Martin O’Malley was booed off the stage at Netroots Nation 2015 because he said “All lives matter.” He was booed off the stage because he didn’t say “Black lives matter.” Saying that all lives matter is actually considered offensive to some because it apparently symbolizes white supremacy or something.

However, all lives matter. Every last one. Whether it be the unborn child that Planned Parenthood wants to treat as an old car that is only as valuable as the parts that can be salvaged to the black person who is unjustifiably killed while in police custody to a white person who is killed by an illegal immigrant (one who has been in trouble with the law several times) to the Marines killed in a terror attack on our home soil. Every one of these lives matters, no matter what the militant Left would have you believe.

There are times when minority lives are tragically cut short. There are times when white lives are tragically cut short. Are we supposed to treat one as more important as the other? Was the entire movement not to create equality among the races? Or will I simply be accused of exercising white privilege simply because I am naive enough to think we should all be treated equally under the law?

This movement that proclaims “Black Lives Matter” and shouts down anyone who says “All Lives Matter” are simply reacting to a status quo that, under Barack Obama, they assumed would be abolished. However, the fact is that the conditions under which we all live in, but especially the black community, have gotten exponentially worse. Communities are more divided than ever along racial lines, but no one is willing to address the fact that it is under the Democratic Party’s rule that they have gotten so.

Rick Perry is the only candidate to outright come out and ask the black community to give the Republican Party a second chance. By acknowledging that there was ever a problem to begin with, he did what no one in the Democratic Party will ever admit – that, under their watch, things have decayed.

Neither party is actually innocent in the racial divide that we see constantly. The Republican Party has often looked to minority groups like the black and Hispanic communities as trophies to be won in a political contest (though they never seem to be able to). The Democratic Party has often taken for granted the support of such communities. What is ultimately needed, however, is for someone (much like Perry has already done) to come forward and say “You know what? You do matter. We need to pursue true equality. We need politicians who care about more than your vote.”

But, the real world seems so fixated on the vote, and not the representation that should come from it. All lives matter, and we all, as Americans, should be represented by people who want their constituencies’ voters to feel like people and not simply livestock to be herded up every 2-6 years, depending on the office. The tragedies that makes us say what lives matter will ease up when people are treated as people, and that stems from the communities they live in to the offices that represent them.