Two Black Lives Matter activists were so eager to press presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on her record in regards to black youth they paid $500 to attend a private fundraiser, only to get kicked out shortly after it started.
In a video posted to YouTube yesterday, Clinton drones on about body cameras as Black Lives Matter organizer Ashley Williams unfurls a banner with a quote from Clinton in 1996 in reference to at-risk youth: “We have to bring them to heel.”
Williams – a queer black organizer for BLM and “Black-Palestinian Solidarity,” and a student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte – pushed her way to the front of the crowd of roughly 100 that gathered at a private residence in Charleston. As her accomplice recorded, she brandished the banner behind Clinton, who eventually notices Williams and reads her sign out loud, The Huffington Post reports.
“We want you to apologize for mass incarceration,” Williams said, interrupting Clinton.
“Ok, we’ll talk about that …,” Clinton said as Williams again interrupted.
“I’m not a superpredator,” Williams said, referring again to Clinton’s controversial 1996 remarks.
“Can I talk, and maybe you can listen to what I say?” Clinton asked.
Williams continued to talk over the Democratic presidential frontrunner, who then diverted her attention back to her more important guests as the Secret Service attempted to usher Williams away.
Williams resisted, and continued to talk over Clinton.
“Whoa!” an audience member shouts. “You’re being rude!”
Others booed.
“You called black people superpredators,” Williams shouts at Clinton, “that’s rude!”
“Do you want to hear the facts, or just talk?” Clinton shot back.
“I know that you called black people super predators in 1994, please explain your record,” Williams continued.
Each time Clinton opened her mouth, Williams shouted “you owe black people an apology,” or “explain it.”
Security then removed Williams from the gathering as Clinton scrambled to counter her comments.
“Nobody has ever asked me before, you are the first person to ask me,” Clinton said. “I’m happy to address it, but you’re the first person to ask me, dear.”
Williams made her exit, and Clinton turned back to the crowd.
“Ok, now back to the issues,” she said to applause from the nearly all white guests.
“I wanted her to confront her own words,” Williams told The Huffington Post afterwards. “We did this because we wanted to make sure that black people are paying attention to her record, and we want to know what Hillary we are getting.”
Williams referenced President Bill Clinton’s track record on crime as evidence of a Clinton bias against blacks.
“Hillary Clinton has a pattern of throwing the Black community under the bus when it serves her politically,” Williams said in a statement before the event, according to the Post. “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?”
A February profile on Williams featured by the Levine Museum of the New South reports Williams “is currently a Master’s Candidate in a program for Ethics and Applied Philosophy at UNCC,” where she’s “been an active participant around Black Lives Matter, Black-Palestinian Solidarity, and ending police violence in Charlotte.”
“Ashley works to decentralize whiteness and build community in non-colonial ways,” according to the museum’s website. “Ashley’s interests include intersectionality, women’s gender and sexuality studies, and black liberation.”
The other protester who recorded the incident was not identified.
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