Hillary Clinton met with prominent leaders of the new civil rights movement on Friday, including founders of the influential Campaign Zero, telling them she wanted to end the use of private prisons and hinting at the shape her long-awaited policy platform on criminal justice may take.
Members of the delegation told the Guardian that discussions at the Washington DC meeting were productive and wide-ranging, touching on issues from mass incarceration to the policing of protests.
“She [Clinton] was open to being pushed, and I think, in the end, she was reflective,” said DeRay McKesson, a co-founder of Campaign Zero and one of the most high-profile voices to emerge from protests in Ferguson, Missouri beginning last August.
Although Clinton did not provide concrete policy initiatives and gave no indication of when her criminal-justice platform would be announced, McKesson noted she made strident remarks on prison reform.
“She said that she will end [private prisons],” he said – something she has called for publicly and is already a part of her current criminal justice platform. “She said she is trying to figure out how to end federal funding going to them, ending them that way. And [she gave] sort of a broad acknowledgement that the conditions in prison need to be different.”
The multi-billion dollar private prison industry has come under increasing criticism from rights activists, who point to poor conditions and the disproportionate incarceration of young, black males in for-profit facilities.
On Thursday, an immigration activist interrupted Clinton at an event in Washington DC to protest against her accepting campaign money from corporations that run private prisons, which are used to detain thousands of migrants. A report by the Intercept found that two of Clinton’s top fundraisers were lobbyists for the largest private prison companies in the US.
Outlawing the government supply of military equipment to police departments is a central demand of Campaign Zero, after the militarised police crackdown against protesters in Ferguson drew widespread criticism and sharp focus on the government program that permits their sale to local forces.
McKesson said that Clinton indicated she was in favor of demilitarizing the police. “But in terms of what the nuances are, I think that we will be waiting for the platform,” he said.
Attendees also included Brittany Packnett and Johnetta “Netta” Elzie, both of whom also rose to national recognition during the protests in Ferguson following the fatal police shooting of 18 year-old Michael Brown in August 2014. The activists had been preparing for the meeting for days, McKesson said, poring over Clinton’s remarks on race and criminal justice to “talk about policy in really deep ways”.
As a presidential candidate, Clinton has delivered several powerful speeches on race and the criminal justice system. Her criminal justice platform recommends reforming mandatory minimum sentence laws for low-level nonviolent offenses as well as improving transparency and accountability through body cameras and more stringent use of force standards.
This was not Clinton’s first meeting with members of the loosely defined Black Lives Matter movement in recent months. In New Hampshire, she met briefly with members from Massachusetts who had been prevented from disrupting a campaign event there.
In a tense but frank conversation that was captured on video, the activists accused Clinton of supporting criminal justice policies enacted by her husband’s administration – calling them “your mistakes” – including the draconian 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which is widely argued to have led to the over incarceration of African Americans.
Asked how her views had changed, Clinton said: “I don’t believe you change hearts, you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.”
In a short video posted to Pericope by McKesson straight after Friday’s meeting, Clinton can be seen smiling and hugging members of the delegation, a marked contrast to her demeanour after the impromptu New Hampshire meeting.
Campaign Zero launched in August, proposing a raft of reforms at the federal, state and local level aimed at reducing officer-involved shootings and restricting police use of force. The activists called for the outlawing of the supply of military equipment to police departments, the institution of training to prevent racial bias and forcing the US government to keep a comprehensive record of fatal incidents.
Their proposals followed a series of disruptions of presidential campaign events by protesters affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, who demanded that candidates propose solutions to the spate of killings of African Americans by police and decades of criminal justice practices that have disproportionately affected communities of color.
Such disruptions have succeeded in pushing criminal justice reform and racial equality the fore in the race for the Democratic nomination – candidates can expect to be asked about such subjects in next week’s first Democratic debate.
After twice being interrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters at campaign events, Clinton’s closest challenger, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, moved closer to their key positions.
In August, the Sanders campaign unveiled a racial justice platform that recommended systemic police reform, including the demilitarisation of local police forces and federal funding for body cameras. The platform also calls for a ban on private prisons and elimination of mandatory minimum sentencing.
The former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who was also interrupted by activists at an event in July, has also recommended police reforms, including mandatory data collection on officer-involved shootings and establishing a national use of force standard.
O’Malley has also called for abolishing the death penalty, as he did as governor in Maryland, and reducing the nation’s prison population.
