"The emcee announced that next we'd hear from a presidential candidate, a U.S. senator from Vermont. The politician's name wasn't familiar to me, but I turned around to see if I might recognize him. I didn't. I saw an older white man with white hair. His wife smiled and waved in my direction. I turned back around and returned to fidgeting with the flatware. As he spoke, I listened, but I would be lying if I said I was engaged. But then I noticed that he was speaking frankly about the connection between racial justice and income inequality, and I heard him name mass movement as a solution. "We need to bring people together to take on the powers that be," he said. "When thousands and millions of people stand together, there is no stopping us. We can succeed." He had other clear ideas for solutions: "We need to demilitarize the police," he told the crowd, and finally, I heard him say, "Black lives do matter." I spun around. I couldn't believe what I'd heard. Every single other candidate refused to acknowledge the particular precarity we face in this country as Black people...I hadn't known anything about Bernie Sanders before I saw him onstage at the conference, but his boldness that day had opened my eyes. With his wild gesticulations, and unapologetic manner, he'd shown me that I didn't have to temper what I believed, even in a staid environment. From Bernie, I learned that I could run as myself. Now that I was vying for a Senate seat, I looked him up and scoured his website to learn more about him."