Stop being a literal-list, Vex.....u way too intelligent for that, homie.....

Also, this is why black folks in the BlackLivesMatter movement are giving Bernie the side-eye. Like I said, not all of it is fair...But OPTICS are very important, not giving a list of things u did in the past....

The money quote below: "Sanders came across as defensive, saying he spent 50 years “fighting for civil rights” and “if you don’t want me to be here that’s OK.” We all know what he was trying to say...But the way he CAME OFF on TV was an entirely different story....

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Politico
Netroots disruption energizes black activists

By Maya Park and Daniel Strauss

7/25/15 8:45 AM EDT
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Protesters who hijacked a presidential forum in Arizona last Saturday demanding that the candidates spend more time addressing problems in the black community left feeling dissatisfied.

But a week later, what at the time felt like a disastrous disruption has supercharged the Black Lives Matter movement — and pushed Hillary Clinton and her rivals for the Democratic nomination to speak to the concerns of an African-American community that is enraged by high-profile incidents of police misconduct and is demanding that its voice be heard.

“We’re not having this conversation because haven’t been polite,” NAACP President Cornell William Brooks told POLITICO on Friday. “We’re having this conversation because the presidential candidates are not being sufficiently precise.”

At the forum, hosted by the liberal activist group Netroots Nation, protesters clashed with Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, commandeering the stage as they accused the two Democrats of ignoring police brutality against blacks.

O’Malley at one point said, “black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter” — a statement that offended many in the Black Lives Matter movement, who recall the phrase being used to diminish their cause.

Sanders came across as defensive, saying he spent 50 years “fighting for civil rights” and “if you don’t want me to be here that’s OK.”

“During the action, you saw Bernie Sanders trying to talk us down, trying to speak over us,” Angela Peoples, one of the organizers of the protest at Netroots and the co-director of GetEqual, an LGBTQ rights advocacy group. “Basically it was as if he was trying to pretend that there weren’t 15 people in the room screaming ‘black lives matter.”

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), a leading member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that the protesters should have let the candidates speak.

“If I ask you a question, I must want your answer. And so if I ask you a question and talk over your answer, what have I done?” Clyburn said, stressing the importance of substance over symbolism and cautioning against anyone who wants to “make a headline rather than make headway.”

Yet, as Peoples noted, all three major Democratic candidates have spent the week showing their concern for the black community.

Clinton, who skipped Netroots Nation, used a Facebook chat on Monday to emphasize that “everyone in this country should stand firmly behind” the notion that “black lives matter.”

Sanders began working the phrase ‘black lives matter’ into his stump speech and social media efforts, while O’Malley apologized and has made sure to repeatedly say he’s “listening and speaking to leaders” from the Black Lives Matter movement.

The candidates were acknowledging that, Brooks said, “the campaign rhetoric has not risen to the level of reality.”

Seizing the moment, the Black Lives Matter group —a movement organizing action on topics important to the black community and racial injustice — decided to quickly put together a summit in Cleveland, Ohio. The summit describes itself as “hundreds of Black freedom fighters from around the country” coming together to coordinate and build a new coalition for action in the black community. The conference offers panels on, for instance, self defense and organizing for black activists.

It comes after national attention fell on Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African-American woman from Chicago who was pulled over by a Texas state highway patrolman for not signaling before changing lanes and then was jailed for not putting out her cigarette in her car, even though that’s not illegal. She died in jail, allegedly by hanging herself.

Bland’s death has further galvanized black leaders to demand that their concerns be heard. Many appreciate how the Democratic candidates talk about the black community’s economic disadvantages, but want them to more explicitly tie those gaps to racism — while others note that Bland was a college graduate.
WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 22: Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at a Capitol Hill rally to introduce legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour July 22, 2015 in Washington, DC. Sanders said the U.S. federal government is the largest employer of minimum wage workers in the United States. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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“We get that the solution to the structural racism that black folks are facing is connected to fair wages, issues of access to education,” Peoples said. “The piece that’s missing is talking about how the legacy of racism, anti-blackness, and racial violence plays out in all of those issues.”

There were also setbacks. Sanders, for instance, reportedly skipped a meeting with Black Lives Matters protesters during the Netroots Nation weekend and ended up sending campaign manager Jeff Weaver instead. That resulted in some grumbling.

“Bullshit — I’m sorry,” Jamal Simmons, a Democratic consultant, said. “If he was scheduled to meet with activists, then he should have met with activists. You can’t not show up. You gotta show up.”

Other black leaders said that merely showing up wouldn’t be enough, either.

“The day is over for saying ‘I believe in justice,’ and ‘Everyone should have equality, whether black or white, male or female, young or old,’” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) said in a phone interview from Nairobi on Friday.

Talking about how economic inequality affects African Americans is fine, legislators, activists and strategists said — but specific plans to address it are better.

For instance, Clyburn said, Sanders should offer a plan for dilapidated schools and Medicaid expansion in states that have resisted Obamacare.

“Yes, the criminal justice stuff is big,” said Democratic strategist and pollster Cornell Belcher. “If you’re talking to African-American women who will be a plurality in a lot of these Democratic primary states, education and not losing a lot of young people to crime and violence is still tops. And yeah, they have angst economically about jobs.”

Of the three main Democratic candidates, Clinton has been the most assertive in speaking to those issues.

Earlier in the year, she unveiled a set of criminal justice reform proposals with mentions of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio, and Trayvon Martin in Florida. On Thursday, Clinton continued to beat that drum, saying in a panel at South Carolina’s influential Brookland Baptist Church, “It’s essential that we all stand up and say, loudly and clearly, that yes, black lives matter.’”

Speeches like that have helped Clinton stay visible in the African-American community, Belcher said.

“I think that most of the polling that you see right now is that Sanders and O’Malley are not very well known figures in the community,” Belcher said. “What’s important is for you to build a strategy around how to introduce yourself in the black community in a way that resonates with the value of the community and that’s not hopefully tone-deaf which is what Bernie came across with.”

It’s something O’Malley seems to have realized. On Wednesday, he released a statement saying his “heart breaks for Sandra Bland and her family” and called for a “thorough and independent investigation of the traffic stop, the arrest and Ms. Bland’s tragic death in custody.”

He also called Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree on Wednesday to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement and topics important to the African-American community, as part of a series of discussions ahead of unveiling his criminal justice platform.

“We had a robust and informative and strikingly candid conversation about the past, present, and future,” Ogletree said, adding he expected to talk more with O’Malley going forward.

Meanwhile, Sanders has made sure to try and offer more specifics in media interviews and over social media.

“We have more people in jail than any other country on Earth,” Sanders said in an MSNBC interview on Wednesday. “Millions of lives have been destroyed because people are in jail for non-violent crimes, so we have to take a look at mandatory minimums and the drug policy and the militarization of police forces all over the country. We have to take a look at use-of-force policy. That is what you saw in that dreadful and painful video of Sandra Bland.”

“We’ve got a lot of work in front of us,” Sanders added.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/netroots-disruption-energizes-black-activists-120617.html#ixzz3gw5JU4YB

GOAT of his era......long live Prince.....God is alive....