By Jasmine Palmer
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
WASHINGTON – A panel of five African American representatives of Democratic Party presidential and local candidates debated the meaning of the Black Lives Matter movement during a Dec. 3 forum at the National Education Association.
Some panel members told the estimated 80 people who attended the event that African Americans must become a more consistent voting block it they want to get the attention of politicians while others said that the movement must focus on protesting against the institutionalized racism that still exists in the country.
Panelists also said the Black Lives Matter movement was trying to bring the issue of diversit to the forefront of the 2016 presidential and congressional elections.
“If you only show up at presidential election times and you want to march and you want to protest in the street you will get no where,” said panel member Yvette Lewis, who was
representing the presidential campaign of former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley.“If you’re going to be mad then you got to be mad with a strategy and you got to be mad prepared to come out and put that strategy in place”
Lewis said that voting, rather than simply protesting, is the solution if activists want to grab the attention of political leadership.
“If you are a consistent voting block, then you get their ear, Lewis said. “You have to be a consistent voter that knows how to harvest that economic power to get their attention.”
Lewis’s comment stirred mixed feelings amont the millennial panelist who felt that disruption played a major role in drawing attention to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Others on the panel seemed to disagree with this point as well saying that there is a bigger issue at hand that needs to be put into focus.
“For anyone to argue that we maybe need to get a little more serious about voting and get a little serious about politics before we can affect change, I would disagree,” said Symone D. Sanders, who was representing presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. “We have to address institutional and structural racism. We have to call it racism when it is racism.”
Other issues in the African American community that have influenced the Black Lives Matter movement, such as police brutality and mass incarceration of African Americans, were also discussed.
“Policy changes alone aren’t going to solve the problem if our leadership is unwilling to approach these matters with a fundamental commitment to the black lives,” said congressional staffer Tristan Wilkerson.
The panelist agreed that to draw attention to the Black Lives Matter movement and encourage diversity, none of these actions should be mutually exclusive. They said all of these actions are important and should work together.
Other panel members included De’Ara Balenger of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Eugene Young, who is running for Mayor in Wilmington, Delaware. Political strategist Derrick Robinson sponsored and moderated the forum.
U.S. Rep. Donna F. Edwards, who is running for the Democratic Party nomination for U.S. Senate, was in the audience and said the Black Lives Matter movement can have an impact in the 2016 election year.
“I know that the conversation in this country has to be elevated so that we are talking upfront and personal and close about race, about our relationship among our races, and
about the racism that goes on in so many of our communities in so many different ways,” Edwards said. “We have the ability and the Black Lives Matter movement has the ability to call attention to this in the environment of a 2016 election. There is no better time.”