Claire Bernish / (ANTIMEDIA) Hillary Clinton has once again been cornered by her own past words — and, thus, forced to deliver an apology. At a private campaign fundraising function Wednesday night, two Black Lives Matter activists confronted Clinton with a sign bearing a portion of the candidate’s statement from 1996. Hillary had discussed a startlingly biased, but now-debunked, theory about high crime rates:
“They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy, we can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”
Ashley Williams, a 23-year-old activist from Charlotte, interrupted the event, concerned about Clinton’s inconsistent — and, really, ever-changing — stances on mass incarceration and crime. In order to attend the event held at a private residence, Williams and her unidentified colleague shelled out $500. Though attendees praised the former secretary of state for her strong record of racial justice, Williams wanted to point out Clinton’s chameleon-like shift over the years.
“I wanted to bring her to confront her own words,” the activist told the Huffington Post after the event. “We did this because we wanted to make sure that black people are paying attention to her record, and we want to know [which] Hillary we are getting.”
In a statement before the event, Williams said:
“Hillary Clinton has a pattern of throwing the Black community under the bus when it serves her politically. She called our boys ‘super-predators’ in ‘96, then she race-baited when running against Obama in ‘08, now she’s a lifelong civil rights activist. I just want to know which Hillary is running for President, the one from ‘96, ‘08, or the new Hillary?”
In August, an activist confronted Clinton about her direct contribution to the epidemic of mass incarceration, equating the issue to the “prison plantation system.” In a video released by GOOD Magazine, reported by Anti-Media, which featured footage of that interaction, a subtitle explained Hillary’s role:
“Hillary Clinton lobbied Congress to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Bill Clinton signed the act into law in 1994 … The largest crime bill in history, it provided $9.7 billion in prison funding. From 1992 to 2000, the amount of prisoners in the U.S. increased almost 60%.”
Now, the Land of the Free houses the largest prison population on the planet — more people, statistically, than countries the U.S. government criticizes and derides for a lack of freedom.
Williams felt the need to emphasize the difference (if not outright hypocrisy) in Clinton’s past actions with her present campaign platform and her vows to work on mass incarceration. This might be an impossible task.
As The Intercept reported in July, two of Hillary’s top campaign donors are the largest private prison contractors in the world: Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Geo Group. How Clinton expects the world to believe what she says, when all evidence points to her devotion to private prisons — and her past lobbying for the bill which allowed them to morph into a behemoth machine — is up in the air. As Anti-Media previously reported, five Clinton campaign “Hillraisers” — essentially super-lobbyists — received lobbying fees from CCA.
Though mass incarceration certainly spans all races, its heavily lopsided impact on the black community is clear. Activists like Williams are attempting to counter media coverage which seems hell bent on touting Clinton’s claims she’s done good for their communities — and ignore increasing malcontent as awareness of her true record grows.
Rather than address Williams’ pertinent queries, Clinton seemed baffled — and Secret Service agents reportedly swooped in to remove the activist from the premises, whom other attendees called “rude.” However uncomfortable such questions might be for the former secretary of state, they must be addressed.
In a written response to the Washington Post on Thursday, Clinton responded somewhat to the confrontation, in part saying:
“Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today.”
Williams explained to the Post why she chose to point out Hillary’s ‘super-predator’ comment above everything else:
“I thought that quote was important not only because it was her own words, but because that was her pathologizing black youth as these criminal, animal people. And we know that’s not right and we know that’s really racist.”
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