No Presidential Candidate...
No presidential candidate in 2016 will get one vote or one nickel from me UNTIL I am satisfied that black lives matter to them. Until black lives matter to them, they are no longer assured my vote. And, I have voted in every local and national election since the first year I was able to vote in 1992.
What counts as evidence for me?
1) Legislation that you passed that keeps individuals in my community ALIVE.
2) Their presence on the streets of America in communities as we cry, march, and scream about the murders of our loved ones at the hands of police officers.
3) Their presence in our town hall meetings in unscripted forums as we try to come to solutions to the problems of over aggressive policing.
(feel free to add as you see fit)...
Until then, I'm done. I believe in climate change. But, in 2016, your belief in it won't earn you my vote. I believe in a long list of things, but in 2016, I will be a one issue voter. I will vote for the presidential candidate who believes in working to help keep my sons alive.
At the moment, I see NO presidential candidate willing to walk the walk...and precious few politicians, in general. But, I could be wrong. PLEASE tell me something great about the one you're supporting. Otherwise, I'm just done.
I don't post much here anymore. I do miss you guys in the group. I miss you the most on days like this, with the Cleveland verdict. I'm sick to tears. I'm sick of carrying water for people who don't give a rat's rear about black folk until its election season. Then they get your vote and go and do their own thing and I'm supposed to take some kind of pride in the fact that my team won. I'm so sorry for the rant. But, I'm just so sick and tired of watching us die at the hands of the police and then, there are just no consequences.
My team isn't winning. My team is dying. They STILL HAVE NOT EVEN INTERVIEWED THE KILLER OF TAMIR RICE. I want to know what EVERY presidential candidate thinks about that. I want to know what they're willing to do about that. I plan to vote for the candidate that can't stop thinking and talking about it. My next vote for a presidential candidate will be for the one who can't stop talking about and who has already shown evidence of working to make a difference. If they haven't been working to make a difference, they can start today. I'll be watching.
That is all...
= new reply since forum marked as read
I'm looking forward to it.
Sanders has a rich and long record of doing the right thing.
Of course not all of his bills are passed but that's no reason to aim lower.
Clinton and her supporters are literally saying "aim lower, aim for compromise".
No. Not going to do that.
I came in here just to post an OP about some of the really weaselly confusing and disgusting behavior that popped up in another thread in reference to Hillary's support among black folks. It was shocking some of the crap that was being spewed there.
Re: Tamir Rice, the people who really need to have their asses handed to them are the prosecutors and "investigators" there. I recently read that his mother has been so devastated over her son's death that she is now living in a homeless shelter. It is heartbreaking and dispiriting in every way. I am screaming for her and her son.
But I agree with you that seeing what the current crop of presidential candidates think about all of this would definitely give us an understanding of how important this is to them. The Dem Party has always been fairly slow and weak on civil rights issues but they are still light years beyond the Republicans who, drunk on Tea, have gone BACKWARDS and gotten even crazier and stupid over the last 20 years.
Wouldn't it be amazing to see a Dem at the next Black Lives Matter rally??
And I hope that things are going well. Haven't seen you in a long while. Not that I blame you at all.
I think the biggest draw back is they both made their political bones in the east ... no regional separation.
I don't see a way in hell HRC accepts the number 2 spot ... from anyone! 
I can picture Sanders or O'Malley out there.
Both have a history suggesting that they would.
Bernie Sanders, member of the steering committee, stands next to George Beadle, University of Chicago president, who is speaking at a Committee On Racial Equality meeting on housing sit-ins. 1962.
Bernie Sanders was a prominent local activist in college, and not much has changed. Bernie Sanders won the first election he ever lost.
It was the late 1950s, and Sanders was still a teenager, running to be class president at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York. His platform promised to raise scholarship money for kids in Korea orphaned during the recent war. “It was an unusual thing for a person so young to be involved in,” remembers Larry Sanders, Bernie’s older brother. When the votes were tallied, the future Senator from Vermont fell short, coming in third, but the outcome set a precedent he would love to repeat on the national stage. The winner adopted the Korean scholarship idea and made it happen.
snip
In Chicago, Sanders threw himself into activism—civil rights, economic justice, volunteering, organizing. “I received more of an education off campus than I did in the classroom,” Sanders says. By his 23rd birthday, Sanders had worked for a meatpackers union, marched for civil rights in Washington D.C., joined the university socialists and been arrested at a civil rights demonstration. He delivered jeremiads to young crowds. The police called him an outside agitator, Sanders said. He was a sloppy student, and the dean asked him to take a year off. He inspired his classmates. “He knows how to talk to people now,” said Robin Kaufman, a student who knew Sanders in 1960s Chicago, “and he knew how to do it then.” He was a radical before it was cool.
Response to onpatrol98 (Original post)