In Boston on Sunday, the US senator discussed racial inequality, calling for better police training and an emphasis on community policing

Elizabeth Warren earned high praise from activists for a Sunday speech on racial inequality that unabashedly echoed many of the arguments of the Black Lives Matter movement, after their persistent disappointment with presidential candidates’ rhetoric on the issue.

The US senator called for better police training, an emphasis on community policing, and body cameras, and traced a direct line from the struggles of the civil rights era to the new era of activism that has come into prominence since Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.

“The first civil rights battles were hard fought. But they established that Black Lives Matter. That Black Citizens Matter. That Black Families Matter,” Warren said, during her speech at the Edward M Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston.

“She was willing to give the speech that other politicians seem to be afraid to give, which is to say that black humanity matters without equivocation,” said Brittany Packnett, a Black Lives Matter activist and member of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

“We’ve seen sickening videos of unarmed black Americans cut down by bullets, choked to death while gasping for air – their lives ended by those who are sworn to protect them,” Warren said, in language that could have been lifted from a protest rally.

Tying physical violence at the hands of law enforcement to broader trends of historical and systemic racism, the address also touched on how black Americans are disproportionately affected by economic issues like the wage gap and the 2008 housing collapse.

“Because middle-class black families’ wealth was disproportionately tied up in home ownership and not other forms of savings, these families were hit harder by the housing collapse. But they also got hit harder because of discriminatory lending practices – yes, discriminatory lending practices in the 21st century,” Warren said.

This was part of Warren’s broader theme that “economic justice is not – and has never been – sufficient to ensure racial justice. Owning a home won’t stop someone from burning a cross on the front lawn. Admission to a school won’t prevent a beating on the sidewalk outside. The tools of oppression were woven together, and the civil rights struggle was fought against that oppression wherever it was found – against violence, against the denial of voting rights and against economic injustice.”

The popular senior senator from Massachusetts has stated repeatedly that she is not running for president in 2016. During an interview afterward, Warren said: “That’s a speech I really wanted to give … I’ve been working on this one a long time.”

Warren’s speech was a welcome development for many activists who have been underwhelmed by the crop of candidates seeking their party’s presidential nomination. Warren has repeatedly said she is not running for president, despite widespread early speculation that she would.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a US senator from Vermont, has been criticized for what many feel is his tendency to discuss racism as an effect of economic inequality rather than its own form of prejudice. During campaign events over the summer, Sanders was interrupted twice by Black Lives Matters activists unsatisfied by his campaign’s lack of a robust racial justice platform, which he subsequently released on his website to mostly positive reviews.

“The fact that people can be a politician or even the president without having a really advanced understanding of racial dynamics isn’t acceptable and we should consider it a prerequisite for the job,” said Daunasia Yancey, a Black Lives Matter Boston activist.

When BLM activists, including Yancey, met with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, after unsuccessfully trying to disrupt a campaign stop in New Hampshire, they asked her to acknowledge her early support for her husband’s criminal justice policies that would have a devastating effect on black communities. In a video that captured the interaction, Clinton dismissed introspection as a way to move forward: “I don’t believe you change hearts,” she said. “I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.”

Yancey said Clinton did not go far enough in explaining what she had learned from the failed criminal justice policies of her husband’s administration.

“The anti-black sentiment that runs through this country – that runs through its policies – is what needs to change in addition to the policies themselves,” Yancey said.

Black Lives Matter has been careful not to align with a political party, and recently disavowed all party politics after the Democratic party adopted a resolution in support of the movement. But in rare praise of a politician, Yancey commended the Massachusetts senator for expressing the urgency and the history of the BLM movement in a way she said is too often dismissed or overlooked by other candidates.

“Senator Warren really understood that lives are at stake here,” Yancey said. “Other [politicians] hear ‘Black Lives Matter’ and they say ‘absolutely’. They say that, and they leave it there, and they don’t have policies to back it up and they don’t necessarily have a long-term historic lens … I think Elizabeth Warren has really raised the bar.”