Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton met with activists from the “Black Lives Matter” movement and lent her advice on how to change policies instead of just “changing hearts.”
“Look, I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate,” Clinton told members of the group after a town hall meeting in New Hampshire last week.
Clinton also met privately with members of the group’s Boston and Worchester, Massachusetts chapters briefly after the event that was focused in on drug addiction. Originally, the activists had planned to disrupt the event, as they have done to other events recently, but this time, they didn’t arrive in time, according to the Chicago Tribune.
As activists asked Clinton about her role as first lady, senator and secretary of state in the war on drugs and policies, videos were taken that have streamed across the web.
Although Clinton was accused of “victim blaming” by on activist, Julius Jones, she firmly pushed back replying that systematic racism cannot be solved without changes in education policies, housing and criminal justice.
“You can keep the movement going, which you have stated, and through it you may actually change some hearts. But if that’s all that happens we’ll be back here in 10 years having the same conversation because we will not have all the changes that you deserve to see happen in your lifetime,” she said.
Clinton said that she wants to give people real tools to utilize in order to change policies and truly understand versus asking only white Americans to pay lip service to the movement.
“You’re going to have to come together as a movement and say ‘Here’s what we want done about it,’ because you can get lip service from as many white people as you can pack in Yankee Stadium,” she said. “That’s not enough, at least in my book.”