Sanders, a left-leaning independent U.S. senator from Vermont, was visibly irritated at times during his shorter-than-expected appearance at the Netroots Nation gathering. He, in turn, angered the “Black Lives Matter” protesters by not immediately responding to them.
The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter is widely used on social media by activists and their allies.
“Black lives, of course, matter,” Sanders said at one point. “… But if you don’t want me to be here, that’s O.K.”
O’Malley, a former Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor whose record has come under fire in the wake of the civil unrest in the city, spoke first. He stood by silently on stage as the demonstrators took control of the proceedings.
“What side are you on, my people,” the several dozen protesters chanted as they filed between tables to the front of the Phoenix Convention Center hall, where O’Malley and moderator Jose Antonio Vargas were talking.
“Far from bringing forward the mass arrest/mass incarceration policing that you talked about it, I actually made policing more responsive,” O’Malley said. “We did a hundred reverse-integrity stings a year.”
But O’Malley was later booed when he said: “Every life matters … Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.”
The comments make it clear that Democratic candidates have work to do in understanding and addressing the movement for Black lives, according to Anna Galland, executive director of the liberal group MoveOn.org Civil Action.
“Saying that ‘all lives matter’ or ‘white lives matter’ immediately after saying ‘Black lives matter’ minimizes and draws attention away from the specific, distinct ways in which Black lives have been devalued by our society and in which Black people have been subject to state and other violence,” Galland said.
O’Malley later apologized for the remarks during an interview with This Week in Blackness, a digital show.
“I meant no disrespect,” O’Malley said. “…I did not mean to be insensitive in anyway or communicate that I did not understand the tremendous passion commitment, and feeling and depth of feeling that all of us should be attaching to this issue.”
Tia Oso, a Phoenix resident with the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, said she helped organize the protest because Black-rights issues were not represented at the annual national gathering of political progressives this year. While events for Latino immigrants were integrated into the convention, black immigrants were ignored, she said.
“We had to do this,” she said. “This is the most important progressive gathering.”
In a black shirt with white letting that said “Black love,” Oso climbed on stage with O’Malley to talk about racial inequality and law enforcement treatment of the Black population and to chide Netroots Nation’s programming for not addressing Black immigration issues, such as the Black refugees in Arizona who had to seek asylum because of U.S. foreign policy.
“I feel like his response is very rooted in what he believed his track record was,” she said of O’Malley. “He’s very tone deaf to our community.”
While on-stage, Oso also hammered the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislatureand recalled former GOP Gov. Evan Mecham’s controversial repeal of the state’sMartin Luther King holiday in the 1980s.
In a written statement, Netroots Nation said it “stands in solidarity with all people seeking human rights.”
“Although we wish the candidates had more time to respond to the issues, what happened today is reflective of an urgent moment that America is facing today,” the statement said. “In 2016, we’re heading to St. Louis. We plan to work with activists there just as we did in Phoenix with local leaders, including the #BlackLivesMatter movement, to amplify issues like racial profiling and police brutality in a major way.”
In the chaotic atmosphere, Sanders, who had many fans in the Netroots Nation audience, struggled to make his points about income inequality, the minimum wage and his other top issues.
For his part, O’Malley was kept on the defensive about police issues for most of his appearance. He said his criminal-justice plan will be forthcoming from his campaign.
“Specifically, I believe every police department in America should have to report, in an open and transparent and timely way all police-involved shootings, all discourtesy complaints and all brutality complaints,” O’Malley said when the Q&A resumed after the interruption. “I believe that all departments should have civilian review boards. We implemented one, and it works. But they have to be staffed.”
