Bill Clinton to NAACP in Philly: South Carolina shooting ‘changed the country’
Former President Bill Clinton followed President Obama by speaking with the national NAACP in Philadelphia on Wednesday. Clinton talked about voting, midterm versus presidential election turnout and touched on race issues, like the shooting in South Carolina.
“They changed the country,” Clinton said of the relatives of those gunned down by Dylann Roof, referring to the removal of the Confederate Flag from the state’s capitol.
President Obama had addressed the same group on Tuesday and Clinton touched on voter turnout headed into the 2016 election where is spouse, Hillary Clinton is the likely Democratic nominee.
Bill Clinton 2014 photo/ Mike Brice via pixabay.com
“Two different Americas show up,” Clinton said to the crowd of at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, contrasting the non-presidential election years with the turnout for 2012 or 2010 and blamed the GOP for passing restrictive voter ID laws.
“How come all those laws passed?” Clinton asked. “In state after state after state we . . . have actually stopped voting in non-presidential elections.
The former president praised Obama’s speech in South Carolina, encouraged the NAACP to continue to fight for equality, citing the recent demonstrations in reaction to black men being killed by police officers.
Other speakers were Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division of the Justice Department.
