Dear Bernie (Can I call you that?),
I’m one of the 2000 people hosting one of your campaign’s “Organizing Kickoff” events at my home on July 29th. I’m doing so because I’m impressed by your uncommon integrity and your clear commitment to a citizen-powered political revolution. Like many other of your supporters, I align with your unwavering stance on issues like unemployment, creating a living wage, getting big money out of politics, and climate change, as well as your voting record on issues like women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and the Iraq war. As a young-ish adult living with impossible debt, financial insecurity, and resulting feelings of hopelessness, your platform resonates with me. But after your flimsy reaction to the concerns of #BlackLivesMatter protesters at the Netroots Nation conference on Saturday, I have to say: Catch up to this issue, or you’ve lost me and millions of other potential supporters.
I know that #BlackLivesMatter wasn’t the group you intended to address last night. Perhaps it was stressful to deal with loud protesters. Perhaps you felt derailed by them. But here’s the thing — people of color in this country consistently have their urgent concerns about racialized violence derailed, diminished, or otherwise ignored. That’s why they’re shouting when people are diplomatically talking. That’s why they’re stealing the mic at well-meaning, lefty organizing conferences. They’re reinforcing that this is a state of emergency for people who don’t value Black lives enough to recognize it as a state of emergency. They’re trying to wake up white people like us who are socialized to be numb to the ongoing, awful violence perpetrated against Black people. (Hence the name: “Black. Lives. Matter.”)
Being interrupted and shouted down is disconcerting, but put beside the crisis of systemic racism, some concerned heckling shouldn’t seem so big of a deal. (Sorry internet commenters, you’ll never convince me that their “Ideas are right but their tactics are wrong” where this is concerned). As a decades-long civil rights activist who marched on Washington, I’d imagine you’d be sympathetic with all of this. The citizen-powered revolution you’re fighting for? #BlackLivesMatter is part of it.
When activist Tia Oso grabbed the microphone to ask fellow progressive presidential candidate Martin O’Malley, “As leader of this country will you advance an agenda that will dismantle structural racism in this country?” you had every opportunity to address her (valid) question when it was your turn to speak. If her question seemed off the menu, then perhaps it’s because you have failed to seriously consider this very real crisis. In other words, there’s a major gap in your otherwise relevant campaign platform, and the #BlackLivesMatter protesters showed up to emphasize that. If anything, they provided a shining opportunity for you to fill that gap in. You missed that opportunity.
While you did say, “The criminal justice system has failed Black people,” you were neither specific nor direct. Your point about high unemployment among Black youth (oft-repeated throughout your campaign) seemed dismissive in light of continuing acts of terror committed against Black people. As GetEqual Co-Director Angela Peoples’ put it to Time Magazine: “We have to center this conversation around blackness and anti-blackness. We cannot keep disguising structural racism as income inequality…What we saw at this conference was a lack of acknowledgement of movement for black lives.”
You are right to suggest, as you have in the past, that economic inequality makes living as a Black person harder. One could argue that Black poverty is itself a form of state violence, and we’d all benefit from continuing solidarity-enforcing conversations about the intersecting dimensions of economic oppression, race, and gender. Calling attention to this fact, however, doesn’t pardon you from thoroughly addressing the racism-borne, social dimensions of state violence (see: police brutality, racial profiling, unequal imprisonment, etc.) as they are uniquely experienced by people of color. It also doesn’t pardon you from vocally crediting #BlackLivesMatter with being the profoundly important movement that it is.
In the name of Natasha McKenna, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Oscar Grant, Freddie Gray, Tanisha Anderson, Rumain Brisbon, Tamir Rice, Shelly Frey, Akai Gurley, Kajieme Powell, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, John Crawford III, Miriam Carey, and countless other people of color who have been and are still being unjustifiably arrested, beaten, and murdered by the police state — step up and speak out. Add this crisis to the list of core Issues on your website and tell us what — besides addressing economic inequality — you plan to do to confront it if you were president.
With deep respect, I say: You can do better. We’re waiting for you to show us.
Sincerely,
Sara Aboulafia
Oakland, CA
