New Video Shows Hillary Meet With Black Lives Matter Activists — and Things Briefly Get Tense

Newly-released video shows Hillary Clinton's meeting with the Boston chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement earlier this month after the activists were initially denied entry to a campaign event.

The video shows Clinton meet backstage in New Hampshire with what appears to be a group of three activists. One of the activists compares the prison system in the U.S. to the plantation system.

"America's first drug is free black labor. And turning black bodies into profit," the activist tells Clinton as she nods her head, seemingly agreeing. "The mass incarceration system mirrors an awful lot like the prison. The prison plantation system. It's a similar thread. And until someone takes that message and speaks that truth to white people in this country, so that we can actually take on anti-blackness as a founding problem in this problem."

The activist suggested that the mass incarceration of individuals is motivated by money before asking Clinton a question about "what in your heart has changed that is going to change the direction of this country?"

"What in you, not your platform, not what you're supposed to say, how do you actually feel that is different than you did before?" the activist asked.

Clinton said that it was a "very thoughtful question" that deserved a "thoughtful answer."

"I can only tell you that I feel very committed to and responsible for doing whatever I can," she said, before noting she has spent much of her career focused on kids.

"I think there has to be a reckoning. I agree with that. But I also think there has to be some positive vision and plan that we can move forward," she said, advising the activists that they need a specific list of demands to ask politicians for.

"All I'm saying is your analysis is totally fair," Clinton continued. "It's historically fair, it's psychologically fair, it's economically fair. But you're going to have to come together as a movement and say here's what we want done about it. Because you can get lip service from as many white people you can pack into Yankee Stadium and a million more like it who are going to say, 'We get it, we get it. We are going to be nicer.' That's not enough in my book."

In a separate clip published online, things briefly got tense after the activist tells Clinton that this has always been a "white problem of violence."

"There's not much that we can do to stop the violence against us," he told Clinton.

The Democratic frontrunner pushed back.

"Respectfully, if that is your position, then I will only talk to white people about how we are going to deal with these very real problems," she shot back.

"That's not what I mean," the activist replied. "But, what you just said was a form of victim blaming. You were saying what the Black Lives Matter movement needs to do to change white hearts is to—."

Clinton said that she doesn't believe in changing all hearts, but instead changing laws and allocation of resources.

"You change the way systems operate," she said.

The video was released by activists the same day Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders announced he would meet with a prominent Black Lives Matter activist.

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