Hillary Clinton met privately with family members and friends of the Pulse shooting victims at Holden Heights Community Center July 22.
The meeting was followed by a roundtable discussion with members of the Orlando LGBT, Muslim and Latino communities including; Mayor Buddy Dyer, Commissioner Patty Sheehan, Equality Florida’s Ida Eskamani and Carlos Guillermo Smith, GLBT Center’s Terry DeCarlo, president of the Islamic Society Imam Muhammad Musri and Orlando SWAT commander Capt. Mark Canty.
Clinton spoke to the crowd before listening to the stories from each person seated at the table.
“The LGBT community, by any measure, was the community most severely impacted by this terrible attack,” Clinton says. “What does that mean? Well, among other things, it means that it is still dangerous to be LGBT in America.
“I think it’s an unfortunate fact, but one that needs to be said that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are more likely than any other group in our country to be the targets of hate crimes. They face a very complicated intersecting set of challenges in general, and especially even more so as people of color,” she says.
After leaving the community center, Clinton made an unannounced stop at Pulse Nightclub to pay her respects with Dyer and Florida Senator Bill Nelson.
Clinton then spent a few moments with Pulse owner Barbara Poma and employees of the nightclub, as well as some of the officers and medical personnel that assisted during the violence from June 12.
