So, the more powerful the candidate, the less likely she is to be heckled.
Miriam
Black Lives Matter Arrives on Hillary Clinton's Doorstep
After being shut out of a New Hampshire event, activists meet with the
candidate
By Jamil Smith @JamilSmith Photo: Getty Images
Black Lives Matter activists met with Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton after they were denied entry to a scheduled campaign event
in Keene, New Hampshire, which they had planned to disrupt.
"The place we ended up arriving with her, in part, was a personal discussion
about what we think would work," said Julius Jones, founder of the Black
Lives Matter chapter in Worcester, Massachusetts, and one of the activists
who attended the meeting. "For her, she was saying that the policies that
they tried to implement in the eighties and nineties just didn't work, and
they had the unfortunate consequence of being enacted on black or brown
bodies more than anyone else." The Clinton campaign told the New Republic
that they are preparing a statement about today's meeting.
Clinton, according to Jones, felt as if the system would be more easily
changed structurally, through policy change-rather than tackling
anti-blackness in white people through widespread cultural change. "She said
that she didn't feel that you were going to be able to change hearts; that
you can change systems, and then maybe you can change hearts."
Jones and the rest of the group contended that it was the racism embedded
the policies that needed to be addressed as well. "She was not willing to
concede that the inherent anti-blackness in the policies that were enacted
to address problems is the cause of the problems we have today," Jones said.
"She didn't concede that."
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Led by Black Lives Matter Boston founder Daunasia Yancey, the activists went
to the event with intention of staging a protest similar to the disruption
of a Netroots Nation event featuring two Democratic hopefuls, former
Maryland governor Martin O'Malley and current U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont. O'Malley subsequently released a criminal justice reform plan that
responded to many of the protesters' concerns. But Sanders was interrupted
again on Saturday at an event in Seattle. Sanders's supporters have been
vocal in print and online articles, as well as social media, about their
consternation that their candidate, a vocal supporter of civil rights for
decades, was the target of Black Lives Matter protests. Many openly wondered
why Clinton was not herself a target. Activists and journalists, including
me, have defended the protests.
When they arrived at today's Clinton event, which focused on substance abuse
and the heroin epidemic, after first sharing their talking points and
questions exclusively with the New Republic, the activists found the
entrances closed by U.S. Secret Service who said the venue was at capacity.
Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who was in contact with the
five activists, later told the New Republic that the activists were
eventually let into an "overflow room." Following the event, Clinton met
with the group for about 15 minutes in a private meeting that they claim
turned contentious at times, and featured Clinton giving unsolicited advice
for the direction of the movement.
The group's remarks and questions varied a bit from the script they
prepared, which focused on criminal justice policies Clinton had supported
while her husband was president, but not in tone. "I asked specifically
about her and her family's involvement in the War on Drugs at home and
abroad, and the implications that has had on communities of color and
especially black people in terms of white supremacist violence," Yancey told
me in an interview after the meeting. "And I wanted to know how she felt
about her involvement in those processes."
Asked whether Clinton actually proposed policies in the meeting, Jones said,
"Not that I recall, no. In fact, I know that she didn't because she was
projecting that what the Black Lives Matter movement needs to do is X,Y, and
Z-to which we pushed back [to say] that it is not her place to tell the
Black Lives Matter movement or black people what to do, and that the real
work doesn't lie in the victim-blaming that that implies. And that was a
rift in the conversation." Jones said that the meeting concluded without any
aggression, and that the meeting was "respectful."
As first lady, Clinton lobbied on behalf of her husband's tough-on-crime
stance, telling a gathering of female police officers in 1994 that a pending
crime bill would "make a difference in your lives as police officers and in
the lives of the communities you serve." In The New Jim Crow, author
Michelle Alexander cites sentencing policies passed during the Clinton
administration as playing a decisive role in the explosion of the U.S.
prison population.
Clinton gave a major speech at Columbia University in April regarding
criminal justice reform, calling for an end to mass incarceration. The
former Secretary of State also noted that of a large percentage of the more
than two million Americans currently in prison are low-level offenders, many
of them simply waiting for trial. In late May, she not only signaled her
intention to make substance abuse a key issue in her campaign, but as the
Huffington Post reported, began drafting policy solutions. "The drug
epidemic, meth, pills in Iowa, and then I got to New Hampshire and at my
very first coffee shop meeting I heard about the heroin epidemic in New
Hampshire," Clinton said in a Google Hangout organized by her campaign in
May, adding, "This is tearing families apart, but it is below the surface.
People aren't talking about it, because it's something that is hard to deal
with."
"We were going in there with the understanding that we were combating
systems, but we're also encountering a person with a higher level of
responsibility for the way that the systems are today than most anyone in
the presidential race," Jones said. "We went in there with that
understanding, and chose to press her on her personal involvement and her
personal feelings about her involvement, and what she was going to do to
change it, given her husband's history of perpetuating mass incarceration
and the War on Drugs."
When asked whether the group accomplished its goals for the day, despite not
being able to have their say inside the event, Jones noted the presence of
the Secret Service that protects Clinton. "That is a bit of a game-changer
when it comes to personal safety," he said. "Whether or not a disruption
would have been more productive, I can't say-but I know that direct action
wins. It has won against Bernie Sanders, and it will push the other
candidates if it were to happen to them. But in this instance, what we
walked away with was the best that we could walk away with. I have no
regrets about it whatsoever. It happened the way it was supposed to happen
and it moved the needle more towards justice, for sure."
Yancey was called the "new face of Boston's civil rights movement" in a
February Boston magazine profile. An activist since the age of 13, Yancey
was trained largely in local LGBT youth organizations. She has led marches
and rallies in Boston, including one in November shortly after the
announcement that no charges would be filed in the shooting of Michael Brown
in Ferguson, Missouri. Fifty-one protesters were arrested.
Additional reporting by Steven Cohen.
Black Lives Matter Arrives on Hillary Clinton's Doorstep
After being shut out of a New Hampshire event, activists meet with the
candidate
By Jamil Smith @JamilSmith Photo: Getty Images
Black Lives Matter activists met with Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton after they were denied entry to a scheduled campaign event
in Keene, New Hampshire, which they had planned to disrupt.
"The place we ended up arriving with her, in part, was a personal discussion
about what we think would work," said Julius Jones, founder of the Black
Lives Matter chapter in Worcester, Massachusetts, and one of the activists
who attended the meeting. "For her, she was saying that the policies that
they tried to implement in the eighties and nineties just didn't work, and
they had the unfortunate consequence of being enacted on black or brown
bodies more than anyone else." The Clinton campaign told the New Republic
that they are preparing a statement about today's meeting.
Clinton, according to Jones, felt as if the system would be more easily
changed structurally, through policy change-rather than tackling
anti-blackness in white people through widespread cultural change. "She said
that she didn't feel that you were going to be able to change hearts; that
you can change systems, and then maybe you can change hearts."
Jones and the rest of the group contended that it was the racism embedded
the policies that needed to be addressed as well. "She was not willing to
concede that the inherent anti-blackness in the policies that were enacted
to address problems is the cause of the problems we have today," Jones said.
"She didn't concede that."
ADVERTISEMENT
Led by Black Lives Matter Boston founder Daunasia Yancey, the activists went
to the event with intention of staging a protest similar to the disruption
of a Netroots Nation event featuring two Democratic hopefuls, former
Maryland governor Martin O'Malley and current U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont. O'Malley subsequently released a criminal justice reform plan that
responded to many of the protesters' concerns. But Sanders was interrupted
again on Saturday at an event in Seattle. Sanders's supporters have been
vocal in print and online articles, as well as social media, about their
consternation that their candidate, a vocal supporter of civil rights for
decades, was the target of Black Lives Matter protests. Many openly wondered
why Clinton was not herself a target. Activists and journalists, including
me, have defended the protests.
When they arrived at today's Clinton event, which focused on substance abuse
and the heroin epidemic, after first sharing their talking points and
questions exclusively with the New Republic, the activists found the
entrances closed by U.S. Secret Service who said the venue was at capacity.
Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who was in contact with the
five activists, later told the New Republic that the activists were
eventually let into an "overflow room." Following the event, Clinton met
with the group for about 15 minutes in a private meeting that they claim
turned contentious at times, and featured Clinton giving unsolicited advice
for the direction of the movement.
The group's remarks and questions varied a bit from the script they
prepared, which focused on criminal justice policies Clinton had supported
while her husband was president, but not in tone. "I asked specifically
about her and her family's involvement in the War on Drugs at home and
abroad, and the implications that has had on communities of color and
especially black people in terms of white supremacist violence," Yancey told
me in an interview after the meeting. "And I wanted to know how she felt
about her involvement in those processes."
Asked whether Clinton actually proposed policies in the meeting, Jones said,
"Not that I recall, no. In fact, I know that she didn't because she was
projecting that what the Black Lives Matter movement needs to do is X,Y, and
Z-to which we pushed back [to say] that it is not her place to tell the
Black Lives Matter movement or black people what to do, and that the real
work doesn't lie in the victim-blaming that that implies. And that was a
rift in the conversation." Jones said that the meeting concluded without any
aggression, and that the meeting was "respectful."
As first lady, Clinton lobbied on behalf of her husband's tough-on-crime
stance, telling a gathering of female police officers in 1994 that a pending
crime bill would "make a difference in your lives as police officers and in
the lives of the communities you serve." In The New Jim Crow, author
Michelle Alexander cites sentencing policies passed during the Clinton
administration as playing a decisive role in the explosion of the U.S.
prison population.
Clinton gave a major speech at Columbia University in April regarding
criminal justice reform, calling for an end to mass incarceration. The
former Secretary of State also noted that of a large percentage of the more
than two million Americans currently in prison are low-level offenders, many
of them simply waiting for trial. In late May, she not only signaled her
intention to make substance abuse a key issue in her campaign, but as the
Huffington Post reported, began drafting policy solutions. "The drug
epidemic, meth, pills in Iowa, and then I got to New Hampshire and at my
very first coffee shop meeting I heard about the heroin epidemic in New
Hampshire," Clinton said in a Google Hangout organized by her campaign in
May, adding, "This is tearing families apart, but it is below the surface.
People aren't talking about it, because it's something that is hard to deal
with."
"We were going in there with the understanding that we were combating
systems, but we're also encountering a person with a higher level of
responsibility for the way that the systems are today than most anyone in
the presidential race," Jones said. "We went in there with that
understanding, and chose to press her on her personal involvement and her
personal feelings about her involvement, and what she was going to do to
change it, given her husband's history of perpetuating mass incarceration
and the War on Drugs."
When asked whether the group accomplished its goals for the day, despite not
being able to have their say inside the event, Jones noted the presence of
the Secret Service that protects Clinton. "That is a bit of a game-changer
when it comes to personal safety," he said. "Whether or not a disruption
would have been more productive, I can't say-but I know that direct action
wins. It has won against Bernie Sanders, and it will push the other
candidates if it were to happen to them. But in this instance, what we
walked away with was the best that we could walk away with. I have no
regrets about it whatsoever. It happened the way it was supposed to happen
and it moved the needle more towards justice, for sure."
Yancey was called the "new face of Boston's civil rights movement" in a
February Boston magazine profile. An activist since the age of 13, Yancey
was trained largely in local LGBT youth organizations. She has led marches
and rallies in Boston, including one in November shortly after the
announcement that no charges would be filed in the shooting of Michael Brown
in Ferguson, Missouri. Fifty-one protesters were arrested.
Additional reporting by Steven Cohen.
This article comes from The New republic.
