Black Lives Matter activists met with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton after they were denied entry to a scheduled campaign event in Keene, New Hampshire, which they had planned to disrupt.

"The place we ended up arriving with her, in part, was a personal discussion about what we think would work,” said Julius Jones, founder of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Worcester, Massachusetts, and one of the activists who attended the meeting. "For her, she was saying that the policies that they tried to implement in the eighties and nineties just didn't work, and they had the unfortunate consequence of being enacted on black or brown bodies more than anyone else.” The Clinton campaign told the New Republic that they are preparing a statement about today's meeting.

Clinton, according to Jones, felt as if the system would be more easily changed structurally, through policy change–rather than tackling anti-blackness in white people through widespread cultural change. "She said that she didn't feel that you were going to be able to change hearts; that you can change systems, and then maybe you can change hearts.”

Jones and the rest of the group contended that it was the racism embedded in the policies that needed to be addressed as well. "She was not willing to concede that the inherent anti-blackness in the policies that were enacted to address problems is the cause of the problems we have today," Jones said. "She didn’t concede that."

Led by Black Lives Matter Boston founder Daunasia Yancey, the activists went to the event with intention of staging a protest similar to the disruption of a Netroots Nation event featuring two Democratic hopefuls, former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley and current U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. O'Malley subsequently released a criminal justice reform plan that responded to many of the protesters' concerns. But Sanders was interrupted again on Saturday at an event in Seattle. Sanders's supporters have been vocal in print and online articles, as well as social media, about their consternation that their candidate, a vocal supporter of civil rights for decades, was the target of Black Lives Matter protests. Many openly wondered why Clinton was not herself a target. Activists and journalists, including me, have defended the protests.