Bernie Sanders event shut down Black Lives Matter activists.
brianlux
Posts: 42,038
I know we started to talk about this in the Bernie Sanders thread but it seems to me this is a much bigger issue than just about Sanders. I am completely baffled by this action. One of the activists said to the Seattle crowd, ""Now that you've covered yourself in your white supremacist liberalism, I will formally welcome Bernie Sanders to Seattle." What where they thinking? Attack one of the candidates mostly likely to support you and call his supporters supremacist liberals? This is radicalism gone very awry- even to my way of thinking. Very disappointing.
Thoughts?
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/bernie-sanders-event-shut-down-black-lives-matter-activists
Thoughts?
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/bernie-sanders-event-shut-down-black-lives-matter-activists
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.
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Seems they did themselves quite a disservice.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
I do believe that Bernie is the candidate who would help the Black Lives Matter movement more than any of the other candidates.
So I do have to wonder why are they going after Bernie this way. And why choose a rally about protecting Social Security and Medicare to jump the podium and call everyone there a racist? How does that help your cause? It doesn't. They ended up looking foolish, angry and poorly organized.
I also got to wondering why are these specific "activists" going after a Presidential candidate at all when the Presidential Inauguration isn't even until January 2017. Why aren't their efforts being focused on those people currently in power who can do something to directly help the movement right now? The activist's actions singling Bernie out do not make sense to me. It is as if there is something more odious going on. I mean, who has the most to gain with Bernie shut down and unable to speak out? Just a thought.
I don't have the link anymore- I was doing a lot of poking around- but what I read from a comment made elsewhere claims that BLM's intent is to target liberal democratic candidates because BLM seems to feel that those candidates show hypocrisy by claiming to be progressive and yet place BLM's agenda at the bottom of their priorities.
If this is true, does this mean that BLM equates their agenda with being the main focus in the interest of African Americans in general? Are they really doing what is best for black Americans or simply for their own exposure?
The other thing I read (I cannot verify this to be true) was that BLM intends to disrupt any of the democratic candidates that they can and (according to this person) that so far, they have been blocked from doing so by all but one- Sanders.
I don't know how reliable all this information is but I'll keep it in mind as things progress.
The other thing I begin to question is with regards the notion that Sanders would do (or might have done) more to support BLM than any of the other candidates. After this incident, being a Sanders supporter I have to wonder, is this really what we want him to do or are there better ways he can serve the black community and fight racism in general? BLM's actions tend to give me pause to wonder if this is an activist group or a hate group. If so, do I really want the candidate I support to be supportive of such a group? And what is it exactly that BLM wants to accomplish?
The other thing I read is that the group that shut down Sanders may in fact be a splinter group from BLM, a radical faction called Outside Agitators 206. Any one heard of them?
I hope forthcoming news helps to sort out some of the confusion.
The country must be in worse shape then I thought if Bernie is now leading "the cause" ...
This kind of protest is missing in today's political climate - it needs to happen more often, and with a much broader number of topics. Because it works. Direct action.
i don't know if it's right for a white male to set the acceptable parameters of racial justice protests, nor the acceptable timeline for change - which silencing people does.
I generally encourage any form of peaceful protest, and see it as more important than supporters hearing a politician speak....
Trust me, I'm conflicted on this....you're right, if it turned allies against them it didn't do them any favours. you're also right that publicity is always one objective.
Just happy to see people with the balls to do this kinda thing even if it wasn't exactly diplomatically executed.
Although, it is amusing to see socialist liberals get accused of being "The Man" for a change. It has been a burden I've had to carry for too long.
I very much agree, Drowned Out, about what you said about the need for direct action.We saw this happen frequently and effectively during the sixties and into the early seventies with regard to the civil rights movement, the early black power movement and the Viet Nam war protest. But the targets for that actions were generally carefully chosen. BLM targeting someone like Bernie Sanders would have been like the SDS targeting Robert F. Kennedy or the American Indian Movement targeting Robert Redford. What BLM did just doesn't make sense and - at least in my opinion- degrades and makes a mockery of effective direct action.Edit. I left what I said above but struck out my initial thought because, to be honest, I'm not so sure how effective direct protest or physical action is anymore. I would like to think it is but I've read to many accounts of people who were involved in that sort of action who believe in today's world that is not the way to get things done. I the documentary "Wrenched" (the best doc. I know of covering the radical environmental movement) Terry Tempest Williams, for example, talks about how she and some other women were stopped by federal officials from entering what had once been a nuclear bomb test sight in order to draw attention to breast cancer issues related to radiation. The fed asked her what it was she had stuffed in her socks and Williams said, "weapons". She was asked to pull her socks down and she did, revealing a pad of paper and a pen.
But in this instance, what is it that has inspired you and I to figuratively put pen to paper? Are you saying educating people is the best means to change? In the internet era, we need something to bring a topic to light before the world starts typing, no? Direct action was still the catalyst here. But maybe I'm misunderstanding your edit?
Here are some more thoughts on the topic from the perspective I raised above, from a blog I found linked on the coffee party's page on fb (ya, I guess that's a thing
http://egbertowillies.com/2015/08/10/response-to-critiques-of-blacklivesmatter-focus-on-bernie-sanders-video/
http://egbertowillies.com/2015/08/11/huge-l-a-rally-bernie-sanders-gets-it-will-all-of-his-white-liberal-supporters-get-it-video/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=EgbertoWillies.com&utm_content=Huge L.A. rally. Bernie Sanders gets it. Will all of his white liberal supporters get it? (VIDEO)
An aside:
One of the reply comments this blogger quotes in the first article mentions that actions like this protest portray the BLM movement in the crazy light of the tea party. Which I found interesting because the author of a different article I read (from a conservative blog) had dug up Twitter posts and other items to support a claim that one of the protestors (who were not reps of the BLM movement, but another org), were former Sarah Palin supporters.
What would the odds be that someone behind a curtain somewhere is trying to give Sanders some bad press, and drive a wedge between him and black America, all while making BLM look like a looney tunes movement? Some say the tea party was a grassroots movement that was hijacked by the establishment when it gained too much momentum....ill take my tinfoil hat off, but if it ever comes out that Hilary or anyone else in Washington has ties to these women, you heard it here first haha
But I don't think this kind of action will hold up or be allowed to hold up long in the public eye which takes us back to what I was saying about direct action possibly not being very effective any longer- or at least not in a direct sense. Lets go back to the Viet Nam war. That anti war movement was strong and it instigated tremendous waves of direct action. Those actions made a big impact on how people viewed the war and their response to it. Before the war ended, the majority of Americans no longer supported it. The activist did a lot to wear down the opposition.
The closest thing we've had in recent years to those 60's protest was the Occupy movement. That movement brought a lot of attention to the disparity between haves and have nots but nothing changed- if anything the rich are getting more rich and the poor more poor. But the Occupy movement did at least bring the subject to light and now any change that will come is more likely to come from education, information and possibly even political motion if someone like Bernie Sanders hold true to what he espouses. Sorry if this sounds like a plug for Sanders- I could use someone like Naomi Klein or Elizabeth Warren equally as an example.
So yeah, I tend to think things like written and spoken word, education, dissemination of information, and teaching critical thinking are going to prove to be more effective if for no other reason than that they have a better chance of having staying power, a longer shelf-life so to speak.
All that said, I still like the idea of direct action as having the potential of being a catalyst. As for the BLM thing, who knows, maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe they did it because it helped get Sanders name in the headlines! All kinds of twists in the plot are possible>
I agree about direct action and the powers that be allowing it to happen. Protest zones, stricter permit procedures, surveillance and harassment of activists, agent provocateurs (usually dressed up in anarchist costumes), and all the other laws the Patriot Act and other legislation have brought us....the government has tilted the scales away from the right to assemble, and made it extremely difficult to effectively protest anything.