The presidential candidate met with founders of Campaign Zero and other delegates Friday, and discussed issues from mass incarceration to protests
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.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/09/hillary-clinton-meets-civil-rights-movement-leaders
