Black Lives Matter leader DeRay McKesson endorses Clinton

by Mallory Shelbourne - 10/26/16 9:42 AM ET

Top Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson on Wednesday endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

{mosads}”Clinton’s platform on racial justice is strong: It is informed by the policy failings of the past and is a vision for where we need to go,” McKesson wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.

Clinton hosted a meeting with McKesson and other Black Lives Matter activists in the fall to discuss the Campaign Zero plan to end police violence.

McKesson wrote that Clinton “didn’t appear to understand the urgency of the need to address racism” when she began running for the White House but that her position on racial justice is now “strong.”

“Her platform signals both deep understanding of the challenges and a plan to move us forward,” he wrote. “When I met with her last week, it was clear that she now understands these issues well at a policy level and that she has researched the implications of the positions that she has proposed.”

McKesson’s move comes one day after Brittany Packnett, the co-founder of Campaign Zero, endorsed Clinton during an appearance on MSNBC.

Clinton has been a vocal supporter of Mothers of the Movement, a group of mothers who have lost sons to incidents related to police violence. The Democratic nominee recently campaigned with the group in North Carolina, and they spoke at July’s Democratic National Convention.

McKesson praised Clinton’s platform for seeking to reform parts of her husband’s 1994 crime bill and slammed Donald Trump for campaigning “on moving backward from today.”

“When Trump says, ‘Make America great again,’ he is referencing an era when people were singled out and harmed because of their race and religious beliefs, and when violent enforcement of Jim Crow masqueraded as the will of the people,” McKesson wrote.

Tags Donald Trump Hillary Clinton