Bernie Sanders’s ambassador to black voters hits the ground running
Source: Washington Post
By Sunday evening, Portland, Ore., fans of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had watched their candidate be shamed off a stage by activists who claimed to represent the #BlackLivesMatter movement. There were more rumors, about more protests by people who believed Sanders did not "center black lives" in his presidential campaign. But the 28,000 progressives who'd filled the Moda Center had their nerves calmed by a 25-year-old black woman.
"My name is Symone Sanders," she said, to applause. "I am joining the campaign this week as the national press secretary." More applause. "I have some good information that says there might be a little disruption tonight. So: I wanna be very clear. This campaign is about bringing people together. If there happens to be a disruption tonight, I want everyone in this stadium to respond with a chant."
Symone Sanders led the crowd in a dry run: "We! Stand! Together!" As more Bernie Sanders (no relation) supporters talked about uniting the left, and about "a climate justice movement that works for racial and global economic justice," Symone Sanders stayed onstage. This was not her first time in a room full of people screaming for a president.
The rise of Symone Sanders is a blessing for an insurgent campaign that keeps getting interrupted by activists crying out for racial justice. Just weeks ago, after protesters disrupted Bernie Sanders's Q&A at the progressive Netroots Nation conference, some mocked the candidate by joking about his civil rights cred with the tag #BerniesSoBlack. Nobody's going to try that with Symone Sanders, who left the Campaign for Juvenile Justice for this role. People who've worked with her describe a smart, ambitious progressive who's been engaged in politics since she was a teenager growing up in Omaha. In 2006, a 16-year-old Sanders learned that Bill Clinton would be addressing a year-end fundraiser for Girls Inc., a nonprofit that trains young women to be confident and skilled. Sanders, a Girls Inc. member, told executive director Roberta Wilhelm that she needed to be the one introducing Clinton onstage.
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Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/10/bernie-sanderss-ambassador-to-black-voters-hits-the-ground-running/
= new reply since forum marked as read
But I don't see that getting very far 
The writer is not just "some guy," he's a newly hired senior editor hired to restore the cred of the reeling TNR; he is black, he's well versed on black and women's issues (he is a fan of the "rising tide lifts all boats" school of activism) and he recently used to work as a producer at MSNBC for Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris-Perry, FWIW:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122510/blacklivesmatter-protesters-are-not-problem
#BlackLivesMatter Protesters Are Not the Problem
One year after Michael Brown's death, both liberals and conservatives are still getting it wrong[/b
....Sanders, given to touting his record of working for civil rights and uttering names like Sandra Bland since the Netroots incident, experienced a second interruption during a planned event in Seattle on Saturday. Two women and one man claiming affiliation with #BlackLivesMatter disrupted the event before the Vermont senator could speak. Some Sanders backers in the crowd booed when they were told that one of the women, Marissa Johnson, would get her say before the candidate. “Bernie, you were confronted at Netroots at by black women," Johnson said before adding, "you have yet to put out a criminal justice reform package like O’Malley did."
Having already responded to the crowd’s boos by telling them that they proved how “racist” the reputably liberal Seattle is, Johnson also called for a four-and-one-half minute-long moment of silence for Brown. Instead, more shouting from the crowd followed, including, per reports, shouts of “arrest her.” Sanders, rather than letting the protesters have their say and responding, left the stage. The event concluded without him speaking. A chorus of his supporters took to social media to question Johnson’s tactics—as if that’s what mattered most—and to tell anyone who dared question why Sanders didn’t have a set of racial-justice proposals that they somehow already existed. They were wrong.
A page entitled “Racial Justice” only appeared on his site early Sunday morning, containing a long list of proposals. A campaign representative reached out to me to say that those proposals, in the works for the three weeks since Netroots, were derived from a speech that’s been on the site since July 25. Given the pressure being put on them and the urgency they showed in creating the platform, it’s odd that the campaign put it online, essentially, under the cover of darkness.
The policies on Sanders’s racial justice page, while surely more welcome than none at all, are undeniably blurrier than those O’Malley put forth, and need considerably more specificity and clarity. There’s a lot of the typically forcefully liberal language Sanders likes to employ in order to inspire, but it seems even more fanciful than the O’Malley plan. But those ideas are certainly signs that he is hearing #BlackLivesMatter’s message. The problem isn’t so much him as it is his supporters, cursing protesters and later, on social media, touting their guy’s record whenever they are challenged on his (heretofore) lack of a platform regarding structural racism. They continue to misunderstand the primary goals of the #BlackLivesMatter protest actions, as have been clearly stated: Firm policy proposals, not rhetoric. Black voters have moved past "hope and change.” And hiring Symone Sanders, a black woman, as his press secretary—as the Sanders campaign announced hours after the protest—can't be expected to mollify the movement. #BlackLivesMatter wants policies for black people, not black people for his policies.....Forget the White House for a moment; Sanders acolytes insist upon nominating their candidate first as an ally for black people. They act insulted that they are not trusted to recommend their candidate as the top advocate for black liberation in the presidential race. Yet, they and the campaign spend time devising tone-deaf chants ("We Stand Together"to drown out any future protesters, as Ms. Sanders announced during a Sunday night event in Portland. I'm not against criticizing activist tactics, but the idea that #BlackLivesMatter protesters are hurting their cause by challenging candidates, even those considered allies, is based in the notion that the burden of making change is on them. It isn't. Too many Sanders supporters appear to be caught up in their feelings when a protester rubs them the wrong way. They ask, why are the protesters so rude, or annoying, or targeting the “wrong guy”?
of course though when looking to distract I guess any port will do 
Since you missed it the first time....
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122510/blacklivesmatter-protesters-are-not-problem
The policies on Sanders’s racial justice page, while surely more welcome than none at all, are undeniably blurrier than those O’Malley put forth, and need considerably more specificity and clarity. There’s a lot of the typically forcefully liberal language Sanders likes to employ in order to inspire, but it seems even more fanciful than the O’Malley plan. But those ideas are certainly signs that he is hearing #BlackLivesMatter’s message. The problem isn’t so much him as it is his supporters, cursing protesters and later, on social media, touting their guy’s record whenever they are challenged on his (heretofore) lack of a platform regarding structural racism. They continue to misunderstand the primary goals of the #BlackLivesMatter protest actions, as have been clearly stated: Firm policy proposals, not rhetoric. Black voters have moved past "hope and change.” And hiring Symone Sanders, a black woman, as his press secretary—as the Sanders campaign announced hours after the protest—can't be expected to mollify the movement. #BlackLivesMatter wants policies for black people, not black people for his policies.
