This is a very short diary, basically just pointing you to a guest editorial in Seattle's free weekly, the Stranger. I really like this perspective about the events that went down at the Westlake Plaza in Seattle yesterday, where apparently two people, purporting to act on behalf of #BLM, prevented guest speaker Sanders from speaking at a celebration of Social Security and Medicaid.
Full disclosure: I was not at the event at Westlake, so I do not have first hand experience of what transpired. I was working at the Hec Edmundson Pavilion later that evening for the biggest Sanders rally yet (15,000) though, so I was able to #FeelTheBern!
The author of this guest editorial in Seattle's Stranger, Pramila Jayapal is a Washington State Senator and was attending the event at the Westlake Center.
Snip:
Here's what I am trying to deeply think about: How do we call people in even as we call them out? As a brown woman, the only woman of color in the state senate, often the only person of color in many rooms, I am constantly thinking about this. To build a movement, we have to be smarter than those who are trying to divide us. We have to take our anger and rage and channel it into building, growing, loving, holding each other up. We need our outlets too, our places of safety where we can say what we think without worrying about how it's going to land, where we can call out even our white loved ones, friends, allies for what they are not doing. But in the end, if we want to win for ALL of us on racial, economic and social justice issues, we need multiple sets of tactics, working together. Some are disruptive tactics. Some are loving tactics. Some are truth-telling tactics. Some can only be taken on by white people. Some can only be taken on by people of color. Sometimes we need someone from the other strand to step in and hold us up. Other times, we have to step out and hold them up. Each of us has a different role to play but we all have to hold the collective space for movement building together. That's what I hope we all keep in mind and work on together. It's the only way we move forward.
The entire guest editorial can be found at the Stranger at:
http://www.thestranger.com/...
Not sure why the hyperlink doesn't work ...