One of the big secrets of the Democratic Party is the deep racial tension between the mostly white elite progressive leaders and activists “of color.”
We examined this in detail in 2011, Dem Base Fractures Into Twitter War And Charges Of Racism Against Professional Left. In that post, we documented the Twitter war between black activists and Joan Walsh of Salon.com and Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake:
What is clear is that there is a growing fissure in the Democratic “base” over criticism by the (mostly White) Professional Left, as reflected in this Twitter exchange:
Those tensions have simmered for the past several years, and grown in the past year as the #BlackLivesMatters movement insisted that its voice was not being heard even within progressive circles.
Particular anger was directed at Democratic politicians who used the term #AllLivesMatter, under the argument that caring for everyone equally diminished caring particularly for people of color. (Hey, I didn’t make this up, I’m just reporting.)
Netroots Nation is the organization that started as progressive bloggers, and now encompasses the progressive movement.
At the Netroots annual conference today, the racial fissure opened up when Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders were on stage. O’Malley broke the rule against saying “all lives matter” and Sanders was talking class warfare, not racial consciousness.
The #BlackLivesMatters activists in the room were enraged.
Here are tweets setting forth what happened:
The protesters took over the stage:
Then they staged a walk-out, and chanted outside the room:
The movement plans on working so “black and brown bodies” finally are heard in the Democratic Party, as reflected in this tweet from Dream Defenders (which, by the way, is anti-Israel):
Hillary Clinton avoided Netroot Nation’s conference.
I wonder what the #BlackLivesMatters movement thinks about someone who wants to speak for them, but will not show up to listen to them?
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