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“You know what, nobody’s ever asked me that before. You’re the first person to ask me.”

This was former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s response to Black Lives Matter youth activist Ashley Williams at a private fundraiser in Charleston, South Carolina last night.

Clinton’s words are suspect—but maybe, just maybe, they are technically true. Giving her extreme benefit of the doubt, perhaps no one has ever asked Clinton about her 1996 comments in Keene, New Hampshire as First Lady in which she called black people “super-predators,” taking a line straight from the invective of far-right commentary at the time.

As Adam Johnson at Alternet describes, the idea of a “super-predator” was promoted by and then a decade later disavowed by John J. Dilulio Jr. This “myth was born from the pages of the far-right Weekly Standard and is credited with providing pseudo-academic cover for a wave of harsh anti-drug and juvenile penalties that swept the nation in the '90s.”

But there is no chance, not even a slight chance, that Clinton has not heard criticisms of her campaign and her political career as far as it concerns African Americans and people of color more broadly.

After Williams and an unnamed fellow demonstrator paid $500 each for entry into the private event, Williams waited at the front of the room for Clinton to begin speaking at around 9:30 pm EST. She then turned to the crowd of onlookers—a crowd of very white faces, incidentally—and unfurled a banner that quoted Clinton’s own words: “We have to bring them to heel.” Them being the so-called super-predators, thinly veiled code for African American men and low income individuals Clinton has made a career of marginalizing.

Bill and Hillary Clinton were a disaster for African American communities. They escalated the war on drugs, ”beyond what many conservatives had imagined possible.”

Clinton advocated and pushed through the federal “three strikes” law, ultimately signing a $30 billion crime bill that “created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and the expansion of police forces.”

The 1994 Crime Bill signed into law by Bill Clinton and championed by Hillary is the primary reason mass incarceration ballooned in the ‘90s, disproportionately affecting African American communities to this day.

The fact is indisputable: under the previous Clinton’s presidency, incarceration rates and unemployment among African Americans rose to their highest levels ever.

As Williams said in a statement before the event, “Hillary Clinton has a pattern of throwing the Black community under the bus when it serves her politically.”

"She called our boys ‘super-predators’ in ’96, then she race-baited when running against Obama in ‘08, now she’s a lifelong civil rights activist,” added Williams. “I just want to know which Hillary is running for President, the one from ’96, ’08, or the new Hillary?”

Among other things, Williams’ actions have reinvigorated the debate around Clinton’s stance on racial justice, her disrespect for working people and proves that she by no means is entitled to the Democratic nomination.

The hashtag #WhichHillary has exploded in popularity since the event.

Unsurprisingly, the establishment media that is fully in the bag for Clinton were slow to publish Ashley Williams’ demonstration but quick—and abundant—in publishing Clinton’s apology statements.

Two articles appeared at the Washington Post within an hour of each other highlighting Clinton’s regret over making the comments.

Here and here. The latter article was written by Jonathan Capehart, the commentator who now famously insisted on smearing Bernie Sanders’ civil rights record. And then refused to apologize for getting the facts wrong.

Capehart publishes the entire statement from Clinton, serving as a mouthpiece of the establishment media for the establishment candidate.

Much of Clinton’s apology is deflection and self-aggrandizing, but she does get one thing right.

“We haven’t done right by them. We need to. We need to end the school to prison pipeline and replace it with a cradle-to-college pipeline,” Clinton’s statement reads. Too bad her neoliberal, culture war invective and warmongering got us here.

Anyway, since the establishment media is continuing to serve as Clinton’s mouthpiece, we will continue to serve as the mouthpiece of those fighting for change and justice.

Ashley Williams has proven beyond a doubt that she has an excellent voice.

Williams posted the following letter entitled “Apology Not Accepted” on Twitter at around 8 pm EST. It speaks for itself.

“While Clinton’s choice of words in that speech were racist and offensive, it is the impact of the policies that she vigorously championed that should give us all pause. She owes the nation an apology for using her position of power to enact criminal justice policies which have been roundly denounced as failures.

Here’s the truth: the Clinton legacy has left our prisons bursting at the seams. Real lives have been destroyed as a result. It is an indisputable fact that millions of Black people were locked up for drug crimes and provided the bodies for the expansion of the prison industry.

The 1994 Crime Bill that she so vigorously defended not only expanded incarceration, but stripped funding for college education from prisoners. The Clinton legacy allowed for policies that prevented anyone convicted of a felony drug offense from receiving food stamps or income assistance. Clinton-led welfare reform fundamentally ripped apart the social safety net...

Make no mistake. Hillary Clinton’s efforts to push these policies resulted in the continued destruction of Black communities and the swift growth of our mass incarceration crisis.

I held Hillary Clinton responsible for this damage. And that is what she owes Black communities an apology for.”