2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: What Bernie said in June of this year about Black Lives Matter. Did the hecklers know? [View all]scarletwoman
(31,893 posts)He "answers" by showing them what he's really made of, by showing them that he heard him and took their message to heart in his future actions, by proving that he gets it.
And it's not just Bernie, it's also us white progressive supporters of Bernie who also need to prove that we're listening and hearing them. And right now we're not looking very good - all the whining and gnashing of teeth about Bernie being "hurt", instead of taking to heart the message that the protestors were bringing.
They're in our faces telling us to prove that we're really allies, and not just a bunch of politally correct white liberals who sadly shake our heads about endemic racism, but don't actually feel it in our guts because we don't have to - it doesn't happen to us.
I wrote this last night:
You know, I've been doing my best to process what went down at the Netroots forum ever since it
happened. It's pretty much the only topic I've been reading about over all these hours - I don't know how many different threads, plus a few non-DU news articles and such.
Anyway, it's taken me awhile, but after all that reading it finally hit me that those protestors did exactly the right thing. Yup, they transgressed bigtime - they pushed us nice white progressives totally out of our comfort zone, pissed us off, outraged us, inconvenienced us, messed up our nice candidate speeches, and sent bunches of us typing furiously on our keyboards about it.
Indeed, typing furiously on our keyboards... And therein lies the power of that protest. Instead of having the pleasant experience of cheering for our guy after a well-delivered speech, we were confronted with the stark reality that these sisters and brothers don't just get inconvenienced when their day doesn't turn out so good - they get murdered.
I don't want to be that nice white progressive who feels inconvenienced about a speech being interrupted. I don't want to sit in judgement over what's a "proper" way to protest. My life is generally not at risk just from driving down the road in my car and forgetting to use my turn signal when I change lanes. There a so many things I never have to think about because I was born white. So I bless those protestors for getting all up in our faces like they did - for making me really THINK about the why of their anger.
Yes, it was well done, it was necessary, and they were right to do it. Transgression is powerful. I thank them.