Last week in Seattle, Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders was driven off the stage of one of his rallies by activists from the Black Lives Matter movement. When I first heard the news, my first reaction was, "Why of all people are they picketing Bernie?" I mean, of all the people fighting for the presidency, they chose Bernie Sanders, the most liberal? Sanders has a very solid record of voting very progressively for the last few decades and was involved with the Civil Rights Act, and walked in the march on Washington. Yet, after reading some press releases from Black Lives Matter and thinking about the situation, I believe the activists made the correct choice in picketing Mr. Sanders.
Sanders’ campaign has so far been built upon the platform of fighting the rampant income inequality in America. Many people believe that this fight against the billionaires will greatly help the poor and middle class, and consequently help many minority communities that currently are struggling in the current economic conditions. However, until the interruption of his rally, Sanders had not made fighting systematic racism a central tenet of his campaign. While his economic policies will certainly benefit a large percentage of Americans, it is naïve to believe they will dismantle the centuries’ worth of racist systems built into every part of American society.
While the Republican candidates certainly do need to be convinced of this reality, it is not necessarily beneficial for the Black Lives Movement to picket them at this point. They will be all but ignored as the Republican Party is dragged farther to the right, at least until the primaries are over. With Bernie, their message has a chance of being heard, and more importantly, implemented. At this point, Sanders’ chances of getting the nomination are dependent on him convincing more minority voters in the Democratic Party to vote for him and not Hilary. As an old, white man from a white state, that will take some convincing.
It is in Bernie’s best interests to expand his campaign to focus on stopping police brutality and including discussion of minorities in his attempts to reform the prison system. I truly believe that Sanders is the best option to fix many of America’s largest problems, but if he chooses to ignore this one, the rest of his campaign will be dismantled. Racism will not go away with time. It requires a conscious effort from all three branches of government and the public. The sheer numbers of high profile incidents involving minorities and police officers in the past few months alone shows that it can no longer be a secondary priority. Bernie must now prove his dedication to progressivism with action.
We need his message of grassroots campaigning and reluctance to accept large donations from corporations. We need his insistence on curbing the growth of the wealth gap and the shrinking of the middle class in the USA. Now all we need is for him to bring all Americans into his new vision of a progressive America.
