Hillary Clinton's History with Black Folks: Lock 'Em Up

Clinton-Thompson-Walker Bond or Black Lives Matter more than Hillary Clinton's Career

Updated - Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of where the Democratic Party went wrong, the abandonment of human rights and decency replaced by passive complacency and careerism.

I wasn't shocked when Clinton defended her mentoring and advice from the war criminal, Henry Kissinger. It was convenient.

This is the same Hillary Clinton who made common cause with former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R-Wisconsin) and an obscure State Rep. Scott Walker (R-White People) in demonizing black folks in the 1990s—capitulating "entirely to the right-wing backlash against the civil-rights movement and (embracing) former president Ronald Reagan’s agenda on race, crime, welfare, and taxes—ultimately doing more harm to black communities than Reagan ever did," as noted in an important piece by Michelle Alexander in The Nation.

Notes Alexander: "In her support for the 1994 crime bill, for example, she used racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals. 'They are not just gangs of kids anymore,' she said. 'They are often the kinds of kids that are called "super-predators." No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.'

One hopes the inducements of a public salary, health care and pension are worth the deals some black members of Congress have made in their endorsement of Clinton.

But to these members of Congress, I say you know damn well you're selling out the future of a people who still matter, even if they're inconvenient to your political careers.

Bernie in Milwaukee with Irish-Latina

Consider private, for-profit prisons. "[T]here are now about 130 private prisons in the country with about 157,000 beds," notes Michael Cohen in the Washington Post on April 28, 2015, a couple of weeks after Hillary Clinton declared her candidacy for the presidency, (Chozick, NYT).

Six months later, it dawned on Clinton that she should cut her ties with the for-profit prison industry and stop taking money from private prison lobbyists, (Rivas, Fusion).

As for Bernie Sanders, he called for-profit prisons "morally repugnant and a national tragedy," and introduced bills to ban this disgrace, (Gaudiano, USA Today).

Hillary would have no moral high ground against a Marco Rubio or other Republican in the general election in this morally repugnant practice.

Bernie Sanders would and does now.

Bernie Sanders: Remember Eric Garner: