Less than two months ago, Brittany Packnett featured prominently in The New York Times'reporting about Hillary Clinton's continued inability to solidify black millennial voters. Packnett, 31, first came to national attention during the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the police shooting death of Michael Brown. She is one of the founding members of Campaign Zero, an innovative data, strategy, and policy platform aimed at ending police violence in America. She is easily one of the most identifiable young voices to have emerged in the leader-full movement for Black Lives in the past five years. In September, Packnett told The New York Times, "We're in the midst of a movement with a real sense of urgency. Mrs. Clinton is not yet connecting because the conversation that younger black voters are having is no longer one about settling on a candidate who is better than the alternative."
Today, Brittany Packnett officially and publicly endorsed Secretary Hillary Clinton for president.
Packnett's endorsement is personal, not institutional. No one person speaks for the broad and varied social movement commonly known as Black Lives Matter.
Still, I wanted to ask someone else in the movement about this moment. In June, Alicia Garza, one of the founders of #BlackLivesMatter, told me during an ELLE.com interview she would never support Hillary Clinton, so I called Alicia and asked her about Packnett's endorsement. I asked if it signaled a broader shift within the movement for Black Lives toward public support of Clinton's candidacy. Unlike Packnett, Garza asserted, "I voted early. I voted for Clinton, but I don't support Clinton. I'm not 'with her' and I don't and won't endorse her. I do not support Hillary Clinton, even as I recognize the difficult challenge we face regarding the need to halt Donald Trump. I respect the choices others feel they must make in this environment. I believe we must ask ourselves what it takes to make a candidate feel accountable to the concrete policy demands of a movement."
There are fewer than three weeks until the election, all the debates are complete, fewer than two months have passed since Packnett was openly incredulous of Clinton's candidacy, and she operates in a space where fellow activists are hardly enthusiastic about the former Secretary of State's campaign. So why did Brittany Packnett decide to endorse Hillary Clinton? I asked her.
MHP: Why endorse Hillary Clinton now?
BRITTANY PACKNETT: It was a really personal decision. I was raised to believe it is my responsibility to get out there and do something about things that frustrate me. I have spent my career in social justice trying to fulfill that mission. But I have heard so many young people, especially young people of color, express a great deal of frustration about this particular election.
They feel we participated in our democracy and our government abused us. They met our cardboard signs with tear gas. They met our cell phones with pepper spray. These young people are understandably asking, 'What is the point of continuing to participate in this system that assaults me?'
I have been wrestling with the same frustrations, but I have a responsibility to young people, to my community, and to our work. If our work is progress, then I must use the platform I have to ensure the work has the best possibility to advance. This is not about me. This is about the work. The best way I can use my platform is to support Secretary Clinton. Our vote is sacred. If it weren't, people wouldn't have been trying to steal it from us for so long. I'm hoping that we use our vote wisely on November 8.
Why did it take you so long to decide to publicly support Secretary Clinton?
I shared the concerns of others in my generation. Young activists worry about her support of the 1994 Crime Bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton a great deal. We have legitimate concerns about how that legislation contributed to mass incarceration and the very police violence we protest today. We put those challenges before Secretary Clinton and all the candidates this election cycle, but it has been hard to sustain media attention for policy commitments during this campaign cycle. This election has been dominated by distractions that are beneath the American people.
Ultimately, I arrived at two points simultaneously. First, Secretary Clinton can protect the important, though imperfect, steps taken by the Obama administration to improve equity in criminal justice, education, and health care. And second, I am completely fed up with Donald Trump's candidacy. It is not a joke. The policies he is proposing on issues like immigration, health care, and Supreme Court appointments truly are deeply worrisome and dangerous. Once I realized both of these things, I knew I couldn't look at myself in the mirror if I didn't stand up and do what I could do now to encourage young people to vote in this election.
You are speaking exclusively as Brittany and not as a representative of Campaign Zero or for the movement for Black Lives. Still, you are a well-known young activist. And you are from a very different generation within the movement for Black Lives than the Mothers of the Movement, who have been the most prominent and vocal supporters of Secretary Clinton. How does your endorsement represent connect to the movement for Black Lives differently than the endorsement of the Mothers of the Movement?
I have deep and abiding respect for these women as my elders and as parents who have chosen to fight through unthinkable grief as they seek to make a more just nation. They are so important to the entire movement. No matter how great our struggle as protesters, organizers, and activists, we are not bearing the same grief they are. I do not return home to find my child, or father, or sister dead. Our decision to step into the streets was a decision to stand up for and to stand with the mothers because they already had a greater burden than all of us, so at the very least they should not have to fight back alone.
Still, there were and are generational differences. We play music at our protests; some of the elders go home before nightfall because they don't love our music. No disrespect; just different tastes. They did not always like our chants, or the way we wear our messages on our chests instead of on signs, or how we use technology to organize ourselves. These are generational differences. What moves us is different than what moves them. That can be true for a candidate, too. Who can compel various portions of our community to move and act differs. That's true of every single community including ours. That does not necessarily mean there is some kind of fissure, simply because within a movement two generations needed different time to develop relationships to a candidate.
There is an even younger generation of activists than me. I may not move them. I am worried they feel beat up and disenfranchised and may not show up to vote at all in November. I worry about young people feeling utterly disrespected by their nation.
What makes you confident Hillary Clinton is someone who will listen?
Part of it was coming to see and understand Hillary's personal story more. Have you seen the Humans of New York video of her discussing her experiences as a young law student? The first time I watched the video I identified with her in a way that I hadn't before. She discussed taking her law school entrance exams and having men verbally assault her. That resonated with me. I vividly remember my experiences of sexism and racism, and I could see how her experiences had imprinted on her as well. Those moments never go away. They shape you.
And as a fairly young woman in positions of authority, I have been in a lot of spaces where men wouldn't speak to me. They'd only speak to my male colleagues, even though I was the one in the position of authority. I have been treated more as an object than as a professional; the topic of conversation was my nail color or if my hair was in braids or straight or natural. As a woman activist, I have had to think about what I am wearing, where I take meetings, what time I schedule them, and who else is around when I take them. There are so many more hoops for women.
Listening to Secretary Clinton discuss her own experiences assured me she understood that reality. She wanted to help people as a lawyer, she had to clear all these additional barriers the men in the room didn't have manage. She used a phrase: she put her head down. I've literally said that exact same thing to myself so many times—just put your head down because ultimately the work is what matters.
Once I connected to her on a human level, I realized I needed to take responsibility to understand what she's accomplished. I learned more about her time at the Children's Defense Fund and about her time organizing around issues that matter to me. I found myself having deeper respect for her. And as a woman of color, I see more of myself among her staff than among the staff of other candidates. That matters.
So this endorsement is truly for Clinton and not just against Trump?
I am not going to pretend Trump is not a serious problem for me. This summer I was in Toronto, and found myself looking around and wondering if I could just stay if Trump won. But I am not leaving this country my ancestors built, and I'm not letting anybody drive me away from land where my ancestors are buried on plantations where they worked. I'm not going to disrespect them and their sacrifices like that. I can't allow Donald Trump to ever be president of their country. I can't do it.
The movement for Black Lives is not represented by a single leader, and some in the movement will undoubtedly criticize this endorsement. What is your response?
I think movements should have a diversity of tactics and opinions to broaden our ability to do more work and to get further faster. No approach is above conversation or criticism. Honest conversations with activists of all different belief systems help push us to create a better world for black people and for disenfranchised people.
My endorsement of Hilary Clinton and my encouraging young people to vote for her is squarely about our ability to push forward the things that we care about in the movement. It is not about a job. It's not about some kind of political quid pro quo. It is absolutely about caring so deeply about this work that I'm okay taking some criticism. Because at the end of the day, this is about making the intentional, pragmatic strides we must take from the inside and the outside toward the radical dream of justice and liberation for us all.
I don't believe that there is a perfect candidate. I do believe that there's one path for progress.
