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Symone Sanders was on the campaign trail with Sen. Bernie Sanders. It was 2016\u00a0 and the senator was hopscotching around the country in his run for the presidency; Symone was his national press secretary.<\/p>\n
In a northeastern city, she was inside a building, heading for one of the senator\u2019s political rallies; he was right behind her. As they walked, Symone, who is black, heard someone behind her shouting, \u201cMa\u2019am, move! Step to the side! Ma\u2019am, move!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018Oh my goodness, that lady better move,\u2019\u201d recalled Symone, keynote speaker for Martin Luther King Day at UTC.<\/p>\n
Her left arm suddenly was grabbed by a state trooper, who yanked her roughly to one side. She realized she was the woman being told to get out of the way.<\/p>\n
As the trooper dragged her, another member of Sanders\u2019 campaign staff, Paul (Symone doesn\u2019t want to give his last name), grabbed her from the other side, pulling her out of the grip of trooper, who quickly apologized when told who Symone was.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes we are faced with a choice in the moment to act, to do something. And the spirit of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. demands that, much like Paul, you pull me back, you stop the entourage and you intervene,\u201d she told the audience in the University Center Auditorium on Jan. 25.<\/p>\n
Paul was \u201cstanding in the gap for someone else,\u201d one of the five cornerstone beliefs that made King a \u201cradical revolutionary,\u201d said Sanders, a Democratic political strategist and a commentator on such news networks as CNN, NPR, BET and in newspapers such as the Washington Post.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think in these times, in this day and age, we need a few more radical revolutionaries,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Many folks know King through his \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech, through his philosophy of non-violence, through “We shall overcome,'” she said. \u201cI think that is absolutely an important part of who he was and his legacy, but it wasn\u2019t all he was.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her 30-minute speech, her voice often rising in fiery volume for emphasis, she spelled out the five steps that must be taken to be a \u201cradical revolutionary.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the passage of the federal 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, King was asked that, since he had gotten what he was fighting for, why was he continuing to fight for more? Others were satisfied with the strides blacks had made with those laws being enacted, Sanders said, but not King, who said genuine equality meant economic equality.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter who doesn\u2019t own enough money to buy a hamburger?\u2019\u201d she said, quoting King.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need people who are willing to take a risk, who are willing to speak up in the face of adversity,” she added. “That\u2019s what Dr. King\u2019s dream, if you will, was really all about.\u201d<\/p>\n
A person must make \u201cconscious decisions every single day if you’re to stand up or stand in the gap for somebody else,\u201d she said, like Paul in Sen. Sanders\u2019 entourage. \u201cIt\u2019s not easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLadies and gentlemen, I came here today to tell you that some of us are not taking stock of who is being locked out of the proverbial building. We are not assessing who we may be looking over or hurting in the process \u2026 And if we truly want to be radical revolutionaries in the spirit of Dr. King, we have to always think about who is not at the table.\u201d<\/p>\n
She pointed to a TV interview King did in 1967 with NBC News where it was obvious how uncomfortable he was during the interview, she said. Despite the fights that he had waged to achieve the gains that blacks and the poor had made over the previous several years, \u201che is visibly uncomfortable with where we are in America at that time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Those gains had been made \u201cat bargain rates,\u201d King said, but future goals of eradicating slums, getting rid of poverty, providing jobs and repairing economic inequality was going cost the government billions of dollars. It was going to be difficult to convince politicians to spend that money.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to be willing to be uncomfortable if you really want to do any type of community-change, social-justice work,\u201d Sanders said. \u201cIf you\u2019re not uncomfortable, I\u2019m here to tell you, you\u2019re not actually doing the work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Too many organizations trying to bring about social and political change only think about the near-future and have no idea what\u2019s going to happen beyond that, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere are all the 10-, 15-, 20-year plans?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
As a college student, she interned in Union-Pacific Railroad\u2019s corporate communications department, she said. \u201cThey had like a 100-year plan. Nobody at the company was going to be around when that 100-year plan was executed, by they had one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to ask ourselves: Are we being strategic in our coalition-building? Are we being strategic in our community-building, needle-moving work?\u201d<\/p>\n
When King continued to push for income equality and social justice after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts were passed, some of his allies in those fights backed away, not willing to continue helping. King realized those people had worked with him only because of the unfair and appalling treatment of blacks by racists like George Wallace and Bull Connor, the police chief in Birmingham, Ala.<\/p>\n
King\u2019s former allies \u201cwere not specifically responding to issues of justice and inequality,” and he understood that \u201cwe\u2019re going to have to hold some people\u2019s feet to the fire,\u201d Sanders said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, far too many of us are not willing to take on our allies. We\u2019re are very ready to take on our adversaries.\u201d<\/p>\n
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