Khalif criticized Clinton for supporting the 1994 crime bill that was signed into law by her husband. He also charged that the Democratic Party largely ignored the BLM movement as the party put together its convention platform.

Khalif said some of Clinton’s rhetoric on the campaign trail has been patronizing….

…Khalif said Republican nominee Donald Trump is a “racist bigot” who won’t win votes from his community. But he said Clinton still has a chance to keep young black voters from casting ballots elsewhere or sitting out the election.

He said Clinton should specifically make it clear that she will expect authorities to fire and prosecute police officers who are captured on video shooting unarmed men and women.

Black Lives Matter protesters want to send message to Clinton

(I’d add) or engaging in other unlawful and violent activities.

Hate Bill’s ’94 crime bill. I like the sum total of his body work but I do not approve of that bill. At all. She supported it too. Yes, I imagine political expediency was involved. I also like to think that their (and many, many others) mistakes in this huge, deep, important matter were at least in part innocent on their part.

Hear me out here. I’m letting not them off the hook. Far from it. I’m trying to understand how people I have so much respect for could be so soulless and dumb. This is what I’ve got so far:

Ignorance that was born of being in a bubble. Even when Hillary and Bill were mixing it up with folks of different backgrounds than themselves they were still in a bit of a bubble. They both came from humble backgrounds to be sure but they both seem to come from people with j-o-b-s. They also have the lucky accident of being white going for them in a-l-l sorts of situations. They achieved a middle class lifestyle while they were still young. …And -most importantly here- hung out with other people on similar paths, with similar career trajectories.

The Clintons weren’t exposed to things like the idea of DWB. I’m not saying they didn’t hang out with black people. I’m saying the black people -and probably all of the people that they hung out- with were successful, upwardly mobile types themselves. Types, who for various reason, might not have wanted to make a big deal of race-related things that happened to them. If a DWB story did come up it might have been something that seemed (in the context of circles who do not know, experience &/or discuss these things) like they were isolated incidents and not an entrenched, malignant problem.

I’m just speculating, I don’t know the specifics really but we can all agree it wasn’t something that came up a lot in progressive, left or Democratic Party politics until recently. Bill and Hillary were simply not acquainted with the instant turmoil and economic turmoil that an arrest or incarceration causes a family. The ensuing devastation to a community when many, many incidents are concentrated within a certain population wasn’t on their radar. It should have been but it wasn’t.

Like many who do not see the day-to-day effects of heavy, military-style policing on a given community, the Clintons might have found it hard to fathom that Officers of the Law were doing anything but ‘enforcing the peace.’ I imagine the thinking simply goes along the lines of, ‘the police are there to protect us, right? So the police are right.’

For someone who is not already exposed to these realities it must have been hard to believe that, for some Americans, the police aren’t always right and the U.S. justice system is very, very unjust.

With today’s cell phone video reporting and media attention on huge demonstrations in support of #BlackLivesMatter , it’s probably a concept someone like Bill or Hillary is much more familiar with now than they have been in the past.

Hillary’s a wonk. In the parlance of recent times, she’s a total geek for that shit. When she picks her determined course of action to address a problem, she back it up with a whole bunch of research and clearly spelled out programs. That’s who she is.

She also has spent a great deal of her life working in service to public sphere. She has championed a lot of programs that are all about helping raise people up. She is the person to champion the cause of making the justice system fair and just. We just need to make sure she is well-informed so that when she creates a plan it helps, rather than hurts.

Short version, hated Bill’s bill but I like his body of work so I choose to think he’d do it different if he knew then what he knows now. Same goes for his wife’s support of his crime bill.

So get out there and make sure Hillary knows what is happening with institutional injustice in the criminal/penal system kids!