20 ways to be a BLM racist

[cascadiance]

10. The two issues that BLM sites have focused on are Sanders vote to extradite Assata Shakur from Cuba

... and his vote for a 1995 Omnibus Crime bill that they didn't like.

The details of the efforts to extradite Shakur from Cuba who was sentenced to life in prison for her killing a police officer are here... Apparently Sanders voted for this extradition.

http://bossip.com/1082103/fight-the-power-cuba-will-not-extradite-us-most-wanted-woman-black-panther-assata-shakur-for-lifted-sanctions/

If BLM wants to make a point on this issue, and it is a paramount issue that is more important to them than anything else Bernie has done for their charges, then why don't they make a point of giving similar treatment they give Bernie for Chris Christie, who has gone much further in lobbying Obama to extradite Shakur as noted in the above article... But they think focusing on Bernie for this issue will get them more results than going after Christie... Huh?

...
For US law enforcement Shakur remains a dangerous criminal on the run, meriting a place on the FBI’s most-wanted list and a $2 million bounty combined from the bureau and the New Jersey state police. Republican Governor Christie demanded that her extradition be made a condition for America’s normalizing ties with Cuba in blunt terms.

“Cuba’s provision of safe harbor to Chesimard by providing political asylum to a convicted cop killer … is an affront to every resident of our state, our country, and in particular, the men and women of the New Jersey State Police,” Christie wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama.

“I urge you to demand the immediate return of Chesimard before any further consideration of restoration of diplomatic relations with the Cuban government.”
...

and they might want to target Marco Rubio too, who also echoes Christie's comments to the media about the need to extradite Shakur to the U.S. as noted here...

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/rubio-slams-hillary-architect-failed-foreign-policy

Rubio—whose parents were born in Cuba under the oppressive communist regime—also leveled his criticism at President Barack Obama’s "ridiculous" plan to remove Cuba from the terrorist list, suggesting that Obama seems to be caring more about his "legacy" than good foreign policy:

“It’s ridiculous,” Rubio says. “I don’t see how they can rationalize taking them off the list, other than the president’s desire to achieve a legacy issue that he’s the one that opened up Cuba and changed fifty years of policy.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he continued, noting Cuba is “harboring the fugitives of American justice, including the killer of an American police officer, and dozens of people who have stolen millions of dollars from Medicare — fraud from the American taxpayer.” [...]

Cuba has also been caught twice in the last few years helping North Korea evade weapons sanctions, said Rubio, and “they continue to provide shelter and material support for terrorist groups like the FARC in Columbia and others. This is the country that is the third most active espionage force in America today, operating against us, [and also has] military officials who have been indicted in federal court for the murder of U.S. citizens over international waters.”​

The cop-killer Rubio referenced is Assata Shakur (aka JoAnne Chesimard), who was imprisoned for killing a New Jersey State Trooper and included on the FBI's terrorist list. She escaped in 1979 and fled to Cuba, where she remains protected from U.S. legal action. Shakur has made news lately because she was referenced in a list of demands to the University of California at Berkeley administration by the school's Black Student Union, which wants a building named in her honor. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has also recently referenced Shakur in his criticism of the Obama's "awful" Cuba deal.

Hillary Clinton seems absent on commenting or any actions on the extradition of Assata Shakur.

The only other specific issue that BLM was complaining about Bernie yesterday is his vote on a 1995 Omnibus crime bill that was noted here as Bill Clinton's bill... Does Hillary Clinton want to leave a mystery as to whether she supports this action of her husband's, as she has been on the free trade bills that Bill Clinton put in to place amongst other things.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/30/the-problem-with-bernie/

...
The recent mass movement against the epidemic of police murders of (primarily) young Black men has exposed a gaping hole in the myth that comprises the United States. Racism, which Barack Obama’s election was supposed to have placed in the dustbin of history, is arguably greater now than at any time since the 1960s. Because of the aforementioned movement, the nature of the criminal justice system, the laws its enforcers enforce and how those laws are enforced, and the prison system have all been brought under well-deserved scrutiny. No politician has come up with any genuine programs that will check police brutality and remove killer cops from the streets. Nor have many politicians seriously addressed the fundamental role neoliberal capitalism plays in the impoverishment of America’s working class, especially its non-white members. Bernie Sanders’ attacks on the excesses of Wall Street and its cohorts are usually addressed to the “middle class,” that US ideal. Indeed, Sanders was one of many Congressmen who voted for the 1995 Omnibus Crime Bill that its author Bill Clinton recently acknowledged placed too much emphasis on mass incarceration and barely any on keeping young people out of prison or rehabilitating them if they ended up there. Failing to conduct a critically honest discussion that includes solutions to this problem that are not predicated on making profit would be a mistake for Sanders or any candidate. It will prove interesting to watch his moves in this area.
...

I wonder why BLM doesn't protest the wife of the author of this bill, even if Bernie Sanders voted for it... Hmm.... And Bernie Sanders was the congressman who got an amendment to replace death penalties with life imprisonment penalties in that bill too.

http://www.ontheissues.org/Domestic/Bernie_Sanders_Crime.htm

Voted YES on replacing death penalty with life imprisonment.

Amendment to replace death penalty crimes in the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill with life imprisonment.

Doesn't he get any credit for that? Many POC people on death row that have been released with DNA evidence lately might not be alive today if that hadn't been in the bill.

It would seem that if BLM can only come up with these rather nebulous and random complaints about Bernie, and not really paying attention to the larger issues that most people can agree on that this OP addresses, then they really need to rethink why they are going after Bernie, and have to step back and analyze if there is something personal and not too rational about their negative emotions they are telegraphing in their protests.