Black Lives Matter protestors shut down Bernie Sanders event

The divide is likely to be a problem for the Democratic Party, whose presidential candidates tend to be old and white. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., stands nearby as the two women take over the microphone at a rally in downtown Seattle.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders found himself involuntarily sidelined at a rally Saturday night in Seattle, as Black Lives Matter activists commandeered the microphone and refused to give it back.

“We must reform our criminal justice system”, Sanders said in his address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on July 25.

“If you do not listen to [us], your event will be shut down”, one protester said, while members of the audience booed.

As for the first rally protest, Symone Sanders said, “Do I think everyone in the movement agrees with the way the protesters commanded the stage today?”

Meanwhile, as the crowd drew “Bernie” chants, the crowd became uneasy as the man they came to see and cheer for, was hijacked from his own rally.

Sanders’ next event went much better, scoring perhaps his largest crowd of the campaign yet at roughly 15,000, but he made it obvious that the message had been received loud and clear. “Too many lives have been destroyed by the war on drugs, by incarceration”. After the moment of silence the protesters apparently tried to engage directly with Sanders, but he remained off to the side, where he had been standing since the disruption began. The candidate then faces the interesting task of convincing the middle ground that they are not as rightist/leftist as they have been telling their primary voters for the past year, honest. Social Security Works rally organizers pleaded with Black Lives Matter activists to leave the stage and allow Sanders to speak, but the activists remained on stage for about 30 minutes until the event was forced to end.

Their latest tactic is to bum-rush the stage when a Democrat presidential candidate is speaking, and take advantage of the TV news cameras to hector the crowd with their paranoid anti-police propaganda. Citing the anniversary of Brown’s death, they said, “We honor black lives by doing the unthinkable, the unapologetic, and the unrespectable”. “Thank you”, one added.

Sanders has started to address race issues more than he did at the start of his campaign, but he still regularly frames issues of race and inequality as economic matters, arguing that the key to combating racial disparities is by raising wages and increasing opportunities. Afterward, O’Malley released a criminal justice reform package, the Washington Post reported.