WORLD LEADER : Hillary Clinton speaks during a during a round table event on July 23, 2014 in Oakland, California "

Hillary Clinton broke her silence Thursday on the
shooting of Michael Brown, addressing the
tragedy that tipped off two weeks of racially
fraught violence in Ferguson, Missouri for the first
time during a speech at a tech conference in San
Francisco.
“Watching the recent funeral for Michael Brown,
as a mother, as a human being, my heart just
broke for his family. Because losing a child is
every parent’s greatest fear and an unimaginable
loss,” she said at the beginning of her paid
remarks to the Nexenta OpenSDx Summit. “But I
also grieve for that community and for many like
it across our country.”
Speaking for almost five minutes on the situation
in Ferguson in what appeared to be prepared
comments, Clinton also addressed the issues of
police militarization and racial bias in the justice
system.
Clinton has come under fire from civil rights
leaders and others for remaining silent on
Ferguson.“Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, don’t get
laryngitis on this issue,” the Rev. Al Sharpton,
who hosts an msnbc show in addition to leading
the National Action Network, said at a rally.
Despite the calls, a Clinton spokesperson declined
several requests for comment from msnbc, and
Clinton herself dodged reporters’ questions on
Ferguson at a book signing last weekend.
But now that the unrest is over, Brown is buried,
and police have shut down their command center,
Clinton apparently thought it was safe to wade
in.
Clinton not only addressed the tragedy on
Thursday, but also the societal issues behind it.
“We can’t ignore the inequities that persist in our
justice system,” she said, imploring the audience
to think about how they would feel if white drivers
were stopped as often black drivers, or given as
long prison sentences as African-Americans.
“Just look at this room and take if one-third went
to prison during their lifetime. Imagine that. That
is the reality in the lives of so many of our fellow
Americans and so many of the communities in
which they live,” she said, citing incarceration
rates for black men.
“Nobody wants to see our streets look like a war
zone, not in America. We are better than that, she
said,” according to footage of the speech aired by
CNN. She added that law enforcement should
inspire “trust, rather than fear.”
She added that she she “applaud[s]” President
Obama for sending Attorney General Eric Holder
to Ferguson, whose visit was meant to ensure a
thorough investigation and ease tensions in the
community.
Noting that Thursday is the 51st anniversary of
Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech,
Clinton urged Americans to come together to
address the problems from King’s day that persist
to our own.