Bernie Sanders’ “Racial Justice Platform” Wins Praise From Black Lives Matter

[nadinbrzezinski]

It is difficult for a person, or a movement for that matter, to have their voice heard when no-one cares about, or acknowledges, that what the person or movement has to say is relevant. That was likely what incited “activists” identifying with the “Black Lives Matter” movement, official representatives or not, to interrupt Senator Bernie Sanders at Netroots and a rally in Seattle Washington over the past couple of weeks. For the record, the BLM activists also interrupted Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley at Netroots, but it failed to garner the same outrageous reaction from progressives as when Senator Sanders was disrupted.

Obviously, the BLM-associated activists, like African Americans and people of color across the nation, are getting desperate to have their concerns addressed, or even taken seriously, or they would not have felt the need to disrupt a candidate reciting their “fire-em up” speeches. The good news for the BLM movement is that despite the “disgusting reaction” to activists interrupting the populist candidate Sanders, the “disruptions” achieved their desired results, albeit days later, and paid dividends because he came up with a new “racial justice platform” that won him praise from several prominent voices in, that’s right, the BLM movement.

As racial justice platforms go, even though it appears to have taken some pressure from desperate activists, it is beyond dispute that Senator Sanders hit a grand slam; it is no wonder he won praise. Besides a seriously comprehensive platform to address racial injustice, Senator Sanders hired a “young racial justice activist” as his national press secretary; another move that won him praise.

http://linkis.com/www.politicususa.com/M2eUK

Just informational post. Myself, going over the internets for my daily dose of political reading.

Posted originally in the wrong forum, moved it myself.

[drm604]

1. I'm glad to see this here.

I was about to K&R your other post but it had been deleted.

Good article, and great platform!

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. I posted it in the wrong place

so saved the effort to the hosts.

[Maedhros]

3. Not surprising.

Sanders understands the need for action, not just words, in pursuit of racial justice.

[Vattel]

4. Is there anything new in his "new racial justice platform?"

Or is it the same stuff he has been talking about doing since his campaign began?

[Luminous Animal]

5. Does it matter? It is there now on his website when it wasn't there before.

[Vattel]

11. Well, it matters to me anyways.

Some are trying to pretend that Sanders had little concern for racial justice until his recent experiences with BLM protests. That sounds like bullshit, and I am not seeing much of a change in his positions. But I am interested if there is anything new.

[SoapBox]

22. Yup.

He had positions already...they've simply been expanded.

The man has worked his life for racial equality...in addition to a ton of other things.

One man can try...but we now have the chance to put him in THE best position to work on issues...and, we need to VOTE out the scoundrels, giving him the army needed for true change.

Go Bernie!

GOTV!

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. He added a few things that probably came from his advisor

who is part of BLM, and a prison reform advocate. But for the most part, no, not really. And it has been sort of up for a while, But the fact that he is explicitly talking of demilitarization and police accountability, both up there in BLM national agenda... it makes sense.

I really do not expect everybody to know exactly what each pol has done every day of the week, and twice on Shabbat?

But yes, I have been told by a few that he would have never done this if Saturday did not happen. People really do not have any idea how these things take shape or that this was the final edit or many.

[cascadiance]

71. I don't think that we should point figures how these earlier actions actually helped or not...

Whether it was the actions of "protestors" at Netroots or Seattle helping Bernie getting more focus on BLM issues, or whether it was many in Bernie's camp's reactions to some of the extreme actions in these instances that prompted BLM's gesture here too. What precipitated subsequent decent events in my book really isn't that important at this point, as I don't think we should really replicate negative actions in the future in the hopes that they produce positive reactions again. We should avoid that if possible.

What is important is that Bernie, his campaign, and his supporters are making that extra effort to prioritize getting BLM issues solved, and that BLM now is behind Bernie's campaign to do so! THAT is what is important, and moving forward it is those activities and attitudes, etc. that we should focus on to fix all of the many problems facing us now! Let's just DO IT FOLKS!!!

[Vattel]

72. good advice, thx

[SonderWoman]

7. But DU said BLM needs to be marginalized.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Just STOP!!!! You are not helping

[SonderWoman]

15. Actually I am helping. I'm in the streets on the frontlines.

[Bubzer]

18. Thats awesome!

Glad to hear it! Don't suppose you'd be interested in giving updates? I'd be very interested in hear whats going on from on-ground sources!

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. That is great, I report on this from the front lines as well

I mean HERE.

Just cool it, you are not helping HERE.

[malokvale77]

41. I'm pretty sure...

the only thing that poster is on the front lines of, is the Hillary campaign.

[rhett o rick]

54. What city? nm

[SMC22307]

55. Tell us more.

Especially the successes you've had...

[Autumn]

62. Oh I so admire that. Got any stories and pics to post?

It's difficult for me to do that anymore with my mobility issues.

[Bubzer]

17. I cant imagine anyone actually said that.

Perhaps instead of stirring the pot, we could instead embrace what is happening now?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

21. One person did. He got a ton of pushback in the comments below his OP. nt

[Bubzer]

29. I'm surprised there was even one. Was it a troll?

In any case, I'm glad there was a ton of pushback!

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

31. It was EEO.

I don't know the user well enough to guess. Here's the link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251506368

He actually got 5 recs, and a few of the comments seemed to agree with him, even if most didn't.

[Bubzer]

33. Wow! I had to read it twice just to make sure I read it right.

Just....wow.

Well, fortunately, one person ... or even 1 and the 5 that recced, are not representative of DU as a whole.

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. Some of this is what I see as part of the dirty tricks

operation. It is a bad feeling I got...and my antenna were even more out when the African American Press mentioned these guys (the really hyper racist aggressive BS supporters on the twitter sphere) reminded them off... Ron Paul 2012 supporters.

Can I prove it? Nope, but we saw a version of this over the special mayoral election in San Diego.

[Bubzer]

35. To quote Nirvana: "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you."

A little paranoia is healthy. We should all work harder to keep our community positive... regardless of if this is true or not.

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. We cover local politics

we see far more things that strike of dirty tricks in a week than most people identify in a life time.

Most do not cross any legal lines, they are more like... unpleasant. Most could not be proven in a legal sense either. And all sides do them... but this one strikes me as well, 1970s vintage, or if you will 2004.

[Bubzer]

40. I don't know why, but I'm reminded of that phrase:

"The devil's greatest accomplishment was convincing people he doesn't exist" - Now, I'm not overly religious, and I'm certainly not comparing anyone to the devil... but you could say the GOP's greatest accomplishment was convincing people political corruption is just conspiracy theory. Or something very similar to that.

[nadinbrzezinski]

43. My only qualifier is that it was both parties

but yes. It is just a different degree.

[bettyellen]

23. again and again I read this hear. told a dear friend of mine last night to STFU and take

Bernie's lead. Unless he was going off on Code Pink and OWS, both of whom made missteps too, he really should not be arguing against BLM and the NAACP if he wants to help Bernie.
He did not know that Sanders just added the racial equality page over the weekend- he was misinformed that it had been there all along.

[passiveporcupine]

32. I don't know what part of DU you were listening to, but

most of the people I see here never said anything like that.

[SMC22307]

56. DU is not a monolith.

But you knew that already.

[AlbertCat]

67. But DU said BLM needs to be marginalized.

I'm part of DU.... and I've never said such a thing.

Can we see a show of hands of DU members who have said BLM needs to be marginalized?


I did wonder why BLM was spreading Right Wing lying talking points (Sanders doesn't care about blacks) and asked why they did't just have their own forum and invite the candidates to talk about all their concerns. But that's not marginalizing.... that's asking them to get even more involved.

[NuclearDem]

8. It's almost like their goal wasn't to destroy Bernie's campaign or anything.

Who could've imagined?

[Comrade Grumpy]

10. I've edited my response for the sake of comity. n/t

[JDPriestly]

53. I have been banned from the African-American group for pointing out that many of us white

people were supporting Black people's issues for a long time. I mentioned that 8 of the 9 Supreme Court judges that decided Brown v. Board of Education and that the majority of the Congress that passed and the president who signed the Civil Rights Act were white. I also said and will say here too that Black and white liberals have to work together and form a coalition based in great part on the idea that economic issues are very important because that is how we can get a strong enough liberal majority in Congress plus a liberal president who can make it possible to get a liberal Supreme Court and achieve social justice as well as environmental and economic justice.

There is no way that we can achieve racial justice without focusing on economic justice. There are many reasons for that but the most compelling is that we cannot get the voters to elect liberal senators and representatives in many states unless we focus on economic inequality and strengthening our economy.

Sorry guys. I personally have worked hard to establish racial justice, but we cannot get the laws that will place local police under the supervision they need and give them the training they need regarding race unless we get a Democratic majority in Congress that is so strong that the Republican bigots are reduced to rubble. That's the reality. All the rest is just letting off steam. Sorry but that is how democracy works.

[Enthusiast]

60. Sounds good to me—reduce Republican bigots to rubble.

I understand what you are saying, JDPriestly.

[Lifelong Protester]

69. Just to let you know,

JDPriestly-I always check your posts as they are SANE and often mimic my thoughts (and I usually find you've said it much better than I can).

[cascadiance]

70. And economic justice is important in the trenches too!

I just became unemployed at the beginning of this week, and along with other health issues have many priorities this week due to the problems with the economic issues that this country faces that affect so many of us now, that have us have to prioritize what we work on. We need to work together so that we can work in synch with the limited time and resources we have that so many of us are marginalized in many different ways on so that we can fix the problems we all face and not spend too much time arguing with each other about which of our causes are "more important". That really shouldn't be an issue, and we can solve them all if we don't waste time arguing and all of us attend to our life needs as well as on efficiently focused energy to fix the problems we all face so that we can reverse the way the 1% is trying to dump everything on all of us!

This is SO good to see now. I really look forward to working with my POC friends to fix these problems of social justice and our police forces along with so much else we have to fight for and getting the right people to work for us in government to do so!

[NCTraveler]

12. K&R nt

[Warren Stupidity]

13. not possible. He's a white supremacist with no following outside of vermont. nt.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. I think it is possible for people to stop taking the bait

[JackInGreen]

50. Or staying butthurt over it.

[JDPriestly]

16. K&R. Bernie Sanders is great.

The crowd in Los Angeles on Monday night totally supported Bernie's emphasis on the BLM issues and the reading of the names.

Thanks for posting.

[Bubzer]

19. Forward movement!!!

Yes!!!

[stevenleser]

24. Now I know I have heard something similar to this before. Where could it be?

The good news for the BLM movement is that despite the “disgusting reaction” to activists interrupting the populist candidate Sanders, the “disruptions” achieved their desired results, albeit days later, and paid dividends because he came up with a new “racial justice platform” that won him praise from several prominent voices in, that’s right, the BLM movement.

Oh yeah, that's right. Because I'm the one who said it: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027061488

Protest 101: Raise the visibility of your group and it's goals - BLM's netroots and seattle are wins

You may not like how they protested or whom they protested, but their actions are successful by at least one major criteria of protesting.

They have raised the visibility of Black Lives Matter and thus its goals. And by that important criteria, they did it right and were successful.

We're probably going to be talking about BLM and what to do about protecting the lives of African Americans for the rest of the 2016 election season.

And that is as it should be.

[valerief]

25. Thanks for this. Bernie is the responsive candidate who does just about everything right.

And he's an old white guy! What an anomaly.

[CentralMass]

26. Ya, those old whîte guys, they suck.

[jalan48]

27. Bernie gets it, he has for decades.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

28. Yes

[JackInGreen]

30. but..but...

he is ignoring them, or wringing his hands under his giant...glasses...and the invisible KKK hood given to him by David Duke in a secret clandistined meeting and chuckling and telling his cohorts to shout them down, and it's just not safe for Non-honkys near Bernie didn't you know that!?!?!?

[Fred Sanders]

73. Ridiculous post. You are not helping anyone.

[me b zola]

37. On this:

BLM activists also interrupted Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley at Netroots, but it failed to garner the same outrageous reaction from progressives as when Senator Sanders was disrupted.

There is are glaring reasons why the uproar over Sanders but not O'Malley. As mayor of Baltimore and as Governor of Maryland, O'Malley had policy positions that were detrimental to the AA community, specifically policies that were touted as "tough on crime" actually meant a constant harassment of the AA citizens. Here's an article that gives some background:

“We still have men who are suffering from it today,” said Marvin “Doc” Cheathem, a past president of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP, which won a court settlement stemming from the city’s policing policies. “The guy is good at talking, but a lot of us know the real story of the harm he brought to our city.”

Bishop Douglas Miles, a community leader, said O’Malley’s department “set the tone for how the police department in Baltimore has reacted to poor and African American communities since then.”

“None of us are in favor of crime,” Miles said. “But we also recognized that you couldn’t correct the problem through wholesale arrests.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/29/1381072/-NAACP-leader-and-others-hold-O-Malley-responsible-for-issues-in-Baltimore#

O'Malley's policing policies reflect so much of exactly what BLM (and those who support the movement) are protesting.


O'Malley didn't get support because I don't know of any progressives who wants to make excuses for his policies. He owns them and should have to answer for them and share with all of us how he plans be different as POTUS. Because white supremest progressives believe that Black Lives Matter and we really mean that.

And the outrage at how Bernie was treated largely was not because he was interrupted, but rather because what happened was so nasty and personal. Because the entire spectacle was so bizarre and felt very much like people trying to hurt BLM as much as the movement to elect Sanders. The stench of ratfuckery was so strong it took many people's breath away.

I and many others have moved on and decided it was time to get back to focusing on electing Bernie. But when I read or hear things like I quoted at the top of my post, I feel like it needs to be addressed. I'm just going to walk past the stupifying statement that the outrage was outrageous because it seems like the author just wants to keep the rank and fighting going.

[nadinbrzezinski]

39. The stench of rat fuckery

is getting deeper... not that the cause does not matter, it does.

We have a few other things that are getting my antennas on full deployment. One was casually mentioned in passing in an AA publication, something about BS supporters on Twitter being just like Ron Paul 2012.

I think we both can say that a few talking points have been effectively, (maybe) killed by news such as this... but others will come along and some will make this look like well... nice things you say to each other over crumpets and tea.

[Maedhros]

57. Have you seen the very kindly poster

who drops the Ron Paul "It's happening" GIF with Bernie's face shopped over Ron's?

Impressive bit of trollery, that.

[nadinbrzezinski]

66. Nope, but that would make the point of what I suspect partly is going on

[George II]

38. The article at the link...

....says "he came up with a new “racial justice platform” that won him praise from several prominent voices in, that’s right, the BLM movement." but neglects to mention just who thos "several prominent voices" are, or what their positions are within the BLM movement.

I read the entire article and, unless I missed them, nobody specifically was named.

Anywhere we can find more details, names, or specifics?

[Motown_Johnny]

42. Seemingly not released as of yet.

A similar story is at thinkprogress.org, but again no names.




http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/08/10/3689728/after-repeated-protests-bernie-sanders-releases-racial-justice-platform/

^snip^

Bernie Sanders’ New Racial Justice Platform Wins Praise From Black Lives Matter Activists



After activists from the Black Lives Matter movement repeatedly disrupted speeches by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) over the past few weeks, the popular and populist presidential candidate released a comprehensive racial justice platform and hired a young racial justice activist as his national press secretary.

The platform, which has won praise from several prominent voices in the Black Lives Matter movement, focuses on different forms of violence against people of color in the United States: physical violence from law enforcement and extremist vigilantes, the political violence of voter suppression, the legal violence of the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, and the economic violence of crushing poverty. Sanders lays out several proposals to address each form of violence, from passing “ban the box” laws to prevent hiring discrimination against people with criminal records, to outlawing for-profit prisons, to restoring the gutted protections in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Though Sanders has been involved in civil rights work since his college days, he has come under pressure from black activists since launching his bid for president. Having represented the overwhelmingly white state of Vermont for most of his life, Sanders has often struggled to specifically address racial justice issues with the urgency the movement is demanding — an urgency fueled by the fact that an unarmed black person has been killed by police, on average, every nine days this year.

[George II]

44. Thanks for the information. I think I'll wait until it's released, if it is.

[William769]

45. Don't hold your breath.

It's a fly by.

[nadinbrzezinski]

46. Here is the platform, I know you will not give Bernie a hit

and gasp you cannot use the google? Oh and before you mention copyright, campaign platforms, like government documents, are considered public domain. And if you actually bother, it is under the rubric of ISSUES and RACIAL JUSTICE. And this is all I will say to you on this thread, I try to just pretend you do not exist.

ISSUES
Racial Justice
Twitter Facebook Email Link
We must pursue policies that transform this country into a nation that affirms the value of its people of color. That starts with addressing the four central types of violence waged against black and brown Americans: physical, political, legal and economic.

PHYSICAL VIOLENCE
PERPETRATED BY THE STATE
Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Samuel DuBose. We know their names. Each of them died unarmed at the hands of police officers or in police custody. The chants are growing louder. People are angry and they have a right to be angry. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that this violence only affects those whose names have appeared on TV or in the newspaper. African Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.

PERPETRATED BY EXTREMISTS
We are far from eradicating racism in this country. In June, nine of our fellow Americans were murdered while praying in a historic church because of the color of their skin. This violence fills us with outrage, disgust, and a deep, deep sadness. Today in America, if you are black, you can be killed for getting a pack of Skittles during a basketball game. These hateful acts of violence amount to acts of terror. They are perpetrated by extremists who want to intimidate and terrorize black and brown people in this country.

ADDRESSING PHYSICAL VIOLENCE
It is an outrage that in these early years of the 21st century we are seeing intolerable acts of violence being perpetuated by police, and racist terrorism by white supremacists.

A growing number of communities do not trust the police and law enforcement officers have become disconnected from the communities they are sworn to protect. Violence and brutality of any kind, particularly at the hands of the police sworn to protect and serve our communities, is unacceptable and must not be tolerated. We need a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter, and racism cannot be accepted in a civilized country.

We must demilitarize our police forces so they don’t look and act like invading armies.
We must invest in community policing. Only when we get officers into the communities, working within neighborhoods before trouble arises, do we develop the relationships necessary to make our communities safer together. Among other things, that means increasing civilian oversight of police departments.
We need police forces that reflect the diversity of our communities.
At the federal level we need to establish a new model police training program that reorients the way we do law enforcement in this country. With input from a broad segment of the community including activists and leaders from organizations like Black Lives Matter we will reinvent how we police America.
We need to federally fund and require body cameras for law enforcement officers to make it easier to hold them accountable.
Our Justice Department must aggressively investigate and prosecute police officers who break the law and hold them accountable for their actions.
We need to require police departments and states to provide public reports on all police shootings and deaths that take place while in police custody.
We need new rules on the allowable use of force. Police officers need to be trained to de-escalate confrontations and to humanely interact with people who have mental illnesses.
States and localities that make progress in this area should get more federal justice grant money. Those that do not should get their funding slashed.
We need to make sure the federal resources are there to crack down on the illegal activities of hate groups.

POLITICAL VIOLENCE

DISENFRANCHISEMENT
In the shameful days of open segregation, “literacy” laws were used to suppress minority voting. Today, through other laws and actions — such as requiring voters to show photo ID, discriminatory drawing of Congressional districts, not allowing early registration or voting, and purging voter rolls — states are taking steps which have a similar effect.

The patterns are unmistakable. An MIT paper found that African Americans waited twice as long to vote as whites. Wait times of as long as six or seven hours have been reported in some minority precincts, especially in “swing” states like Ohio and Florida. Thirteen percent of African-American men have lost the right to vote due to felony convictions.

This should offend the conscience of every American.

The fight for minority voting rights is a fight for justice. It is inseparable from the struggle for democracy itself.

We must work vigilantly to ensure that every American, regardless of skin color or national origin, is able to vote freely and easily.

ADDRESSING POLITICAL VIOLENCE
We need to re-enfranchise the more than two million African Americans who have had their right to vote taken away by a felony conviction.
Congress must restore the Voting Rights Act’s “pre-clearance” provision, which extended protections to minority voters in states where they were clearly needed.
We must expand the Act’s scope so that every American, regardless of skin color or national origin, is able to vote freely.
We need to make Election Day a federal holiday to increase voters’ ability to participate.
We must make early voting an option for voters who work or study and need the flexibility to vote on evenings or weekends.
We must make no-fault absentee ballots an option for all Americans.
Every American over 18 must be registered to vote automatically, so that students and working people can make their voices heard at the ballot box.
We must put an end to discriminatory laws and the purging of minority-community names from voting rolls.
We need to make sure that there are sufficient polling places and poll workers to prevent long lines from forming at the polls anywhere.
LEGAL VIOLENCE
Millions of lives have been destroyed because people are in jail for nonviolent crimes. For decades, we have been engaged in a failed “War on Drugs” with racially-biased mandatory minimums that punish people of color unfairly.

It is an obscenity that we stigmatize so many young Americans with a criminal record for smoking marijuana, but not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy. This must change.

If current trends continue, one in four black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during their lifetime. Blacks are imprisoned at six times the rate of whites and a report by the Department of Justice found that blacks were three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop, compared to white motorists. African-Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police. This is an unspeakable tragedy.

It is morally repugnant and a national tragedy that we have privatized prisons all over America. In my view, corporations should not be allowed to make a profit by building more jails and keeping more Americans behind bars. We have got to end the private-for-profit prison racket in America. Profiting off the misery of incarcerated people is immoral and it is immoral to take campaign contributions from the private prison industry or its lobbyists.

The measure of success for law enforcement should not be how many people get locked up. We need to invest in drug courts as well as medical and mental health interventions for people with substance abuse problems, so that people struggling with addiction do not end up in prison, they end up in treatment.

For people who have committed crimes that have landed them in jail, there needs to be a path back from prison. The federal system of parole needs to be reinstated. We need real education and real skills training for the incarcerated.

We must end the over incarceration of nonviolent young Americans who do not pose a serious threat to our society. It is an international embarrassment that we have more people locked up in jail than any other country on earth – more than even the Communist totalitarian state of China. That has got to end.

We must address the lingering unjust stereotypes that lead to the labeling of black youths as “thugs.” We know the truth that, like every community in this country, the vast majority of people of color are trying to work hard, play by the rules and raise their children. It’s time to stop demonizing minority communities.

We must reform our criminal justice system to ensure fairness and justice for people of color.

ADDRESSING LEGAL VIOLENCE
We need to ban prisons for profit, which result in an over-incentive to arrest, jail and detain, in order to keep prison beds full.
We need to turn back from the failed “War on Drugs” and eliminate mandatory minimums which result in sentencing disparities between black and white people.
We need to invest in drug courts and medical and mental health interventions for people with substance abuse problems, so that they do not end up in prison, they end up in treatment.
We need to boost investments for programs that help people who have gone to jail rebuild their lives with education and job training.
ECONOMIC VIOLENCE
Weeks before his death, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to a union group in New York about what he called “the other America.”

“One America is flowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of equality,” King said. “That America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies, culture and education for their minds, freedom and human dignity for their spirits. .?.?. But as we assemble here tonight, I’m sure that each of us is painfully aware of the fact that there is another America, and that other America has a daily ugliness about it that transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair.”

The problem was structural, King said: “This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.”

Eight days later, speaking in Memphis, King continued the theme. “Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day?” he asked striking sanitation workers. “And they are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. These are facts which must be seen, and it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income.”

King explained the shift in his focus: “Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?”

But what King saw in 1968 — and what we all should recognize today — is that it is necessary to try to address the rampant economic inequality while also taking on the issue of societal racism. We must simultaneously address the structural and institutional racism which exists in this country, while at the same time we vigorously attack the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality which is making the very rich much richer while everyone else – especially those in our minority communities – are becoming poorer.

In addition to the physical violence faced by too many in our country we need look at the lives of black children and address a few other difficult facts. Black children, who make up just 18 percent of preschoolers, account for 48 percent of all out-of-school suspensions before kindergarten. We are failing our black children before kindergarten. Black students were expelled at three times the rate of white students. Black girls were suspended at higher rates than all other girls and most boys. According to the Department of Education, African American students are more likely to suffer harsh punishments – suspensions and arrests – at school.

We need to take a hard look at our education system. Black students attend schools with higher concentrations of first-year teachers, compared with white students. Black students were more than three times as likely to attend schools where fewer than 60 percent of teachers meet all state certification and licensure requirements.

Communities of color also face the violence of economic deprivation. Let’s be frank: neighborhoods like those in west Baltimore, where Freddie Gray resided, suffer the most. However, the problem of economic immobility isn’t just a problem for young men like Freddie Gray. It has become a problem for millions of Americans who, despite hard-work and the will to get ahead, can spend their entire lives struggling to survive on the economic treadmill.

We live at a time when most Americans don’t have $10,000 in savings, and millions of working adults have no idea how they will ever retire in dignity. God forbid, they are confronted with an unforeseen car accident, a medical emergency, or the loss of a job. It would literally send their lives into an economic tailspin. And the problems are even more serious when we consider race.

Let us not forget: It was the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street that nearly drove the economy off of the cliff seven years ago. While millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, life savings, and ability to send their kids to college, African Americans who were steered into expensive subprime mortgages were the hardest hit.

Most black and Latino households have less than $350 in savings. The black unemployment rate has remained roughly twice as high as the white rate over the last 40 years, regardless of education. Real African American youth unemployment is over 50 percent. This is unacceptable. The American people in general want change – they want a better deal. A fairer deal. A new deal. They want an America with laws and policies that truly reward hard work with economic mobility. They want an America that affords all of its citizens with the economic security to take risks and the opportunity to realize their full potential.

ADDRESSING ECONOMIC VIOLENCE
We need to give our children, regardless of their race or their income, a fair shot at attending college. That’s why all public universities should be made tuition free.
We must invest $5.5 billion in a federally-funded youth employment program to employ young people of color who face disproportionately high unemployment rates.
Knowing that black women earn 64 cents on the dollar compared to white men, we must pass federal legislation to establish pay equity for women.
We must prevent employers from discriminating against applicants based on criminal history.
We need to ensure access to quality affordable childcare for working families.

[William769]

47. Thats a whole lot of writing but thats now what was asked for.

Shouldn't a "journalist" at least be able to give names to back up their story?

[Admiral Loinpresser]

49. I have a major problem and one nit to pick.

First the nit. These racists who kill people because of the color of their skin should be called "white terrorists," because that is what they are. I believe the lack of the use of that phrase is in itself, implicit racism.

Now the major problem. There is no explicit mention of native people, even though they win the "misery Olympics" by any significant criterion. Per capita, native people are more likely to be killed by police, unjustly arrested or abused, than any other group. I take it as either political expediency or oversight that they were not mentioned.

Having said that, I believe Bernie can be the best president ever for native people.

[nadinbrzezinski]

52. I would not be too surprised if that is added to be honest

and I hear you.

Unlike some here, this is not a game of one upmanship

[DemocraticWing]

48. Here you go:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1280&pid=35277

[nadinbrzezinski]

51. Mind if I take your post and save it in my file of things

that I need to know?

[DemocraticWing]

58. Go right ahead.

[Betty Karlson]

59. For someone who has been in politics for 50 years,

Sanders has proven himself to be consistent where it matters, and adaptable where it matters. A real leader of reform.

[LiberalElite]

61. KICK nt

[romanic]

63. Good to hear

although I'm sure a few radicals will still not happy be; can't win them all.

[TBF]

64. BLM deserves our support and respect -

from everything I have seen it is a much needed group and full of many great people. I won't let one or two bad apples on the fringes bring down my opinion of the group as a whole.

[retrowire]

65. this is great!

but it doesn't mean the fight is over. let us all continue to aid BLM in more ways than just through Bernie.

[azmom]

68. K&R