Bernie Sanders got “interrupted” not because he is some horrible person but because people deserve to ask something of the people who ask so much from us.
Our trust, our votes, our time, our money, our future.
Why should anyone trust that politicians and policy makers on federal, state and local levels are really behind the goals they set, when they consistently abuse the trust of their constituents?
We all love House of Cards, but no one seems to talk about how well this piece of entertainment capitalizes off of portraying the strong negative, cutthroat, corporately sustained energy, that is behind the rules that regulate the quality of our lives (past and present).
Why are black activists being mocked and invalidated for demanding transparency and truthful action from the people who determine almost everything about our lives, most especially the parts we do not see. Why are white people so comfortable with refusing to listen? It seems as if the privileged are only okay with showing their support until real questions start being asked.
The filibustering around racial inequality must cease, there are no half answers, you cannot be partially invested.
It is admirable that Sanders seems to be one of the only candidates who has been faithful to the policies he believes in, but the issue is that just because you have done something in the past does not mean you are ready for the present future. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s is not the Civil Rights movement of the 21st century and all of the racist policies that were being lexically improved to cover bigotry, have led us to where we are today. Telling young black people that you tried to help their parents and grandparents doesn’t seem to mean anything when it is fatally apparent that black lives still don’t matter.
To believe that the mentalities of the people that oppress us will suddenly change when they are forced to speak about how “Black lives matter” on a public platform is wishful, well intentioned, but not enough. Anyone can go back on their word once they are in a position of power, especially one where it is clear there will be no repercussions for falling short of your promises.
Any candidate will doing anything necessary to win, including appointing a black woman, Symone Sanders, as the National Press Secretary for your campaign. I say this with a skeptical tone because I am used to having to protect the fragility of my hopefulness, never truly opening up until the work has been done.
I want to believe that this appointment was a sincere consideration and not a political ploy to get black people to trust him, because I am simply tired of having to second guess the motives of real and fake “allies.”
I want those who oppress the identities, and drain the opportunities of those they consider to be inferior, to wake tf up. I want those who oppress black people to know that our lives matter. But most importantly I want black lives to matter more to black and brown people than the validation of their oppressors.
Yes we need the help of all people to accomplish the many social changes we want to see, but self love and the success of the black community is dependent on our knowledge of and access to our brilliance.
Our lives matter, they have always mattered, and they will continue to matter. If we don’t matter then why go out of the way to develop a world wide generational industry dedicated to our oppression? If we are so useless and troublesome, why steal our resources and culture to build the country you would not otherwise have?
To acknowledge and support the genius of the black people and the spectrum of black culture in this world is revolutionary because it goes against the deeply internalized racism that is planted in our minds and tended to through the corrosive messages of the media.The act of shaming the co-founders of the Seattle chapter of BLM, Marissa Johnson and Mara Jacqueline Willaford, as people who ought to know their place and as people who should be silenced is less than sad. When black people, and other marginalized groups speak up against their oppression, we are seen as an “interruption.” Just using this word in a negative tone presents the arguments of silenced voices and inconvenient and dismissible because we are no longer willing to follow a plan that is killing us.
For me this election is particularly tough because I really don’t believe any of the candidates are courageous enough to be any different than previous Presidential runners. The rights of black people, and minority groups in general, are consistently used in service of politicians sinking their hooks into the social and emotional consciousness of the demographics they need. I often find it frustrating that the outcomes of these campaigns ultimately determine so much and that candidates have to be publicly forced to address an issue that affects us all.