- Dan Cronin
- 19,000 Portlanders feeling the Bern
Dont Shoot PDX activist Marcus Cooper is reporting on Facebook that he and five others were invited to sit down with Senator Bernie Sanders on Sunday, following a gigantic rally at the Moda Center.
According to Cooper’s Facebook post, Sanders sat down with the activists—including Teressa Raiford, who was arrested earlier that day following an action to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson—and listened to their concerns about his failure to address institutional racism as a campaign platform.
Correction: Cooper has since clarified that Raiford wasn’t able to attend the meeting with Sanders because she was still sitting in Multnomah County jail.
Cooper—the same activist who was arrested in May when a teen opened fire at an unsanctioned Last Thursday celebration and later had his charges dropped—reports the group spoke with Sanders, his wife, and Sanders’ newly-hired press secretary, Symone Sanders.
“We asked how much time he had, and he said he had a flight to catch early… So I said OK,” Cooper writes. “Then he said, ‘What’s your solutions’… I said first and foremost we are not here to attack or protest against you nor are we here to say we support you. I am here to speak out and educate you as much as I can with the platform of privilege that I have, and this is what I would like you to do as well.”
The Sunday rally came one day after Sanders appeared in Seattle, where two activists took the microphone and disrupted the event. Sanders ended up leaving without speaking in Seattle at that particular event. Sanders did speak later to a crowd of 15,000.
Amid concerns the same would happen in Portland, Symone Sanders, who introduced the senator in Portland, warned attendees there might be a disruption, and requested that the crowd be ready to chant “we stand together” if it happened.
Don’t Shoot PDX activists were present during the rally, as seen in the above photo, and they chanted for most of the event, but the crowd was too loud for them to be heard over the earsplitting cheers. They also remained to the side of the stage and didn’t attempt to commandeer the microphone.
Cooper writes that Sanders told the activists on Sunday that he wasn’t “going city to city to discuss … individual topics.”
“We reminded him that going from city to city and not discussing what the cities are facing but yet using your platform to discuss about those other issues is equivalent to silencing their screams,” he writes. “We address that dialogue needs to happen but only with direct action. People are being massacred and there is no time for just more speeches. Bernie didn’t have a response.”
Cooper says the group suggested Sanders “reform the police” by placing them on on-call status, similar to a fire department.
“You don’t see (fire fighters) driving around profiling for suspected houses to be on fire,” Cooper writes. “WE reminded them that talking is one thing, but (the) platform that he has is a privilege and using that privilege with a direct action would bring direct results.”
Cooper’s post certainly got direct results: As of now, his 10-hour-old post has been shared 39 times, has garnered 88 likes, and has created a long comment thread.
Actually firefighters spend a lot of time going building to building checking businesses for fire code violations. Much more time than they spend actually fighting fires.
For the record: Sanders did not “leave the event without speaking in Seattle.” He was only a guest speaker at the event that BLM “shut down.”
Sanders DID INDEED speak in Seattle later that day. He spoke to 15,000 people while another 3,000 waited outside the stadium.
Lazy reporting!
“Cooper says the group suggested Sanders “reform the police” by placing them on on-call status, similar to a fire department.”
Apparently they have never heard of Community Policing which is working effectively in neighborhoods like Watts.
http://gawker.com/50-years-after-the-riots…
Sanders did speak in Seattle later that night, to a crowd of 15,000 http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/black-lives-matter-protesters-shut-down-bernie-sanders-rally/
As I white progressive, I like how Bernie was called out by these activists for initially adopting the patronizing “All Lives Matter” slogan. I also wonder if some of the activists are motivated by how Bernie’s campaign gets its power from the economic frustration of white working and middle class Americans. Black Americans, however, have always experienced economic injustice endemically. Only when inequality began impacting white people to a high enough degree did we start taking this fight on in a big way (Occupy Wall Street). Lastly, despite the fact that Seattle and Portland are dominated by white progressives, widespread gentrification, police brutality, and huge educational disparities based on race have all occurred on our watch.
I’m confused — why is Bernie Sanders the target of this attention? Surely he’s the closest thing to a major candidate that is sympathetic to the issues the “Don’t Shoot” movement are addressing? Is it just that folks can’t physically get access to the other candidates?
Also, way to reference two people with the same last name and then use that same last name to refer to one of them without saying who.
And, why do they think Symone Sanders hasn’t been talking with him about these same things since she also involved in the movement and is specifically helping him work on race. In that same rally they talked about how economic inequality and race inequality are tied together and need to be addressed together.
It seems like these activists wanted to talk at someone without listening to see if he was already addressing their needs.
It was O’Malley who said All Lives Matter. This happened at the NetRoots Rally where both him and Sanders were disrupted. Please get your facts straight.
Man, this shit is getting beyond stupid.
Like some of Bernies points, but it is high time for a woman in the Oval Office.
This Cooper sounds like an ignorant tool, regardless of his cause.
Yes, #sarcasm makes sense to protest at a Sanders speech. These guys need a marketing class or something.
It’s certainly legitimate to raise institutional racism as part of this campaign. However, I don’t see how Sanders, pretty much the only hope we have for a genuinely humane president, is going to win if people don’t even let his campaign get started without attacking it. But more to the point, it will take the grassroots to end institutional racism, just as it took the grassroots to bring about marriage equality. The politicians will always play catch-up.
I don’t really have a problem with it. It wasn’t a riot; no one was hurt. It was just a political stunt. If you’re a politician, you deal with that. And it appears he listened. Don’t know what he’ll do, but probably more than anybody else out there would.
Good thing Cooper didn’t sucker punch and beat Bernie, like he did that guy who had Cooper’s d-bag car towed at last Thursday a few years ago.
This whole thing is going swimmingly. Hillary is fucking up the Occupy/environmental vote, while Trump is fucking up the women’s/sane people’s vote. All Bernie has to do is not fuck up the black/civil rights vote. No brainer folks!