The interview with Hasan Piker exposed Sanders as a bad-faith interlocutor who uses identity as a cudgel while remaining silent on the poverty, pollution, and police violence that plague the community she claims to represent.
By now you have likely either watched the entire interview that MSNOW (aka MSDNC) hosts Symone Sanders and Eugene Daniels conducted with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker or seen reaction to it on various social media outlets and social media talk shows. This writer agrees with most of the analysis offered by some of the more leftist elements on social media, essentially concluding that Sanders came across as a complete dilettante, was an absolute embarrassment, and a vindication of what Dr. Ruha Benjamin meant when she said, “Black faces in high places are not going to save us,” and “Remember, too, that despite the social media slogan, ‘Trust Black women,’ you too, have to be trustworthy,” while addressing the good sisters of Spelman College two years ago. That said, while it’s irrefutable that after watching the Piker interview, Sanders cannot be characterized as “trustworthy,” we have not yet, to my knowledge, observed an analysis of how the Sanders/Daniels/Piker interview elucidates the dereliction and unprincipled variables that make up the equation of the Black Misleadership Class (BCM). This piece aims to change that.
Years before the Piker interview even took place, Sanders had already exposed herself and confirmed that she was more than willing to be an active resident in the Big House of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) plantation. In 2019, as an advisor for the Joe Biden presidential campaign, Sanders appeared on CNN to discuss the campaign and why Biden, who at that point was losing in the polls to Senator Bernie Sanders (who Symone Sanders previously worked for in 2016), was the best option to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. At one point during the appearance, anchorman Victor Blackwell pressed Sanders on a comment made by Biden’s then-opponent, Kamala Harris, who took umbrage at his suggestion that the 1994 Crime Bill (introduced and pushed by Biden) did not contribute to mass incarceration. Blackwell proceeded to play Sanders a clip of Bill Clinton from 2015, who signed the bill into law as president, saying, “I signed a bill that made the problem [mass incarceration] worse, and I want to admit it.”
While trying to defend Joe Biden, who contended that mass incarceration was the fault of the states, not the federal government, a contention that Sanders repeated during the interview, and then shown statistics from the organization the Sentencing Project proving that the states were given incentives by the federal government, via the 1994 Crime Bill, to lock up more people, Sanders became visibly flustered and reduced the iniquitous piece of legislation to “overcorrection,” while also promising that if elected, Biden would address the issue of mass incarceration, and its disproportionate impacts on poor and working class Black folk. It should be noted that by his second year in office, organizations such as the Prison Policy Initiative characterized his actions to address mass incarceration as “inadequate.”
After one whole year of working in the Biden administration as a Senior Advisor and Chief Spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris, Sanders left her position in the White [People’s] House and was rewarded for her DNCoonery with a television program on MSNOW, which launched just one month after her departure. Fast forward to the recent interview with Piker; it’s clear that Sanders has become comfortable in her role as a spokesperson and vanguard for the Democratic Party and the BCM. Yet, in some key moments during the interview, Sanders exposes herself not only as a bad faith interlocutor, but also as a hypocrite, an identity reductionist bereft of any class analysis whatsoever, and an absolute dilettante when it comes to the history of the Black Liberation struggle in the United States.
From the outset, it was clear that Sanders would try to use anything and everything that came out of Piker’s mouth against him. And she demonstrated this right after the first question asked of Piker, “What are your goals?” Piker’s response adroitly broke down how the plight and anger of the working class in the U.S. have been effectively exploited by the GOP and the larger right wing apparatus via the use of white “supremacy” ideology and culture wars to enjoy electoral success. Specifically, Piker suggested, “The way to bring this discussion back to a productive place is to remind people of their class position.” Sanders apparently saw an opening, and after touting the fact that she is from the “Heartland,” given that she grew up in the North Omaha community of Nebraska, she pressed Piker on who he meant by “the working class,” suggesting that most people don’t include Black folk in that characterization.
A few things here - first, the irony of Sanders suggesting that Black folk are not considered in the larger conversation of working class people is in large part due to the rhetoric of the Democratic Party which is fond of specifically naming the white working class when discussing the challenges of working people. And it’s also the Democrats who largely ignore the fact that Black people do reside in rural communities, which is demonstrated by the party’s paltry investment in southern states where the vast majority of Black folk live in rural communities - a case recently made by Justin Pearson who is currently a candidate for the House of Representatives in Tennessee. Sanders was silent on both of these ironies during the interview and believed that she successfully hatched a gotcha moment for Piker.
It’s hilarious that Sanders believed that a man who just used a term like “exploited proletariat" would fall for her identity-reductionist trap. Instead Piker gave a near perfect answer to who he means by the working class, “I am talking about everyone who is a wage laborer,” and then even preceded to criticize elements of the left who are reductive in their characterizations of working class people, “...there is like a, like a branch of, of leftist thought or, uh, you know, academic thought, even that, that makes it seem as though the only definitional working classes is like mystical, uh, you know, hard hat wearing white guy living in West Virginia in the coal mines,” and added, “but the working class is also much broader than that. It's every wage laborer, regardless of color or creed or ethnicity.”
Sanders believed that she could still paint Piker as a standard class reductionist [and to be clear, there is absolutely a class reductionist problem within large swaths of the white left], pressing him to explain who he believes doesn’t have a strong understanding of class issues, “You've said a lot actually, that the number one problem in this country is, you know, that Americans lack class consciousness…because I don't think a lot of people that I you know and grew up with people that I know actually lack class consciousness.” Piker treated this offering like Serena Williams treated the second serve of her opponents, that is, a winner down the sideline that was too fast to be hit back to her, and even evoked Chairman Fred Hampton in the process, “I'm definitely referencing people who do not recognize that they're being screwed over, right?... It's not a new concept. It's actually a fairly old-school concept. It's a rainbow coalition. It's what Fred Hampton tried to accomplish as well.” I would posit that you would be hard-pressed to find a time in Sanders’ career when she lifted up the work of Chairman Fred, his class analysis, his embrace of socialism, or his assassination by J. Edgar Hoover and the State.
Later in the discussion, Sanders continues to expose herself as more of a DNC propaganda talking head than a journalist when she requests that Piker describe who and what he means by the “democratic party establishment.” Pike explained that, “Establishment Democrats, [are] like more right-wing Democrats, Democrats in positions of power, Democrats that don't shy away from getting, you know, corporate sponsorships in order to fill their campaign coffers, Democrats that did not really do that much about Donald Trump this second time around.” He went on to discuss the Democratic Party’s move to the right under Bill Clinton and elements such as the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council, “And I think it's because, simply put, the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton and onward, in the post-Reagan neoliberal era, that had presented a pivot to moderation, to win over the independents, to win over the moderates, that theory had lost twice in spectacular display to an incompetent tyrant like Donald Trump.” Sanders expressed that she disagreed with Piker’s analysis because it did not take into account the fact that Biden defeated Trump in 2020. She makes no mention of the fact that Biden was greatly assisted by the police lynchings of George Floyd and Breona Taylor and the associated public outrage that followed, nor the fact that many United Statesians were outraged by the Trump administration’s inhumane and iniquitous response to the global COVID pandemic that resulted in, by some estimates, the death of over 400,000 people. So the question becomes, does Sanders really believe that people were more inspired by Biden in 2020 or did they take more umbrage with the Trump administration?
There’s likely a reason that Sanders chose to use the 2020 Biden election as an example of why she believed that Piker’s analysis of the electoral shellacking the Democrats experienced in 2024 is inaccurate - she worked for the 2020 Biden campaign. After castigating Piker by exclaiming, “...if I was a strategist or a consultant or the political director on one of these campaigns, I would absolutely be telling my people to disavow you.” Piker disagreed with the sentiment, to which Sanders quipped, “I've elected people though, and you've never elected anybody.” And here is where the penny drops and the veil gets lifted, exposing the bad-faith coonery associated with her questioning of Piker. First, Piker has never claimed to be an electoral politics operative, he has never worked on a campaign as much as he has worked with campaigns, no different than Democrat Party candidates like Kamala Harris who leaned on the likes of billionaires like Oprah Winfrey and numerous candidates who have utilized many elements of Hollywood and the music industry to boost their campaigns. But if Sanders wants to play this game, let’s talk about it.
The first question that arises is did Sanders single-handedly get Joe Biden elected President of the United States? Of course she didn’t, as a senior advisor she certainly played a role on that campaign, but she did not get Biden elected, the people, in fact did. Yet we still have to interrogate who Sanders got elected - a man who eulogized segregationists, someone who once decried the idea of bussing Black kids into whiter school districts because he did not want his own children being subjected to what he described as “a racial jungle,” a lawmaker who was instrumental in the passage of the ignominious 1994 Crime Bill, and, a president who aided, abetted, and funded an ongoing pogrom of genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people. But we also have to talk about who she didn't get elected if we are to be dialectical.
Symone Sanders became a national name when she was an operative for the 2016 Bernie Sanders for President campaign. She was specifically added to [Bernie} Sanders’ team after a series of public incidents with Black activists who felt that he was not adequately discussing issues of racism and white “supremacy” and how both systems specifically and adversely impact Black people. In fact [Symone] Sanders was hired by the [Bernie] Sanders campaign after he was essentially forced off the stage by Black activists during a campaign rally in Seattle, Washington. Shortly after being hired by the Sanders campaign, during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press program, [Symone] Sanders stated, “One of my suggestions, he took it and ran with it, is that racial inequality and economic inequality are parallel issues. I [told him,] you know, economic equality is an issue.” She added, “It’s something we need to address. But for some people it doesn’t matter how much money you make, it doesn’t matter where you went to school, it doesn’t matter what your parents do. It doesn’t matter that Sandra Bland had a job and was on her way to teach for her alma mater. It doesn’t matter. None of that matters.” While it would not be accurate or fair to place blame on [Symone] Sanders for the outcome of the 2016 Democratic Party presidential campaign, which [Bernie] Sanders lost, it’s fair to say that [Symone] Sanders was not efficacious in her role as it pertained to increasing the number of Black votes for her candidate. But there is something else that she revealed about herself in her comments during the Meet the Press interview that proves, rather than Piker, it is she who lacks a comprehensive class analysis by suggesting that making more money, even for Black folk, somehow doesn’t put them in a position of privilege and more safety than poor and working class Black folk.
At one point during the Piker interview, Sanders proclaimed, “I am the base of the Democratic Party, and for you to say that most people agree with you. Yeah, well, I think you're painting with a broad-stroke brush. So how can you prove it? Because I don't believe that.” This was kind of the checkmate moment of the interview, as Piker’s response was masterful in that he named specific policy positions that he supports, including Medicare for All and re-examining the U.S. relationship with the zionist ethnostate, aka Israel. A poll taken in February revealed that 77% of Black folk support Medicare for All, and a poll taken by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in 2024 revealed that 54% of Black folk support putting restrictions on US military aid to Israel so that it cannot use that aid toward military operations against Palestinians. And, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center report, “Black adults were the only racial or ethnic group more likely to view capitalism more negatively than positively, and also the only group more likely to view socialism more positively (52%) than negatively (42%).” These statistics all prove that not only is [Symone] Sanders out of touch with Black people, but that she seems to understand their political positions less than Piker and, therefore, has no right to claim that she is the base of the Democratic Party beyond her complexion and identity. And the biggest reason for this is, wait for it, class.
According to some reports, Symone Sanders has an estimated net worth of between $1 million and $5 million dollars - good for you, Symone. According to a 2021 report by Goldman Sachs, “The median net worth for a single Black woman in America is estimated to be as low as $200 (or $7,000 depending on the specific age brackets and asset definitions used in baseline studies).” So what exactly does Symone Sanders have in common with poor and working class Black women besides sharing their racial identity? It’s fair then to characterize Sanders as a class traitor who has no business attempting to use her race as a cudgel against people like Piker who, despite being wealthy himself, clearly remains in actual and demonstrated solidarity with poor and working class people by the policy positions he promotes. Sanders, on the other hand, defends Black lawmakers like those in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), like Hakeem “AIPAC Shakur” Jeffries, who hold policy positions that are counter to those of the majority of Black folk, including, but not limited to, healthcare and support for the zionist ethnostate. Sanders certainly has never offered an objective critique of the CBC like the comrades from Pan African Community Action (PACA) who recently, in their opprobrium of the CBC stated, “Black representatives can win reforms. But putting Black representatives inside an institution does not place that institution under the control of Black communities.” PACA also criticized the annual CBC Gala that Sanders attended/is attending, noting, “The same corporate interests [who were featured at the CBC Gala] responsible for our exploitation can pay for sponsorships and gain access to the political spaces where solutions to these problems are being discussed.”
Sanders has never used her station to lift up the fact that Black people in her hometown of Omaha are the poorest, most incarcerated, most polluted, and most subjugated in the city. Nor has she used her station to criticize Omaha’s first Black mayor, John Ewing Jr., who after nearly two years in office, has raised the police budget, sold public parks to private family foundations, sided with derelict landlords over poor and working class tenants, done nothing to reduce the number of houseless people despite presiding over a metro area that has seen the largest per capita increase of unhoused people in the nation, and, overall, has done nothing to directly improve the material conditions of poor and working class people.
The reason for all of this is because Sanders is corporate, and now that she has established herself as a loyal element of the BMC, she will double and triple down in defense of it. The problem for Sanders and the BMC is that more and more of the Black masses are observing their desolation by seeing both for who and what they are - opporcoonists who promote individual Black “excellence” over collective Black power in service to their zionist, corporate, and capitalist overseers rather than being in service to their people. This is why we cannot take Symone Sanders seriously and why we should be getting our information and analysis from principled Black women including, but not limited to, Margaret Kimberley, Briahna Joy Gray, and Sabby Sabs, leaving the trash panda minstrel shows pretending to be journalism to the likes of Sanders.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is a son of Sierra Leon and an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cats “Evil” Ernie and MalaChai the Mischevous. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the North South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
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