Sunday, August 09, 2015

Bernie Sanders and #BlackLivesMatter

As I understand it, Bernie Sanders held a rally in Seattle, some Black Lives Matter protesters stormed the stage before his speech and took the mic, said some stuff and had a 4.5-minutes of silence for all the black people who have been killed ... by police since Ferguson? ... and then Sanders did not go on to speak. That's about all I know. I like this article about it, by Pramila Jayapal, a lot. But since I have a place I can blog too, I will.

White people: the BLM protestors are right. (see point #1 in the article I linked above.)

BLM protestors: huh, maybe this worked. Got a lot of people talking. Maybe it didn't: alienate the people rooting for the most radical candidate out there. Shoot, this seems the best I've seen from any candidate so far. See point #5 in Jayapal's article above. How can we call people in as we call them out?

Ms. Jayapal: "But in the end, if we want to win for ALL of us on racial, economic, and social justice issues, we need multiple sets of tactics, working together. Some are disruptive tactics. Some are loving tactics. Some are truth-telling tactics. Some can only be taken on by white people. Some can only be taken on by people of color."

What are those tactics? What can I do? (not saying I will do them, because I'm trying hard enough to work on my work and stay sane otherwise. but I'm curious what I ought to/can be doing here. maybe talking about it on the internet is part of it.)

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