No cameras were present, but the moment wasn’t lost.
The Huffington Post reports that via a chance encounter at a Washington D.C. Thai restaurant last week, 2016 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders sat down with Sandra Bland’s mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, in an unpublicized meeting.
Rev. Hannah Adair Bonner was dining with Reed-Veal and Bland’s oldest sister, Shante, when Sanders entered the restaurant where the trio was dining. Bonner and Shante approached the Democratic candidate and told him that Bland’s mother was with them, resulting in Sanders sitting down with the group.
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“What happened to your daughter is inexcusable,” Sanders said, according to Bonner’s blog. “We are broken, and this has exposed us.”
Sanders promised Bland’s family that he would continue to #SayHerName (he mentioned Sandra Bland by name during this week’s Democratic debates), and reportedly never used the encounter for his political gain.
“He did not use the moment as an opportunity to promote his campaign,” Bonner wrote. “He took no record, he made no statement. He did not try to turn it into a publicity stunt. He simply made space for a sacred moment, and then let it pass without trying to gain anything from it.”
