Black Lives Matter Activists Confront Hillary Clinton
Five members of the Massachusetts faction of
the Black Lives Matter movement who weren’t allowed into a New Hampshire
event got a one-on-one with the presidential hopeful and grilled her on
mass incarceration and police brutality.
Hillary Clinton talks with several members of the Black Lives Matter movement after an event in New Hampshire Aug. 11, 2015.
MSNBC Screenshot
Black Lives Matter activists have now become infamous for rushing the
stages of presidential hopefuls and turning what would have been a
rally for votes come election time into a rally for justice.
Turns out, Black Lives Matter activists who were denied entrance into
a New Hampshire event featuring Hillary Clinton Aug. 11 got a
one-on-one chance with the Democratic hopeful that day to grill her on
racial issues, including the mass incarceration of blacks and police
brutality.
In a newly released video, initially posted to YouTube before being quickly taken down and shown exclusively on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, five members of the Massachusetts faction of the Black Lives Matter movement hold Clinton's feet to the flame.
Activist Julius Jones told Clinton that mass incarceration hasn't
worked in this country, a sentiment with which Clinton agreed. He then
went on to note several policies that haven't worked, including the war
on drugs: "America's first drug is free black labor and turning black
bodies into profit, and the mass-incarceration system mirrors the prison
plantation system."
For almost three full minutes, Jones walked the Democratic hopeful
through issues he believes are hurting the black community, before a man
who appeared to be with Clinton told the group it was running low on
time.
Clinton explained that she was working hard to change what she called
"the country's original sin" and noted that the work for her was trying
to figure out ways to "explain and sell" change "because in politics,"
she told the activists, "if you can't explain it and you can't sell it,
it stays on the shelf."
Things took a turn when Clinton asked the activists to explain policy changes they wanted to see enacted.
"I stand here in your space and I say this as respectfully as I can,
'If you don't tell black people what we need to do, then we won't tell
you all what to do,' " Jones said. "What I mean to say is, this is and
has always been a white problem of violence. There's not much that we
can do to stop the violence against us."
"Respectfully," Clinton answered, "if that is your position, then I
will only talk to white people about how we are going to deal with these
very real problems."
"That's not what I mean," Jones said. He added, "But what you just
said was a form of victim blaming. You were saying what the Black Lives
Matter movement needs to do to change white hearts is to ... "
Clinton told them that she isn't interested in changing hearts but,
rather, policy. "You can keep the movement going, which you have
started, and through that you might change some hearts," she said. "But
if that's all that happens, we'll be back here in 10 years having the
same conversation because we will not have all of the changes that you
deserve to see happen in your lifetime because of your willingness to
get out there and talk about this."
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