernie Sanders was a misfit in this election, and that it was “Hillary’s turn.”
I did not know Sanders had been teased by protesters who think–how dare they–that racism belongs on the agenda of any serious political candidate.
I can only hope that Bernie is not the exception for the demonstrators and that EVERY candidate will get their message.
Congrats to Bernie on his intelligent response.
The entire country, not just Democratic and Republican Party professionals, will have to deal with unrest and distrust because we’re all showing the signs: road rage, killings, white men with assault rifles, police killing citizens, misappropriated public money… Black Lives Matter is showing that good intentions are not enough at a time when the notion of change has been replaced by the exercise of power. Seeking comfort is not a strategy in these times.
Ponder these…
-Were the women who disrupted the Seattle rally, (I heard the whole confrontation), simply mistaken? Hired hitwomen?
-Does anyone know they were offered the mic and refused?
-Many socially active Black leaders through different media forms have denounced the deomstrators.
-Does anyone know that Sanders was once arrested and jailed in Chicago supporting minority (mainly Black) housing rights?
Bernie, the populist, the social Democrat, will be around for awhile, even with the media blackout. And Hillary, the corporatist, will be around because of money.
That’s ‘demonstrators’, I can spell, just type poorly!
It would take you less than a minute on Google to answer your questions about the BLM protesters in Seattle. Here, try this link: http://crooksandliars.com/2015/08/activist-marissa-janae-johnson-speaks
And there are 363,000 more links if you don’t find that one to your liking. Like I said in the story, Sanders has been a class act about dealing with this. His supporters vis-a-vis the obvious trolling going on here, not so much.
Doug, I think your views are over simplistic with respect to the negative reactions to the “screamers” at the rally. I saw it; they didn’t just disrupt, they tried to shut down the event right from the outset and said so even when they were told they could speak after Bernie and instead demanded to speak; they behaved like 2 year olds literally screaming at people up on stage and then in the audience–incoherently, I may add. Nothing at all was prepared in the way of being read; people started to boo after they began to scream obscenities at people as well as make them all out to be “white supremacists.” That fundamentally is their problem–members of that audience were not all “white,” and being subjected to profanities that racialized people with one broad brush is not acceptable and certainly not acceptable when the rally is for a 70 year old socialist Jew who is also a member of a historically oppressed minority and who in all probability has a far more diverse audience than is in the imaginations of the press, yourself or the screamers. I happen to be a multiculturalist and that is why I have a hard time stomaching SOME of the black rights activists who believe multiculturalism undercuts their project. For them, the entire universe is black versus white; there is no space for other forms of identity such as for example Mexican, gay or Muslim. To define the world in terms of black and white is fundamentally to replicate a struggle that does not exist in a space that enables people to be all kinds of things. That is why the BLM won’t work. They are not recruiting anyone to blackness but instead branding everyone they don’t recognize as some evil white–that is why people in the audience screamed “racist” as painful as that was to listen to as it was directed to BLM members. The other thing that they are doing is hijacking discussion, issues gaining national attention or thread on the internet–concerns with conservation or climate change for example are not good priorities.They aren’t the only just cause. They are losing all kinds of people that they ought to be recruiting–I would like it if they brought me to the space for blackness, not attacking whiteness which is what they were doing, and to respect the fact that there are other ways to exist that aren’t white or black. FInally, I’d triple dare any of those screamers to walk through Homeland Security next to me; both of them would enter with a welcome while I got sent into some room to get frisked. The world is not based on black and white; the United States is much more diverse, so members of BLM will have to come up with something more inclusive than what they have at the moment.
I present an excerpt from Martin Lurther King Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 April 1963):
“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Sorry, but you are clearly a monoculturalist, as proven by your persistent use of “they” & “I”.
Bernie Sanders comes from a state where black & brown are more visible in maple syrup & autumn leaves than in its inhabitants. “Black Lives Matter” is purely an abstraction for them, just like Bernie’s “Socialism.” Sanders is the embodiment of abstraction. This incident brought real black lives into Bernie’s abstractly color-blind sight. He blinked.
If not Bernie, than who? If not now, then when?
When will there be another like Bernie? Is our heart not part of our values? Bernie is part of the solution. We need need more like him. Doug for mayor!