1/9/2024 0 Comments Bernie sanders anaconda videoAs of press time, The Guardian’s Counted project has tracked more than 850 citizen deaths by police officers this year alone, a large percentage of those being people of color. She touched upon some harsh realities, like gentrification in the Central District and the disproportionate rate of African-American children who are suspended within the Seattle School District (which was federally investigated in 2013). They were on the Westlake stage for around 20 minutes, with Johnson addressing the heated racial climate, locally and nationally - mentioning the $210 million Children and Family Justice Center youth jail to be built, the federal investigation of the Seattle Police Department and that Seattle sits on occupied Duwamish land. On the eve of the first anniversary of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Willaford and Johnson had a lot to say, and with palpable urgency, to Bernie Sanders and the audience. Many attacked Johnson’s character (sometimes her Evangelical Christian faith, sometimes her high school support of Sarah Palin that stemmed from tea-party parents), while missing her message altogether. On volatile online forums and around the water cooler, questions were rehashed: Why Bernie? Why be so disrespectful? Are they real Black Lives Matter activists or secret plants by Hillary Clinton’s campaign? Aren’t they harming their own cause? The two stayed nearly silent while “think pieces on think pieces on think pieces” - as Willaford calls them - swept the Internet. Their actions, self-described as “hella rude,” quickly spurred a nationwide conversation that drifted steadily in and out of local and national media for weeks. As they stroll down the pedestrian path at Green Lake, chatting and laughing, it’s hard to associate Mara Willaford and Marissa Johnson with the two black liberation activists who stormed the stage, took the microphone from Bernie Sanders and called the audience white supremacists at an August rally in Seattle.
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