Today, The Washington Post has an article telling about Clinton speaking out about Ferguson at a speech today at the Nexenta OpenSDx Summit in San Francisco.
Here's a brief video of part of Clinton's speech voicing her opinion on what happened and is happening.
Recap of article below
Copied from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
By Nia-Malika Henderson August 29 at 11:59 AM
Dogged for weeks by progressives for not speaking out on Ferguson, Hillary Clinton finally spoke, and her remarks were bold. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Progressives really, really, really wanted to hear from Hillary Clinton on the events in Ferguson, Mo., where an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by a white police officer on Aug. 9, sparking days of unrest in that small city outside St. Louis and elsewhere.
Al Sharpton said he wanted to smoke Clinton out on Ferguson and suggested that if she ran in 2016, he would be a thorn in her side on civil rights issues.
MSNBC host Chris Hayes thought it was “bizarre” that Clinton hadn’t at least weighed in with a statement on the incident, even though she hasn’t made a habit of offering up opinions on much of anything outside of formal interviews and speeches. (She didn’t release a statement on the beheading of Jim Foley by ISIS, for instance)
When she finally decided that pretending that nothing had happened was no help to her own image, Clinton made an effort to attack the real issue of what is happening and not just leave her message as a feelingless list of numbers and statistics highlighted for anger and political gain.
Imagine what we would feel and what we would do if white drivers were three times as likely to be searched by police during a traffic stop as black drivers instead of the other way around. If white offenders received prison sentences ten percent longer than black offenders for the same crimes. If a third of all white men – just look at this room and take one-third – went to prison during their lifetime. Imagine that. That is the reality in the lives of so many of our fellow Americans in so many of the communities in which they live.
Although of course, when anyone political is a bit slow on commenting on a current major happening, their current official stance is hard to take without a grain of salt.
Progressives, fueled by buyer’s remorse over Obama, are set on portraying Clinton as too moderate, ignoring, for instance, that she actually ran to the left of Obama on health care, and has spoken out, in formal settings, on voting rights as well.
Some progressives noticed her comments on Ferguson, but even as they praised her, they questioned her motives:
As a Clinton fan myself, I want to believe this is how she feels, yet I can't deny that it is pretty convenient for her to suddenly take on a popular stance before her campaign.
diary edited as 17:12 CDT on August 29 at request from the DK staff