It was a typical weekend for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.): He shattered attendance records at big-city rallies — not once, but twice — and he lost control of a campaign event to Black Lives Matter protesters.
The action came during a three-day trip down the West Coast, which concludes Monday with stops in Oakland and Los Angeles.
In Seattle on Saturday, Sanders drew 12,000 supporters to the Hec Edmundson Pavilion, according to the Seattle Times, and another 3,000 to an overflow area. The next day, he topped even that record by drawing 19,000 to Portland’s Moda Center, home to the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers. According to CNN, which cited an arena spokesman, another 9,000 Portlandians were turned away at the door.
But similar to three weeks ago, when Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted an event in Phoenix, those rallies were overshadowed by a protest earlier Saturday in Seattle. At a rally meant to celebrate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Sanders was “shoved aside” by protesters and “pushed away when he tried to take the microphone back,” according to the Associated Press.
Here’s how CNN described it:
Seconds after Sanders took the stage, a dozen protesters from the city’s Black Lives Matter chapter jumped barricades around the stage and grabbed the microphone from the senator. Holding a banner that said “Smash Racism,” two of the protesters — Marissa Janae Johnson and Mara Jacqeline Willaford, the co-founders of the chapter — began to address the crowd.
“My name is Marissa Janae Johnson, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Seattle,” she said to sustained boos for an audience that had waited an hour and a half to hear Sanders. “I was going to tell Bernie how racist this city is, filled with its progressives, but you already did it for me, thank you.
According to the Seattle Times:
The activists demanded 4½ minutes of silence in memory of [slain Ferguson, Mo., resident Michael] Brown, to symbolize the 4½ hours his body lay on a Ferguson street. While rally organizers raised their hands in support, some in the crowd yelled profanities.
After the few minutes of silence, the protesters said they wanted to confront Sanders for failing to address their concerns when he was similarly interrupted at a town hall for liberal activists in Phoenix last month. Johnson beckoned Sanders to stand closer as she spoke — he refused.
The Westlake protesters would not let Sanders take the microphone, prompting rally organizer Robby Stern to say the event was over because the demonstrators were determined to stop it.
Sanders left the stage and walked through the crowd, greeting supporters, before leaving in a white Jeep for a fundraiser at the Comet Tavern on Capitol Hill.
In an apparent reaction to the protest, Sanders announced the hiring of a young African American activist as his national press secretary later Saturday. Symone Sanders, who has worked for Public Citizen and volunteered for the Coalition on Juvenile Justice, quickly took center stage in her new role, delivering a 10-minute speech that night at the Hec Edmundson Pavilion introducing her new boss.
According to BuzzFeed, she first met Sanders three weeks ago when she offered him advice on addressing the Black Lives Matter movement:
“One of my suggestions, he took it and ran with it on Meet the Press, is that racial inequality and economic inequality are parallel issues,” she said. “I [told him,] you know, economic equality is an issue. It’s something we need to address. 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. It doesn’t matter that Sandra Bland had a job and was on her way to teach for her alma mater. It doesn’t matter. None of that matters.”
Symone Sanders also addressed the Portland rally Sunday night, according to CNN, and instructed audience members to chant “We stand together” if another protest erupted onstage.
A further sign the campaign was unnerved by the protests? For the first time, according to CNN, it hired security:
Six guards stood around the stage on the floor of the Moda Arena, ensuring that if a protest were to break out, it would be unlikely the stage would be seized. Sanders’ campaign declined to talk about security after Saturday’s protest, but the senator has yet to travel with a visible security detail.
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How’s Bernie gonna deal with ISIS, China, Putin and the billionaire class if he gets shoved aside on stage by two female protesters? What if he debates with Trump?
What, no security on hand?! C’mon Bernie, this is the big time.
Finally the WHITE Elephant in the room is showing itself! Bernie paints a picture of himself as a racial rights advocate, and is trying to quickly revisit his ancient history of how he supports racial justice (seriously, when did Jesse Jackson run for president? 30 years ago?).
Yet by supporting the destructive planned F35 basing in Vermont which will cause thousands of Vermonters to suffer health, safety and loss of property values, he has shown that BLACK LIVE DO NOT MATTER in Vermont to Bernie. Instead of fighting for the rights of the everyday hardworking people who will be most severely impacted, he instead supported the military expansion into densely populated residential neighborhoods whose health and home property values will be taken from them.
Can you guess who will be most disproportionately affected by Bernie’s support of the flawed F35 basing decision? Middle and low income, minority, and refugee populations – all Bernie’s apparent poster children. So please ask Bernie how much he cares about black lives in VERMONT? He will tell you that the F35s had to go somewhere, so they might as well come to Vermont. What a concerned and caring answer to over 6,000 folks who will suffer significant environmental damage from his actions — NOT!
Seriously, folks, do you really believe that he would give more respect to the lives and welfare of black across the nation than those of his own state? He may pretend that he will, in order to get elected.
But the answer is — he won’t! He has shown us here in Vermont that he can talk the talk very well, but when he had the chance to save the lives of those for whom he pretends to support, he betrayed us all.
Bernie is the only candidate to even open his mouth about the fact that 99% of us are not considered on any level. If you are going to join the koch brothers in making sure he doesn’t have a voice, good for you but no complaints later about having to serve in some unknown country to keep our military sharp or increased defense spending or fewer taxes for corporations and more burden for you. There are two sides, the rich and the not rich. republicans somehow are getting average citizens to vote against, social security, unemployment insurance, health care and every other social program that we all (in the 90%) could be a half a step away from needing if whomever we are working for pulls up stakes tomorrow. How do they do that?? Is it the pretty faces and fancy suits or just the brainwashing from all that media money. Learning that the US has a reading level of grade 4 has allowed me to understand why much of this is happening. People are more interested in fantasy football. If you don’t support Bernie who isn’t perfect who do you support??
Oh please wake up and smell the Machiavellian duplicity wafting out of Clinton campaign headquarters. These people are hecklers sent by the Clinton Political Mafia.