A group of black leaders is pushing back against alleged racist attacks from supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign after the Working Families Party decided to endorse Sen. Elizabeth Warren instead, Splinter News reported Thursday.
The Working Families Party, a progressive grass-roots political party primarily based in New York, endorsed Sanders in 2016 but announced on Monday that it was endorsing Warren in 2020.
The letter from more than 100 black leaders was released Thursday evening and condemns “hateful, violent and racist threats” from Sanders supporters following the WFP’s endorsement.
Warren received 60% of the party’s vote, while 35% of vote went to Sanders. The party’s leadership determined half of the vote and a vote of party membership determined the other half.
The results of the vote sparked outrage among some Sanders supporters, with pro-Sanders socialist magazine Jacobin declaring that the party had “written itself out of history.”
The Working Families Party is led by Maurice Mitchell, a black man, and Nelini Stamp, a working-class person of color, the letter says. Both are being threatened on a daily basis with slurs like “Uncle Tom” and “Slave,” according to the letter.
“These kinds of threats have no place in our movements, and are reminiscent of the threats Black people would receive when daring to vote even though the white supremacists would try and discourage Black people from doing so,” the letter states. “The virulent, racist attacks on these leaders are unacceptable and dangerous.”
The letter was signed by dozens of prominent black activists, including Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Global Network, and Tarana Burke, founder and executive director of MeToo.
“Many of us, the undersigned, are no stranger to these kinds of attacks — too many of us receive threats like these ones every day because we dare to organize our people towards freedom,” the letter says. “But if we hope to take back this democracy, if we dare to struggle for electoral justice, if we really want a world where Black lives do in fact matter, all of us must take a stand against these real and persistent threats.”
Sanders condemned racist harassment in a tweet Thursday afternoon.
“This campaign condemns racist bullying and harassment of any kind, in any space,” he tweeted. “We are building a multiracial movement for justice — that’s how we win the White House.”
And campaign co-chair Nina Turner addressed the controversy more heads-on Thursday evening, writing that anyone directing racist, sexist and otherwise personally derogatory tweets and messages toward Mitchell or anyone at the Working Families Party “is a coward and is not in alignment w/@BernieSanders or our collective mission.”
More than 80% of WFP voters listed Warren and Sanders as their top two picks, the WFP said in its press release announcing its endorsement.
“Senator Warren strikes fear into the hearts of the robber barons who rigged the system, and offers hope to millions of working people who have been shut out of our democracy and economy,” Mitchell said in the announcement.
Mitchell said that the party was proud to call both Warren and Sanders “allies in the fight for a more just America.”
“Senator Warren and Senator Sanders have both shaped the ideological terrain on which this campaign is being waged,” Mitchell said. “They have proven an effective team on debate stages and in the polls, and we hope that partnership continues.”
The party has refused to release the breakdown in results in their voting between the votes of their leadership and membership, which they released in 2015. This has led some Sanders supporters to speculate that he won the membership vote but was defeated by the party’s leaders.
Mike Casca, a Sanders campaign spokesperson, told the Washington Post the campaign believed the party should release the final tallies of the board vote and member vote.
“The inconsistency and lack of transparency is creating unnecessary division,” Casca said.
The party responded to this criticism in a lengthy Medium post, which states the members of the party leadership are representative of state and local chapters of the WFP and other grassroots organizations.
“We are building a single party,” the party said. “One that values all of our component parts for the unique role they play and refuses to drive false wedges between them.”
Sanders and Warren have both excited progressive voters during the early stages of the 2020 campaign, with both pledging to ensure the campaign between the two remains civil. Both are in the top three in the polls behind former Vice President Joe Biden, a moderate.
Sanders has shaken up his campaign staff in the last week, appointing aide Shannon Jackson as the head of his New Hampshire campaign. He also took some time off to rest his vocal chords this week.
