Run The Jewels member Killer Mike expressed his frustration with Hillary Clinton’s civil rights actions at a Bernie Sanders rally at Claflin University in South Carolina yesterday.
The US rapper hit out at the Democratic party candidate for dismissing a question from Ashley Williams, an activist for the black liberation movement, Black Lives Matter, on February 24. The moment he was referring to was during a fundraising event for Clinton in South Carolina, when Williams asked, “Are you going to apologise to black people for mass incarceration?” while holding up a banner saying “we have to bring them to heel” (a quote from Clinton).
During his speech Killer Mike referred to Sanders’ history of activism, stating: “If I could find a picture of you from 51 years ago chained to a black woman, protesting segregation, and I know that 51 years later you’re willing to fold your arms, hold your head and listen to two black girls yell and scream – rightfully so – as opposed to telling them to ‘shut up’ after you’ve read your own words… as opposed to someone who will tell you ‘later’, when it comes to your children dying in the streets, I know that the only person that I have the conscious to vote for is Bernard Sanders. I know that the only person my logical beautiful black mind will allow me to vote for is Senator Bernie Sanders.”
Watch Killer Mike’s speech below:
Last year Killer Mike also introduced Sanders in his hometown Atlanta, Georgia, when he spoke about poverty, equality and everybody’s right to healthcare.
“Make sure that wherever you go you take the names, the ideas, the philosophy and the ideology of Bernie Sanders there,” he preached.
You can watch Killer Mike’s full introductory speech from Atlanta here:
Last week Killer Mike co-wrote an opinion piece urging the Supreme Court to overturn a case which ruled against a high school student who wrote a rap song accusing two of his coaches of sexual misconduct.
Taylor Bell, who was a Missisippi high school student, was disciplined by his school in 2011, after he filmed a rap video containing offensive content about two of his teachers, basing the song on accusations of groping that girls at the school had made against two teachers.
He was suspended on the grounds that he had ‘threatened, harassed, and intimidated” school employees,” a decision that was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Now Mike, who was recently among a group of rappers who submitted written evidence towards the Supreme Court appeal, has scribed a column for CNN with University Of Richmond associate professor Erik Nielson calling for the case to be re-ruled.
Killer Mike wrote: “He [Bell] is following a long line of platinum-selling rappers – including Ice Cube, Eminem, Nas and Jay Z – who have built careers and made millions doing the same thing.
“Throughout those careers, none of their fans ever believed that Ice Cube would kill former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, that Eminem would kill his wife, Kim, or that Nas and Jay Z would kill each other – all claims the rappers made in their songs.
“Likewise, we don’t assume that Quentin Tarantino, Stephen King or Johnny Cash carry out the (sometimes extreme) violence depicted in their art — because we acknowledge it as art.
“But as we have noted before, rap is often denied that respect, particularly in the criminal justice system, where amateur rappers, almost always young men of colour who lack the name recognition (and bank accounts) of their professional counterparts, are routinely prosecuted for their music, either because people believe that rap should be read literally or because they just don’t like it.”