Hillary Clinton spoke at an African American church in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Sunday, in a visit delayed a week by protests over the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott. “Too many African American families have been in the same tragic situation that the Scott family has found themselves,” Clinton said, going on to also lament the deaths of police officers on the job. The closest Clinton got to electoral politics was late in the speech:
Now, there are some out there who see this as a moment to command the flames of resentment and division. Who want to exploit people's fears, even though it means tearing our nation even further apart. They say that all of our problems will be solved simply by more ‘law and order.’ As if the systemic racism plaguing our country doesn't exist. Now, of course we need safe neighborhoods, no one is against that. Of course, we need communities that are free from the epidemic of gun violence, of course we need that. But we also need justice and dignity and equality, and we can have both. This is not an either-or question for America.
It’s not real difficult to read between those lines. But far more of the speech was dedicated to the impact police violence has on communities and, in particular, children. Clinton spoke about—and then welcomed and hugged—nine-year-old Zianna Oliphant, whose emotional speech to the Charlotte city council went viral last week.
I'm a grandmother, and like every grandmother I worry about the safety and security of my grandchildren, but my worries are not the same as black grandmothers. They have different, and deeper fears about the world that their grandchildren face. It makes my heart ache, when kids like Zianna, are going through this and trying to make sense of the absolutely senseless. I know how I would feel. I wouldn't be able to stand it if my grandchildren had to be scared and worried the way too many children across our country feel right now. But because my grandchildren are white, because they are the grandchildren of a former president and secretary of state, let's be honest here – they won't face the kind of fear that we heard from the young children testifying before the city council.
You know, every child deserves the same sense of security, every child deserves the same hope. They should not be facing fear, they should be learning and growing, imagining who they can be, and what their contributions to our country could be as well. We've got to take action, we've got to start now, not tomorrow, not next year, now. We know we can't solve all these problems over night, which means we don't have a moment to lose.
Clinton also cited specific policies like Rep. Jim Clyburn’s “plan to put 10 percent of our federal funds into 20 percent of the communities that have generational poverty for 30 years or more,” and called for an end to the school-to-prison pipeline, investment in education, training police in de-escalation, gun law reforms, and “fix[ing] a system where too many black parents are taken from their kids and imprisoned for minor offenses.”
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