Hillary Clinton engaged a Black Lives Matter protester named Ashley Williams at a private fundraiser. Williams was holding a sign that quoted a speech Clinton gave 20 years ago when she was First Lady. Clinton was then supporting her husband’s crime bill, which took particular aim at gang violence. “We need to take these people on. They are often connected to big drug cartels. They are not just gangs of kids anymore,” Clinton said in the speech. “They are often the kinds of kids that are called super-predators.”
Protester Williams asserted she was not a “super-predator.” And she was not one of the gang-members that Clinton was talking about 20 years ago. But the Black Lives Matter argument is that those laws aimed at draconian incarceration of ‘super-predators’ have resulted instead in mass incarceration of people who hardly fall into that category. Casualties of war, in essence. The Williams sign read “We must bring them to heel”, a quote from Clinton’s speech. Clinton seemed game to take on the issue, saying “Well, can I talk? And then maybe you can listen to what I say.” But it didn’t go much further.
