Hillary Clinton will meet with members of Black Lives Matter and other affiliated groups Friday at the National Council of Negro Women in Washington, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the meeting.
The Clinton campaign would not list who will attend the meeting, but the aide characterized the meeting as “important” and said that people are traveling from across the country to attend.
One known attendee: Deray McKesson, a well known and outspoken racial activists with a sizable Twitter following.
Members of Campaign Zero, an organization affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement working to end police brutality, will also attend the meeting.
“We sort of see this meeting as part of an ongoing conversation that we are having with different parts of the movement and other stake holders, activists and people who have been working on criminal justice issues and sentencing reform,” the aide said.
The aide added, “This is something we wanted to do from the beginning in terms of reaching out to different people, stakeholders, activists and people working on criminal justice reform. Hillary Clinton believes that it is important to engage a range of people on policy.”
Clinton has made criminal justice reform a priority in her presidential campaign. Her first speech as a candidate was on addressing police brutality with body cameras and in July, Clinton told a largely black audience in South Carolina that it is time for the United States to confront “systemic racism.”
But Clinton’s overtures to the community of activists have not been universally well received. During an event outside St. Louis in June, the presidential candidate said, “All lives matter,” a phrase seen as a slight to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Clinton and Black Lives Matter activists also had a frank and at times tense discussion behind closed doors in New Hampshire in August. Though the activists appreciated Clinton meeting with them, they told reporters after that they never heard “a reflection on (Clinton’s) part in perpetuating white supremacist violence” and that Clinton “gave the answer she wanted to give.”
But Clinton has not been the most targeted Democratic presidential hopeful to feel the brunt of Black Lives Matters protests. Seconds after Vermont independent senator Bernie Sanders took the stage at an event in Seattle in August, a dozen protesters from the city’s Black Lives Matter chapter jumped barricades around the stage and grabbed the microphone from the senator. They eventually shut down the event.
