Nikki Haley To #BlackLivesMatter: Yelling and Screaming Isn’t Gonna Get You Anywhere

Nikki Haley held a press conference at the National Press Club today. The governor of South Carolina was asked about numerous subjects, ranging from her takedown of the Confederate flag to whether she had any interest in being a choice for VP among the Republican presidential candidates.

Eventually, Haley’s speech brought her to the civil unrest seen across the country due to repeated incidents of African-Americans being shot and killed by law enforcement officers. She brought up the riots seen in Baltimore and Ferguson before announcing clearly that “black lives do matter.”

From there, Haley went on to say that when riots began after the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, black people were frequently the most injured by the crowd and saw the greatest amounts of property damage in both cases. She said that local police are now intimidated about doing their jobs, and acknowledged that though a movement was born from both instances, it had the counterintuitive effect of “disgracefully jeopardizing” black lives.

Later in the conference, NPC president John Hughes asked her to elaborate on her statements, and whether she had a quarrel with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Haley acknowledged that the movement felt a need to make themselves heard, but encouraged people to remember the praise given to law enforcement for the actions they took following the Charleston shooting:

“It’s all about working together. We don’t think we get anything done by yelling. We get everything done by communicating. Any group who wants to talk about violence, there’s no place in South Carolina for that. We will listen to you and work for you and try to bring you together. It’s not just black lives matter, we’ve got lots of groups that want to yell and scream. You can do that, but it’s not going to get you anywhere.”

Haley finished by saying that violence of any kind must not be tolerated, and that #BlackLivesMatter must be ready to denounce anyone advocating their name while showing aggression towards law enforcement.

You can watch both segments of Haley’s conference here, via C-SPAN:

[image via screengrab]