What One Chicago Activist Says She Expects From Her Next President

After 10 years of servicing Chicago’s youth, Dr. Ameena Matthews says she knows what her community needs from America’s next president.

Matthews, a black Muslim woman and community activist who has worked with the organization Cure Violence Chicago to help bring about peace, said the nation’s next leader must plan to do more to address the issues of gun violence that inner-cities, like Chicago, face.

“It’s going to take a strong Commander-In-Chief that’s very passionate about where these guns come from and why these guns are let out in our areas of poverty,” Matthews told The Huffington Post’s Jacques Morel on Tuesday.

Matthews believes a concerned executive branch could help to remedy some of the setbacks she said her community is facing.

“We need a whole cabinet,” she said. “The regime that’s not going to co-sign any of the garbage that’s been going on for the Bush regime. We’re not going to fight anybody else’s war but our own.”

Matthews said she also wants the nation’s next leader to view black women as more than constituents.

“We’re spiritual beings having a human experience,” she said.

Watch the full conversation below: