Sen. Bernie Sanders likely had a bad feeling when the thousands of mostly white supporters who had turned out to hear him speak in Seattle on Social Security watch a #BlackLivesMatter activist take over the microphone and declare the entire audience guilty of “white supremacist liberalism.”
The previous time the #BlackLivesMatter crowd had managed to sabotage a Sanders event, it was followed the #BernieSoBlack hashtag. As one tweeter explained, “#BernieSoBlack is what happens when white liberals try to tell black people what to think.”
Why has Sanders been singled out for this sort of attention? We’re not sure, but Lee Fang of The Intercept says the two women who took over Sanders’ microphone in Seattle issued a really long press release urging the public to use the #BowDownBernie hashtag.
The problem with Sanders’, and with white Seattle progressives in general, is that they are utterly and totally useless (when not outright harmful) in terms of the fight for Black lives. While we are drowning in their liberal rhetoric, we have yet to see them support Black grassroots movements or take on any measure of risk and responsibility for ending the tyranny of white supremacy in our country and in our city. This willful passivity while claiming solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement in an effort to be relevant is over. White progressive Seattle and Bernie Sanders cannot call themselves liberals while they participate in the racist system that claims Black lives. Bernie Sanders will not continue to call himself a man of the people, while ignoring the plight of Black people.
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Even ultra-liberal site Daily Kos retaliated with the #GrowUpBLM hashtag.
#BowDownBernie? No, #GrowUpBLM. Stop heckling and bullying! http://t.co/StZSHkjdKI #BernieSanders #BernieinSeattle #BlackLivesMatter #racism
— Eric Stetson (@EricStetson) August 9, 2015
@lhfang @Umfuld Shameful. #HecklersVeto in action. Free Speech is DOA.
— Perrin Blackman (@FreestateReal) August 9, 2015
@lhfang They can go fuck themselves after the behavior I saw. Lucky they weren't arrested for assault. Finally Secret Service protection.
— x_CrazyJim_x (@x_CrazyJim_x) August 9, 2015
@lhfang @leeleemunster I guess they weren't exactly "feelin' the Bern". #BowDownBernie
— Upstate Voice? (@UpstateVoice) August 9, 2015
@lhfang @madfloridian I heard booing for BLM trio. This was a SS & Medicare rally
— JeffcoCitizen (@JeffcoCitizen) August 9, 2015
@lhfang I HIGHLY suggest looking into the credibility of the two protesters. Nothing about them or this incident adds up as official.
— Vincent P. (@QueenKhameleon) August 9, 2015
@lowriskloris @lhfang how is Bernie being a hateful bigot?
— REL @ MFF (@aBobRoss) August 9, 2015
https://twitter.com/ImagiWizzard/status/630206891600117762
https://twitter.com/HiHannahRose/status/630194348718690305
https://twitter.com/MaxFiction/status/630185168016404480
@brownblaze @BernieSanders #BowDownBernie? Way to treat the candidate who most supports the movement. #embarrassing
— Jon K (@JonKindberg) August 9, 2015
https://twitter.com/Tumblrisms/status/630428340789379076
https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/630458544496586752
This #BowDownBernie hashtag is dangerously close to pushing an important movement into jumped-the-shark territory
— Theodore R. Johnson (@DrTedJ) August 9, 2015
Time for Sanders to revisit the official list of “White People’s Roles and Responsibilities.”
Ever wonder what, as a person with white privilege, you can do to stand in solidarity with black liberation struggle? pic.twitter.com/Zre3onw7J0
— the facebook hater (@onekade) December 12, 2014