Bernie Sanders meets with Campaign Zero team

Bernie Sanders meets with Campaign Zero team

On September 16, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders held a private hour-long meeting with a strong collection of activists to discuss police brutality and the complex system of racial injustice in America.

The team was largely represented by Campaign Zero, a new policy collective that has helped to spark a national dialogue on meaningful solutions to police brutality. Participants were overwhelmingly positive but slightly measured in their remarks about how the meeting went.



Johnetta Elzie said that the senator's “answers to our questions around race, racism, systematic oppression in America as it relates to black people in this country weren't perfect" and that she had not expected them to be. “I can say Bernie Sanders was very open to being pushed,” Elzie added. She pointed out that while Sanders needs the black vote, it's unclear whether he’d be as eager to listen to the black community after being elected. “I also made it very clear that he has not won over a large demographic of black people in this country no matter how progressive he seems and that his policy platform, that his past history of dealing with black people, from his place of power in VT is also a concern in our community," she continued.

Many of the leaders present in the meeting shared their thoughts about it on Twitter. You can read them below.