Sara B., a founding member of our group, shares her thoughts about Bernie’s rally in Seattle on Saturday:

At the end of June, after Bernie said, “Black lives matter, white lives matter, Hispanic lives matter,” in the media for everyone to hear, I wrote a blog post about why he can’t afford to be tone-deaf on racial justice issues. Bay Area for Bernie had already created a courteous, supportive petition to Bernie, asking him to please put issues of racial justice onto his presidential agenda. The backlash I heard from Bernie’s liberal supporters online was distressing. I was publicly told our work was insane and counterproductive by a member of People for Bernie’s leadership. I was accused of being a Hillary plant, or a Republican plant. I was told that we can’t publicly criticize Bernie because that would weaken his campaign.

Well, whether we do or don’t, Black Lives Matter is going to publicly criticize Bernie, and we, liberals and Bernie supporters, are weakening his campaign for him.

Until Netroots happened, I’d only seen tepid support for the online petition. In the 48 hours following it, the number of signatures nearly tripled. It turns out that politely asking Bernie to please make racial justice a priority doesn’t get much attention from liberals until a direct action interrupts of one of Bernie’s many opportunities to speak to a crowd. Black Lives Matter protesters took the mic, and progressives remembered their consciences.

Good for Black Lives Matter.

I took a break on Saturday. I turned my phone off and scurried off to the woods. On Sunday, our editor asked me to address what happened in Seattle in a blog post because I regularly speak to our friends and volunteers about these issues. To catch up on what happened, I read the Daily Caller’s wrap-up because the title of their Google search result was, “Black Lives Matter Ruins Bernie Sanders Event in Seattle.” Black Lives Matter protesters had stormed Bernie’s stage again, and I wanted to see what the angriest write-up of black people confronting a white man with power looks like.

I say the same thing now as I did after Netroots: Good for Black Lives Matter.

I don’t disagree with anything those activists said. In fact, when I heard Marissa Johnson breaking into tears as she talked about the value of her life, as that crowd offered her not compassion but jeers and screams and boos, I cried with her. Do me a favor, play the following video, but turn off your screen. Listen to her voice, and focus on what she’s saying.

Did you hear the myopia, callousness and racial bias of the economic populist wing of liberalism?

We are failing as progressives, and that’s what these Black Lives Matter actions are showing us. I’m writing this on the one-year anniversary of Mike Brown’s murder. Do you think that maybe black folk are feeling the neglect of liberalism this weekend? After all, the police have killed 705 people so far this year, and those are just the shooting deaths. We’re well on track to exceed the number of police shootings from last year (1,106). It’s getting worse, not better. How many black and brown people have to die before we’ll acknowledge their pain and the part we play in it? How high does that number need to climb before we start listening to them?

Bernie supporters, progressives, liberals of whatever stripe, we have to ask ourselves: why are so many of us so angry that Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted Bernie again? After all, he speaks to us all the time, and he didn’t address racial justice issues directly until the first time Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted him and made their voices heard. Apparently, interruption is the only tactic that gets his (or our) short span of attention; Martin O’Malley STILL beat him to the punch with a comprehensive set of police reform policy proposals. And why do I keep hearing from parts of our camp that focusing on identity politics is divisive? It is literally the most inclusive thing that you can do when you focus on issues even if they don’t affect you directly. We’re capable of doing more than one thing at once. What’s divisive is when Bernie’s supporters scream at a black woman in pain, “How dare you!” “You will not tell me what to do!” and “We’ve already addressed it!”

Neither Bernie nor we, his supporters have the privilege of deciding whether what we’ve done so far is good enough for people of color.

Bay Area for Bernie wholeheartedly supports Black Lives Matter. We stand behind their strategy of being vocal and disruptive. Frankly, we’re angry as hell too. They’ve been warning the country for well over a year: if they don’t get justice, they’ll shut s*** down. We saw this coming. The sentence that struck me the most in the Daily Caller article was the last one: “Notably, though, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has yet to encounter any problems with the movement’s protesters.” I hope that everyone grasps the importance of that fact:

Black Lives Matter protesters disrupt Bernie to get him to pay attention to them, because he is a candidate that they want to represent their issues.

But he will neither represent those issues on his terms, nor on ours. He will represent their issues on their terms. And that’s fair. Bernie’s supporters don’t have the privilege of deciding what’s good enough for people of color. We will not dictate the manner in which they’re allowed to speak truth to power. We will not ignore, sideline or diminish their issues. Black Lives Matter won’t let us do that, and we should join their efforts by elevating their voices.

Bernie, his supporters, and liberals have to make some choices. Are we going to do this the easy way by working with Black Lives Matter, or the hard way by ignoring them first and fighting them when they’ve got our attention? Who are we talking about when we talk about “the people?” Are we going to stop calling them “them,” and start calling them “us?” What side of history is this campaign going to come down on? Whose side are we on?

Resources if you’re feeling angry or uncomfortable when directly confronted by racism:

• A song to soothe your spirit: Ain’t No Danger in the Water, Robert Parris Moses
• An article to expand your comfort zone: White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism, Dr. Robin D’Angelo
• American history to reframe your perspective: Racebaiting 101, Matthew Cooke