Activist, organizer and Campaign Zero co-founder DeRay Mckesson announced that he is voting for Hillary Clinton for president in an op-ed penned for the Washington Post on Wednesday.
“Our engagement in democracy comes in many forms—we engage in democracy in protests, in board meetings, in classrooms and, importantly, at the ballot,” Mckesson wrote.
Mckesson said that there is much work ahead and he feels that Clinton is ready and prepared to do it.
While he is not naive enough to believe that voting is the only way to bring about transformational change, he understands that elections have consequences, and he noted that the next president will “continue to shape the trajectory of justice and landscape of opportunity in this country.”
“She will be responsible for how trillions of dollars in federal funding are spent, decide how to ensure both liberty and security in an increasingly interconnected world and determine the path forward on health care and Social Security,” he wrote.
Mckesson said that he does not agree with Clinton on everything, but he agrees with her more than he disagrees with her.
He acknowledged that at the start of her campaign, she did not appear to understand how to address racism. He said that at their first meeting in October 2015, she had not yet released a comprehensive policy dealing with racial justice and was slow to grasp why it was important to have one.
“The unrest and activism over the last two years has undoubtedly pushed Clinton, specifically on key issues that she and other Democrats otherwise would not have addressed as forcefully as the party’s platform does: private prisons, an increased minimum wage, the role of institutional and implicit bias in sustaining unjust systems and acknowledging the need to address racism directly, to name a few.”
Mckesson said that Clinton’s platform on racial justice is strong now and a vision of where we need to go. He noted that the policy explicitly calls for the undoing of some key components of the 1994 crime bill that President Bill Clinton signed into law, including mandatory minimums and the “three-strikes law.”
He highlighted her $125 billion Economic Revitalization Initiative, which he said is akin to the New Deal and will invest in youth employment, re-entry, small-business growth and homeownership.
Mckesson said that not only will he vote for Clinton, but he will also continue to challenge her on her platform and commitments when she is in the White House.
“There is much work that lies ahead, and Clinton is ready and prepared to do the hard work. And we can, and will, hold her accountable every step of the way,” he wrote. “I’m voting for Hillary Clinton.”
Read more at the Washington Post.