Opinions

Black Lives Matter to Bernie’s campaign

Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has been gathering a significant and unexpected amount of support from citizens over the past few months.

Peacefully resolving confrontations with the Black Lives Matter movement after a near-disaster at a rally on Aug. 8 in Seattle has put Sanders in position for a primary win. This comes at a time when Hillary Clinton’s campaign is under fire for her lack of transparency. The missteps in Clinton’s campaign and Sanders’ new ideologies, has created a perfect storm.

The BLM movement — created after the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown last year — recently took the initiative to speak with Sanders at one of his speeches in the least subtle approach. During the event in Seattle, Sanders was scheduled to speak to an audience at a city park, when two members of the BLM movement grabbed the microphone and began stating their cause.

The members began demanding that the audience to hold Sanders “accountable” for not putting in enough effort to address the looming issues of police brutality and racial inequality, the primary focuses of the organization. They were met with boos and requests from the crowd for police to arrest them.

Those actions were a blessing in disguise for Sanders. The confrontation exposed a kink in Sanders’ populist campaign. As appealing as his policies might sound to the average hard-working American, racial equality has not been at the forefront of his campaign.

Yet according to Pew Research, in 2012 over 90 percent of African Americans who voted, voted Democratic in the general election, and Sanders is going to need to win them over to beat Clinton.

Since the incident took place, Sanders has made it a priority to address the inequalities among African Americans in the U.S. The night following the BLM stage rush, Sanders made it clear that his focus was also on racial inequality by stating, “On criminal justice and reform and the need to fight racism there is no other candidate for president who will fight harder than me.”

After the confrontation in Seattle, Sanders appointed Symone Sanders as the national press secretary for his presidential campaign. Symone, who has no relation to Bernie Sanders, serves as the national youth chair for the non-profit organization Coalition on Juvenile Justice.

The new press secretary has already made an impact on Sanders’ campaign, stating that Bernie is now pushing the idea that “racial inequality and economic inequality are parallel issues.” She also elaborated on why BLM felt that he was not addressing the issues of African Americans.

“I [told him,] you know, economic equality is an issue, it’s something we need to address,” she told The Huffington Post. “But for some people it doesn’t matter how much money you make, it doesn’t matter where you went to school, it doesn’t matter what your parents do… None of that matters.”

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