Netroots Nation organizers respond after presidential town hall disrupted by protest

Orga­niz­ers for Net­roots Nation this after­noon released a state­ment respond­ing to the events that tran­spired dur­ing this morn­ing’s pres­i­den­tial town hall in Phoenix. For those who weren’t there and weren’t watch­ing the livestream, the town hall was sup­posed to be a civ­il con­ver­sa­tion with for­mer Mary­land Gov­er­nor Mar­tin O’Mal­ley and U.S. Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders, but turned chaot­ic when a group of Black Lives Mat­ter pro­tes­tors entered the room to voice their anger and frus­tra­tion with sys­temic racism in Amer­i­ca from the floor of the con­ven­tion hall.

Many atten­dees were expect­ing that the pro­tes­tors would ulti­mate­ly march out after hav­ing made their point, but they stayed in place for the dura­tion of the event and con­tin­ued to peri­od­i­cal­ly shout and chant, pre­vent­ing mod­er­a­tor Jose Var­gas from respect­ful­ly fin­ish­ing up the con­ver­sa­tion with O’Mal­ley and then ham­per­ing Var­gas from facil­i­tat­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with Sanders.

Net­roots Nation orga­niz­ers released a state­ment in response, saying:

Net­roots Nation stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with all peo­ple seek­ing human rights. With today’s Town Hall, our aim was to give pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates a chance to respond to the issues fac­ing the many diverse com­mu­ni­ties rep­re­sent­ed here.

Although we wish the can­di­dates had more time to respond to the issues, what hap­pened today is reflec­tive of an urgent moment that Amer­i­ca is fac­ing today.

In 2016, we’re head­ing to St. Louis. We plan to work with activists there just as we did in Phoenix with local lead­ers, includ­ing the #Black­Lives­Mat­ter move­ment, to ampli­fy issues like racial pro­fil­ing and police bru­tal­i­ty in a major way.

It is nec­es­sary and vital to con­tin­ue this con­ver­sa­tion. We look for­ward to doing so in the com­ing year.

It’s impor­tant to know that this is hard­ly the first time a Net­roots Nation event has been crashed or dis­rupt­ed. For instance, last year’s keynote by Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden was inter­rupt­ed by DREAM­ers and pro­test­ers seek­ing jus­tice for new Amer­i­cans. The con­ven­tion’s response to those activists was to bring Net­roots Nation to Phoenix and make immi­gra­tion reform its 2015 theme.

But pre­vi­ous dis­rup­tions have gen­er­al­ly been tem­po­rary. In this case, the event real­ly did­n’t get back on track after being crashed. Mod­er­a­tor Jose Var­gas seemed unsure of how to han­dle the pro­tes­tors. It’s unfor­tu­nate, because the whole point of the town hall was to hear O’Mal­ley’s and Sanders’ vision for our coun­try, includ­ing their respons­es to ques­tions from the community.

In 2007, when it was known as Year­lyKos, Net­roots Nation had a fan­tas­tic Pres­i­den­tial Lead­er­ship forum that drew all but one of the declared Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates. It’s unfor­tu­nate that this con­fer­ence did­n’t have a forum like that.