Thread by @michaelharriot

I've talked to TOO MANY black Southern voters this week (and during my life) I wanna stop and explain the concept of "the establishment" to some people and why a lot of black Southern voters will NEVER vote for Bernie.

Growing up, my family only talked revolutionary politics. I didn't go to school until age 12 so I didn't know about political parties. (I swear this is true) I thought "Democrats" was a religion. My grandma would pop u in the mouth if you said anything bad about a Dem.
Here's why

In a lot of small towns in the South, black people are generally on their own. There is no outside help. Activists, people on the ground doing work, and local political leaders all come from the same pot. There is no real distinction.

My piano teacher growing up was also the NAACP president who was also a city councilperson. Sometimes I had to wait for her to finish with someone who was harassed by the cops. Sometimes there was a meeting about a local restaurant who wouldn't serve black teens.

If it was a voting day, I had to miss a lesson because she had to work the polls.

Shortly after Mike Brown was killed, I went to Ferguson. As soon as I to Florissant Rd. folks asked me to help unload a truck filled with food, water, etc. where people could come and get it.

I don't remember the woman and the man's name but he was from a local mosque and she was on the local Dem committee. Because of the protests, schools were closed. I never thought about this, but they made a good point that only someone in the community would know:

If the kids were home all day but their parents still had to work, who was going to pay for and provide that extra meal they missed?

A few years ago, I did a story about a third-world hookworm epidemic in Lowndes County, Ala. theroot.com/lowndes-county…

The woman who explained the problem to me was Catherine Coleman Flowers, who has worked on environmental justice in the South for years. The hookworms happened because a lot of people couldn't afford septic tanks, so they "straight-piped" the waste away from their homes

Coleman-Flowers didn't discover the hookworm problem because she's some kind of expert. She was working in the county trying to help people in this 73% black county solve its waste problems. It was only when SHE got sick and asked a dr to test her was the hookworm was discovered.

If it wasn't for her, we might not know why people in the area were dying at such a high rate because scientists literally thought the parasite didn't exist in America.

I was once involved in what ended up being a 1-man protest (long story, read it here) theroot.com/that-one-time-…

Police chiefs from 2 different jurisdictions were crouched over me threatening me with arrest. They said I'd be locked up all weekend if I couldn't make bail.

But what they didn't know is that a local councilwoman had already arranged lawyers and bail for anyone who was arrested

Again, there ain't no help for black people EXCEPT black people. Look at photos of protests for Trayvon Martin in Fla. or EJ Bradford Jr. in Birmingham or Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge. Those well-meaning, progressive white liberals are nowhere to be found.

All we have is the institutions, organizations and relationships we built. That's why politicians come to black churches in the south. That's why a lot of activists down here are also educators and religious leaders. It's why Dem. Party meetings take place in church basements.

That is quite literally "the establishment" for us.

Unlike someone who live in blue and progressive areas, their lives depend on politics. It's why I've found black Southern black voters are more educated on the issues than any other group.

Admittedly, that comes with cynicism.
Here is an example:

1 woman told me that Bernie is too "obsessed" with M4A. She believes he'll sell anything out to get it done. Then she shocked the f*ck out of me by explaining something I had never heard of.

She explained that she had read Bernie's M4A plan and didn't like it because it would essentially eliminate private insurance. And, she said, negotiating prescription drugs removed financial incentives for innovating.

Turns out, she was retired from a medical company

She doesn't think pharmeceutical companies and insurance lobbyists would ever let it happen.

"I want to eat anything I want withoutt gaining weight. But it won't happen. The way he [Bernie] has it, it will never happen. Ever. I like the public option more."

She spent her Super Tues. driving people from her community center to the polls in Ala.

Back to the original point.

A lot of these people pay a lot of attention to politics. You can criticize them but you can't say they are uninformed.

And many of them have the same criticism of Bernie Sanders:

"He ain't no Democrat."

And they're right. He has not only criticized the party (God knows I have) but he has denigrated "the establishment" and distanced himself from people like Jim Clyburn and John Lewis.

I shrug it off but, to a lot of people, you're talking about their church members, their piano teachers, the people that help them when they are the lowest.

Those people see that. And to them, Bernie is just another progressive white man with great-sounding "ideas."

They know Bernie's record. They know about his history. They also know about unfulfilled promises. It's not that they trust Biden more than they trust Bernie —A lot of them will NEVER be convinced to trust one white man over another white man.

WHat has Biden ever done for black people?

Nothing.

Neither has Sanders. For a lot of them, NO white person has ever had their best interest at heart.

A lot of them don't even care about Biden's relationship with Obama, as some people claim. He has another 40-year relationship that is more important:

That D" beside his name.

To them, that's the "establishment" they trust.

They all they got