Hillary Clinton advised Black Lives Matter activists to get ready to change systems, not just hearts, in their campaign for racial justice. Video of Clinton's private meeting in New Hampshire on August 11, 2015 shows a somewhat testy exchange in which the Democratic presidential candidate lectures the activists on how to bring about real and lasting change.
Julius Jones of Black Lives Matter appears defensive about the advice from the former secretary of state, responding "If you don't tell black people what we need to do, then we won't tell y'all what you need to do." He suggested Clinton was engaging in "a form of victim-blaming."
Jones told Clinton that she was "in no uncertain way, partially responsible" for the mass incarceration of black American men because of her support for the Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Act signed into law by her husband, President Bill Clinton, in 1994. "America's first drug is free black labor," he said, equating U.S. prisons to the slave plantation system. Jones wanted to know what Clinton now thought about the "unintended consequences" of that law.
She said the United States "still has not recovered from its original sin" of slavery and "there has to be a reckoning." But she added there also "has to be some positive vision plan" to sell to people "on the sidelines." Clinton said she has been trying to put together a plan "that I can explain it and I can sell it, because in politics if you can't explain it and you can't sell it it stays on the shelf."
Clinton suggests the racial justice advocates could learn from the women's and gay rights movements that took advantage of " a moment in time" and "had a plan ready to go."
"You're going to have to come together as a movement and say here's what we want done about it," Clinton said. "Even for us sinners, find some common ground on agendas that can make a difference in peoples lives."
The video is posted in two parts. Here is the first:
Black Lives Matter activists have organized protests following several highly-controversial fatal police shootings of unarmed black men. Just taking to the streets without a plan to change a system won't be successful, Clinton said.
"I don't believe you change hearts," Clinton said. "I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You're not going to change every heart, you're not. But at the end of the day, we can do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them, to live up to their own God-given potential, to live safely without fear of violence in their own communities, to have a decent school, to have a decent house, to have a decent future. So, we can do it one of may ways. You can keep the movement going, which you have started, and through it you may actually change some hearts, but if that's all that happens we'll be back 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 abut this."
Watch part two of the Clinton Black Lives Matter video:
Clinton aides led the candidate away after about 15 minutes, but she promised the activists "I'm ready to do my part in any way that I can."
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