DeRay McKesson, an activist with the Black Lives Matter movement, said he's been in contact with Obama administration officials about the issue of criminal justice reform. Black Lives Matter in contact with the White House about sentencing reform

Black Lives Matter has surged to prominence this year, taking the unrest sparked by a series of shootings of unarmed black men by police officers to shift the conversation in the presidential race and get an audience with one of the most influential offices in the world — the White House.

DeRay McKesson, an activist with the Black Lives Matter movement, told POLITICO’s “Generation Next: Future of Social Action” event in Chicago on Monday evening that he's been in contact with Obama administration officials about the issue of criminal justice reform.


“They sort of want us to help out with that, a little bit, which is interesting,” McKesson said in regards to a request from the White House recently to help with the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, a bipartisan effort to reform drug sentencing and focus enforcement might on violent criminals.

“Some of what we do is like translate right? So we can say, ‘We read it all, this section means this, we think this is actually going to be good for black people.’ Or we can say, ‘This is really problematic but we think this is less problematic,' or like, ‘Everybody don’t vote for it,’” he said. “There is a group of people that are listening to what we say, in some ways.”

McKesson said he’s had a lot of conversations with the White House, including a recent call with senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and Roy Austin Jr., director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs, Justice, and Opportunity. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He said he's also been in contact with senators regarding the bipartisan legislative push for criminal justice reform.

“There is this interest in trying to figure out how we speak to this group of people, especially with the Democrats,” McKesson said.

Black Lives Matter started in earnest after the acquittal in 2013 of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin and gained momentum after a spate of deaths of black men, including Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, by police officers. The group's activists have garnered attention by disrupting a handful of campaign trail events in an attempt to get candidates to more heavily emphasize institutional racism, police brutality and criminal justice reform.

McKesson said he’s met with Sen. Bernie Sanders and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton — meetings which he credits with using the power of Twitter to obtain.

“Twitter: the reach is real,” McKesson said when talking about how he arranged the meetings. “We can make news.”

“We know that if I tweet something about the campaigns that I’ll either get a call from the campaigns or a reporter, right? One of those two things will happen and we know it,” McKesson said. “So we talk to the campaigns often.”

“Their staff knows that what we say when we walk out of the meeting, matters,” McKesson said on the POLITICO panel. “We’ve been able to use that space [social media] to push in that way and that’s been really powerful.”

McKesson also touched on his 90-minute meeting with Clinton.

He said in the meeting with Clinton, the activists told her to stop using coded language because if she talked the way she was talking to them, the black community wouldn’t vote for her.

"People shouldn't have to guess where they fit in to how you talk," McKesson said. "When she talks it's often like, 'I'm like Hillary what was that?'"