Quentin James, a panelist at the progressive Netroots Nation conference, accused Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez of underfunding black candidates on Friday.

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“In order for us to see progress in 2018, we have to consider what we are doing, how we are supporting African-American candidates running throughout the country,” James said. “We have the opportunity to have the largest wave of black elected officials.”

“The question that is out in front of all of us right now is, ‘what are you doing, what are we doing, what are the institutions doing to fund this work?'” he continued. “The dollars have to match up with the priorities, and so I don’t want to hear [DNC Chair] Tom Perez apologize one more time about the failure of the party.”

James also alleged that Perez is “laying off black people” who work for the Democratic National Committee and said he is sick of Perez’s apologies.

“You can’t do that when you’re literally laying off black people at the DNC right now,” he alleged. “I don’t want to hear apologies if the budget isn’t matching up with where we know we see the biggest deficits but also the biggest opportunity to win this cycle.”

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