By Evan McMorris-Santoro, BuzzFeed News

09 August 15

After meeting with Bernie Sanders about criminal justice and Black Lives Matter, Bernie Sanders has hired Symone Sanders as national press secretary. Meanwhile: more protests in Seattle.

ours after Black Lives Matter protesters shut down a Bernie Sanders rally here, the Vermont senator’s populist Democratic presidential campaign once again attempted to cast Sanders as the candidate of a modern civil rights movement.

Before a crowd of more than 12,000 at the Alaska Airlines Arena on the campus of the University Of Washington, a new public face for the Sanders campaign appeared. Symone Sanders, a volunteer organizer with the D.C.-based Coalition for Juvenile Justice, was announced as the new national press secretary of Sanders’ campaign and was tasked with introducing the 73-year-old senator.

Symone Sanders is a young, black, criminal justice advocate and supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. She’s also a progressive political activist right out of the Sanders mold: Her last job was at Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen. In an interview, Symone Sanders said she first connected with the senator about three weeks ago, offering him advice on how to better understand the message of Black Lives Matter activists in an hour-long chat.

“One of my suggestions, he took it and ran with it on Meet the Press, is that racial inequality and economic inequality are parallel issues,” she said. “I [told him,] you know, economic equality is an issue. 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.”

Bernie Sanders took to the advice, Symone Sanders said. She also confronted him with one of the criticisms he faced earlier in the summer, when Black Lives Matter activists rejected his statements about his past Civil Rights Movement work.

“Educating America, the community, letting people know who Bernie Sanders is and what he’s about,” she said. “And not just, ‘Oh, I fought for civil rights and I protested and I sat at the lunch counters.’ That’s important and that’s great but that was 50 years ago and he has a lot more to stand on than just what he did 50 years ago.”

At the end of the meeting, Bernie Sanders offered her a job. Her address at the Seattle arena rally was her first public statement as a Sanders campaign staffer. Among her jobs will be helping to sell a promised comprehensive criminal justice policy package she helped to craft and said will be coming from the Sanders campaign in the near future.

And, on Saturday, her 10-minute introduction for Bernie Sanders in Seattle was heavy on the Black Lives Matter movement and the list names of those who died in recent police encounters common to recent protests.

As for Black Lives Matter the movement, Bernie Sanders “will turn those words into action,” Symone Sanders said on stage to cheers from the huge crowd.

She didn’t mention the Black Lives Matter disruption at a Sanders campaign Social Security rally earlier in the day that forced Bernie Sanders to cut the event short and led to an aggressive statement from the candidate.  SOURCE