Hillary Clinton Has Controversial Closed-Door Meeting With “Black Lives Matter” Activists

Washington, DC — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently met privately activists from the “Black Lives Matter” campaign, and during the meeting she suggested that the activists need to have strong policy goals if they want to create real change. She used the women’s right movement and the gay rights movements as a comparison, but this did not seem to go well.

In a video, captured by GOOD Magazine, activist Julius Jones took issue with what Clinton said and told her: “This is and has always been a white problem of violence. There’s not much that we [black people] can do to stop the violence against us.”

Clinton responded: “Respectfully, if that is your position, then I will only talk to white people about the very real problems.”

Jones continues: “That’s not what I mean. What you just said was a form of victim-blaming. What you were saying was that what the Black Lives Matter movement needs to do to change white hearts…”

Clinton then replies: “I don’t believe you change hearts. You change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.”

She continues, “You can keep the movement going, and through it, you may change actually 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 have because of your willingness to talk about this.”

Later in the meeting Jones asked Clinton about tough crime policies that were established during her husband’s presidency that nowadays target blacks and hispanics at a disproportionate rate.

She responded: “It’s important to remember… that there was a very serious crime wave that was impacting primarily communities of color and poor people. And part of it was that there was just not enough attention paid. So you know, you could argue that people who were trying to address that – including my husband, when he was president – were responding to the very real concerns of people in the communities themselves.”

Clinton also highlighted her support and advocacy in the past families, specifically children. She also pointed out that her current campaign is making big efforts to address racial discrimination.

She told the group, “Let’s get an agenda that addresses the problem as much as we can – because then you can be for something, in addition to getting people to have to admit that they are part of a long history in our country of either proposing, supporting, condoning discrimination, segregation, etc.”

Watch Part I of the meeting:

Watch Part II of the meeting: