Eric Holder Sees 'Younger' Self in Black Lives Matter Movement

Former Attorney General Eric Holder — once blasted for helping to trigger a "war" on police — says he sees his "younger" self in Black Lives Matter activists.

In an interview with Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, a portion of which was posted on You Tube, 

Holder is more positive about the group than last October, when he commented, "Do we have here a moment, or do we have a movement? That, I think, is still up in the air." 

In the interview released Monday, first reported by Buzz Feed News, Holder says the protesters remind him of himself as a college student.

"In them I see a lot of the younger Eric,” Holder says. "Full of energy, with a real sense of mission. When you’re young and not had huge amounts of life experience you always think that you’re right. And I’m not being critical because this was me as a young person as well."

"I think that they’ve disrupted things, but that’s what social change in this country is really all about," Holder adds. "It’s always based on people who are willing to disrupt an unjust status quo."

He also said movement members also remind him of Dr. Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," in which the civil rights leader equates being told to wait for change – to being denied change.

"He said 'Hey, look we can’t wait anymore. These are our rights and we need to deal with the fierce urgency of now,'" Holder says. "They remind me of Dr. King as well."

"I don’t [necessarily] agree with all the tactics but I think their hearts are in the right place," said of Black Lives Matter protesters who shut down a rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders last August. 

"They’re raising issues that for too long our nation has become expert at avoiding. They’re pushing these things into the mainstream conversation and I think that's a good thing not only for their cause but for our country."

"I said, 'You know what? If you had gone on that stage, made your point then retreated [and] let him speak, that would have been a lot more effective as opposed to angering the 10,000 or so who came to see him speak who were denied that opportunity,'" he adds.

"You had the potential to turn all those people into allies, and they focused more on the fact that they didn’t have the chance to hear their candidate speak."

Related Stories:

• Judge Rules Against Obama in Fast and Furious Fight
• Eric Holder: I'd Rather Be 'a Player' Than Supreme Court Justice