By Alex Lloyd Gross
As Bernie Sanders and his delegates saw his nomination and all hopes for a Sanders Presidency slip away tonight, July 26, 2016 about 1000 of his delegates and supporters staged an old fashioned sit in at the DNC in Philadelphia. About 20 minutes after the vote came out in favor of Hillary, the supporters marched into one of the media tents and promptly sat down. Some brought out masking tape and taped their mouths shut.
They were peaceful. As news of the sanders protest spread, dozens of State Troopers showed up and waited. They could not toss them out. As police commanders said, “We have to see if they are welcome to be here, if they are there is nothing we can do” The last thing cops wanted to do was to start dragging protesters out with hundreds of reporters there to capture it all.
As Philly cops arrived they negotiated with the protesters and the protesters left the area without incident. Sanders supporters were upset that they did a ton of hard work for a candidate they truly believed in and high level reps from the Democratic National Convention worked to sabotage his campaign in favor of Hillary Clinton. To throw salt in their wounds, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, former head of the DNC resigned. Less than 12 hours later she had a high level position with the Clinton Campaign.
Sanders was not present during the protest. He spoke last night at the convention.