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It was August 8, 2015, and two Black women took the mic from Bernie Sanders at a Seattle area rally and asked for 4.5 minutes of silence to honor Michael Brown whose body lay on the street for that many hours a year earlier. The crowd shouted obscenities at them & Sanders stormed
out, leaving, refusing to finish his speech, so enraged by their interruption. I understood their interruption and wanted to see how Bernie responded if he would clean up his tantrum. I went to Salon where there were already a few articles condemning the women. The comments were
revelatory. Here were self-proclaimed progressives arguing that Black voters are unnecessary to the Sanders campaign. Blacks are only 12% of the population, so who cares what they think was the general consensus of the Sanders crowd.
Many added that is was thanks to "pandering" to Black voters that the Democrats lost the South, lost the white working class, and other incredibly racist things. I made a few comments in support of the women and the very real issue of police impunity for murdering Black men
I had only ever seen comparable racism when doing some research on white supremacist sites for work. The consensus was Bernie did not need Black voters and was better off without them. I did not stick with @Salon much longer after that since they insisted on publishing HA Goodman
@Salon several times a week. They were so in the bag for Bernie I quit Salon, removed the bookmark, unfollowed everywhere and even now, when someone posts something from them, no matter how appealing the headline, I won't read it. Camille Paglia was foul enough, but HA Goodman?
@Salon Bernie did try to clean up his tantrum. He hired Symone Sanders on the 10th. I note she works for Biden now. He also got Killer Mike to rewrite what happened into this kumbayah story of him "giving" his mic and "sharing" the stage. A complete lie
@Salon But Bernie has never done one thing to address the racism of his supporters, and his tweet this week to address what they did to Working Families was pro forma. If he didn't want harassment and bullying, he would fire half the staff
@Salon If Sanders were serious about wanting to stop harassment, Briahna Joy would have been fired a few months back, David Sirota would never have been hired. Rose DeMoro would have a restraining order keeping her away from the campaign, and he would send Sarandon & her dog a muzzle.
@Salon They are not all the abusers and harassers he has brought in. There's Shaun King. There's Sarsour. Ugh, the foreign policy hire... I can't remember her name. He hired the worst and lets the worst speak for him, including NRA spokesman and liar about BLM Killer Mike
