Warren Looks Helpless When Concerned Parents Protest at Rally, Needs 'Squad' Dem To Save Her
Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is a front-running candidate for her party’s 2020 presidential nomination, but it appears she may have trouble convincing at least some black voters to support her.
It was predominately black parents who repeatedly disrupted a speech Warren was attempting to deliver at a rally Thursday in Atlanta. These parents were concerned with Warrens’ proposed education policy that would do away school choice, The Washington Free Beacon reported.
Video clips of the disruption showed that Warren was confused and had no idea what to do as the protesting parents delayed her event with repeated outbursts and chants that were, in turn, countered and drowned out by the majority white crowd of supporters who’d gathered for the rally.
It wasn’t until Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a member of the progressive “squad” who has endorsed Warren, came out on stage to help quiet the crowd and lend support to the helpless candidate.
Warren was reportedly overheard at one point asking Pressley, “What do we do with this?” as the disruptive chants continued.
“As a white woman, I will never fully understand the discrimination, pain, the harm that black Americans have experienced just because of the color of their skin,” Warren told the crowd at Clark Atlanta University, a historically black college, just before the protests erupted.
According to ABC News, Warren’s event was an obvious attempt at pandering to black voters, as her speech was centered on black issues at the black college, had a DJ playing Drake and DMX songs, and was introduced by Pressley, the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts.
But the parents in favor of school choice and charter schools, part of a group known as Powerful Parent Network, were there to make sure their voices were heard. The Free Beacon noted that some of the group’s chants included “Our children, our choice” and “We will be heard.”
Warren initially attempted to outlast the protesters, saying “OK” and “We’re good” during lulls or attempting to return to her speech, only for the chanting to break out again.
It wasn’t until Pressley finally returned to the stage and rescued Warren that the intermittent protests finally subsided after Pressley had vowed to hold a discussion with them about their concerns later. They were actually granted a meeting with Warren after the rally was over.
A leader of that group, Sarah Carpenter, told ABC after the event that “it felt like she attacks our children’s choice, charter schools,” and that she’d “told [Warren], you gotta talk to real people on the ground” about education policy before announcing nationwide plans.
The Federalist noted that the protests from parents in favor of charter schools and school choice — which Warren would do away with if elected president — were prime evidence of what can occur when white politicians pander to black voters without caring or understanding what those voters actually want.
In fact, a recent poll by Democrats for Education Reform showed that while white Democrats were overwhelmingly opposed to charter schools, a majority of both black and Hispanic Democrats were not.
One reason for that disparity in views on charter schools among Democrats, according to The Federalist, was that many charter schools have specifically stated the goal of closing the education gap between minorities and non-minorities, which can be significant in some locations with large minority populations, such as Atlanta.
As Carpenter said, Warren — and the other Democratic candidates, for that matter — would be wise to seek the counsel of the very people they claim to represent prior to formulating national policies that go directly against their strongly held positions and desires, in this case, school choice.
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