Hillary Clinton And Black Lives Matter Feel Each Other Out

WASHINGTON -- Activists DeRay Mckesson  and Brittany Packnett  recently spoke with Hillary Clinton’s policy director and others in the Clinton camp about police reform, criminal justice and other issues of importance to the black community, several people familiar with the chat told The Huffington Post.

The conversation took place about two weeks ago, sources said, and included at least one other figure from the Black Lives Matter movement besides Mckesson and Packnett. Over the past year, Mckesson -- a former teacher and school administrator in Minneapolis -- has become  one of the most visible Black Lives Matter activists and has documented protests across the country. Packnett, a Teach For America executive and former congressional staffer , is a member of both the Ferguson Commission  in Missouri and President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing . 

Mckesson has been openly critical of various presidential candidates, and has sought to hold them accountable for the way they've seldom addressed the unique issues facing black Americans. After attending Clinton’s official 2016 presidential campaign announcement in June, Mckesson left the event feeling underwhelmed.

Black Lives Matter is gradually making systemic racism a campaign issue for the Democratic presidential hopefuls. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is running as a Democrat, on Sunday introduced a policy platform targeting structural anti-black racism. O'Malley has rolled out a framework for criminal justice reform , although it's less explicit in its discussion of racism than Sanders' platform.

Clinton, however, has not yet produced a comprehensive agenda focusing on police violence or mass incarceration -- issues that disproportionately affect black Americans -- even though she is currently the most popular candidate among black voters, with a favorability rate of 68 percent.

“In the next six months, up to the primaries, we really want to be challenging each candidate about their platforms, or lack thereof, specifically relating to a black agenda,” Cullors said. “We’ve gone far too long with president after president who doesn’t center the needs of black people -- and then, in fact, creates policies that completely decimate black communities.”

“Even after a year of protests and organizing, we still aren’t seeing the reforms necessary to ensure that black people are going to be safe,” Cullors went on. “We want to see something that’s very concrete, and on our end we’ll do our work to continue to lift up the issues that we think are most important, that are impacting black communities today.”

Clinton met with activists from the Boston chapter of Black Lives Matter on Tuesday after they were shut out of a campaign event in Keene, New Hampshire. The activists had planned to disrupt the event, a forum on substance abuse, in a manner similar to how Black Lives Matter demonstrators in Phoenix interrupted a Netroots Nation town hall  last month. But in Keane, the activists were directed to an overflow room by U.S. Secret Service after being told the event was at capacity.

One goal of the confrontation, according to Cullors, was to challenge Clinton’s role in facilitating mass incarceration -- something critics say Clinton has done in part by supporting tough-on-crime initiatives.

“How do we know what she’s saying is going to translate into real-life changes for black people? We haven’t seen a racial justice agenda from the Hillary campaign,” she said. “We haven’t seen a criminal justice reform agenda from the Hillary campaign.”

Cullors said she doesn’t believe the activists were shut out of the Keane event because it was at capacity.

“They found out there was going to be a disruption, saw people with ‘Black Lives Matter’ shirts on, shut them out and then strategically put them in the overflow room,” she said. “It was a very political move. [Clinton] understood that... she would have gotten shut down, and she needed to play her cards right -- so she decided to meet with us. And that’s fine.”

The group met with Clinton for about 15 minutes after the forum ended. It was a short chat that mainly consisted of the former secretary of state making suggestions about how to advance the movement -- but not proposing policies that would address the movement’s concerns, according to Julius Jones , one of the activists in attendance.

“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 told The New Republic  -- a reference to Clinton’s support of a 1994 crime bill  signed into law by her husband, then-President Bill Clinton. “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.”

Democratic candidates aren't the only ones on whom Black Lives Matter activists hope to make an impact.

“Obviously, on the GOP side, we’re going to be challenging the ways in which the GOP has related to black folks for decades,” Cullors said. “We’re going to challenge [former Florida Gov. Jeb] Bush and the regime that he comes from, both his father and his brother who drove black lives into the ground. And we’re going to challenge all the Republicans -- the ones who are most visible.”

Packnett, one of the activists who spoke with Clinton's policy director a couple of weeks ago, told HuffPost that the current political moment is one of great potential.

"There's a critical opportunity before presidential candidates right now to not only engage with marginalized communities, but also to act on our behalf and act with our needs in mind," Packnett said. "I firmly believe that the opportunity has been created due to socially and politically involved people of color, particularly young people of color."

She told HuffPost that today's levels of social and racial inequity have been centuries in the making, and that the next president must set the country on a path to repair those inequalities.

"Incrementalism wouldn't be enough," she said.

Bush was interrupted by Black Lives Matter activists at an event in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Cullors said the group also plans to confront the real estate mogul Donald Trump, who is running for president as a Republican -- even though Trump has claimed that any activists who try to take his mic will be met with physical violence .

“This is coming from [someone] who may lead the country,” Cullors said. “I think it’s important as organizers that... no matter who the candidate is, Democratic or Republican, we have to challenge both sides.”  

This story has been updated to include information about Clinton's April 2014 remarks.