THIS IS A COMPREHENSIVE DETAILED BIO OF THE SHAKE DOWN ARTIST AND HUSSEIN OBAMA ADVISOR..
AL SHARPTON
Hussein Obama has a natural affinity for Anti Americans, Crooks, Race baiters and Assholes.
Al has made 87 Visits to the White House ( Officially!)
AL SHARPTON FITS THAT BILL..
THE TYPICAL PROGRESSIVE NEGRO WHO LOVES A SHAKE DOWN
AND IS A VICTIMHOOD ADVOCATE
Founder of the National Action Network
Helped incite anti-Jewish riots in Crown Heights, New York in 1991
Convicted of libel for his role in the racially charged Tawana Brawley hoax
Incited black anti-Semites against a Jewish business establishment in Harlem in 1995
Democratic Party presidential candidate, 2004
See also: National Action Network
Early Years
Alfred Charles Sharpton was born in Brooklyn, New York in October 1954,
to comparatively prosperous parents. He demonstrated considerable
verbal dexterity at an early age and is
reputed to have begun preaching when he was four years old. He was touted as “
the wonder-boy preacher” by age 7, when he toured with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and Pentecostal minister F.D. Washington. Washington personally
ordained Sharpton, who
idolized Adam Clayton Powell, as a
Pentecostal minister when the boy was 10.
That same year, Sharpton’s parents divorced, leaving the youngster and his mother impoverished and
reliant on welfare. In the late 1960s, Sharpton
joined the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In 1969 he was
appointed as youth director of SCLC's "
Operation Breadbasket," an initiative
headed by
Jesse Jackson which boycotted businesses accused of failing to hire enough black employees. Jackson, moreover, became a
mentor to Sharpton.
Supporting a Communist Front and Angela Davis
In the February 9, 1971
edition of the
Communist Party USA newspaper
Daily World,
CPUSA member Stephanie Allan wrote about a pair of recent rallies (in
Chicago and in White Plains, New York) which had been held to support a
CPUSA front called The Committee to Free
Angela Davis. At the time, Davis was in prison for her role in abetting the murder of a California judge.
Eliseo Medina
was one of the speakers at the Chicago event, while Sharpton addressed
the New York rally. According to Stephanie Allan, Sharpton and fellow
speaker J.L. Scott “exposed the connection between [the] A&P
[Corporation], U.S. monopoly capitalism, racism and imperialism, and
related these to the Angela Davis case and the threat to the vital
rights of the Black people.”
1971-1978
Also in 1971, Sharpton established the National Youth Movement, an organization that
sought
to organize young African Americans to push for increased voter
registration, cultural awareness, and job-training programs. He would
lead the group for the next 17 years.
After
attending Brooklyn College for two years, Sharpton
dropped out and had no additional higher education or formal seminary training. He soon began working (as a
tour manager) for the entertainer James Brown and,
later, for boxing promoter Don King. In
1978, Sharpton made an unsuccessful run for the New York State Senate.
Cocaine, Money-Laundering, and the FBI
In early 1983 the FBI was trying to nail boxing promoter Don King on
cocaine-dealing charges. Toward that end, an undercover FBI agent—using
the name Victor Quintana—
arranged
a meeting with King on the pretext of discussing a prospective boxing
match in the Bahamas. But King, wary of this individual, persuaded his
close friend, Al Sharpton, to meet with Quintana instead—i.e., to take
Quintana to dinner at a restaurant and try to ascertain what type of
person he was. Sharpton did so, accompanied by a friend.
At one point during the meal, Quintana,
posing
as a former South American druglord who was now seeking to launder
money through boxing promotions, told Sharpton: “I know where 10 kilos
of cocaine are and we can make some big money on this.” Sharpton's
companion, wary of the implications of getting involved in such criminal
activity, immediately told Sharpton that this line of discussion was
unacceptable and persuaded Sharpton to leave the restaurant with him.
Sharpton, intrigued by Quintana's proposition, was hesitant to walk away
but ultimately did.
Soon thereafter, Sharpton and his companion met with Quintana a
second time, in a hotel room. But when Quintana again raised the subject of cocaine, Sharpton’s friend once more called off the meeting.
After that, Sharpton and Quintana set up a
third meeting
that would take place in March 1983 without Sharpton's companion,
though the reputed mobster Danny Pagano of the Genovese crime family
would also be present. At this meeting—which, unbeknownst to Sharpton,
was being secretly videotaped by FBI surveillance cameras—Quintana told
Sharpton that he could procure cocaine for
$35,000 per kilo. Sharpton, wearing a cowboy hat and chomping on an unlit cigar,
nodded
his head and said, “I hear you.” When Quintana promised Sharpton a 10%
finder’s fee if he could arrange the purchase of several kilos, Sharpton
referred to an unnamed buyer and said, “If he’s gonna do it, he’ll do
it much more than that.”
According to a comprehensive report by
TheSmokingGun.com (TSG):
“While Sharpton did not explicitly offer to arrange a drug
deal, some investigators thought his interaction with the undercover
agent could be construed as a violation of federal conspiracy laws.
Though an actual prosecution, an ex-FBI agent acknowledged, would have
been 'a reach,' agents decided to approach Sharpton and attempt to
'flip' the activist.... In light of Sharpton’s relationship with Don
King, FBI agents wanted his help in connection with the bureau’s
three-year-old boxing investigation.”
Thus, one Thursday afternoon in June 1983—three months after his
third meeting with Quintana—Sharpton arrived at a Manhattan apartment
expecting to meet with him again. Instead he was
confronted by men identifying themselves as FBI agents. They showed Sharpton the “cocaine” videotape and
warned
that he could face criminal charges as a result of that recording.
Panicked, Sharpton immediately agreed to cooperate with the FBI by
serving as a wired, undercover agent for the Bureau.
In that capacity, Sharpton became known by the FBI as “
CI-7”—short for confidential informant No. 7—and began having numerous face-to-face
meetings, all recorded, with mob figures from the Gambino and Genovese crime fanilies. TSG
reports
that “[t]he resulting surreptitious recordings were eventually used to
help convict an assortment of Mafia members and associates.”
Sharpton's undercover work with the FBI continued until 1987, when his
involvement with the infamous Tawana Brawley case (see below) put an end
to his relationship with the Bureau. For comprehensive details of
Sharpton's FBI work during the mid-1980s,
click here.
The Tawana Brawley Racial Hoax
Sharpton first entered America's national consciousness on a large scale
in November 1987, when he injected himself into the case of a
15-year-old black girl named Tawana Brawley, who claimed that she had
been abducted and raped by a gang of six whites in Dutchess County, New
York. Despite a complete absence of any credible evidence to support
Miss Brawley's story, Sharpton assumed the role of
special adviser
to the girl and thereafter worked closely with her attorneys, C. Vernon
Mason (who, later in his career, would be convicted of 66 counts of
professional misconduct and disbarred from the legal profession) and
Alton Maddox (who has publicly expressed his profound hatred for white
people).
Lamenting that their client had fallen
prey
to “certain elements that have constantly antagonized the black
community, including the Ku Klux Klan and law-enforcement personnel,”
Sharpton and the Brawley lawyers demanded that New York Governor Mario
Cuomo appoint a special prosecutor to the case and publicly charged that
“high-level” local law enforcement officials were involved in the
crime—an allegation that led to numerous death threats against members
of the Dutchess County police department. Sharpton further demanded that
New York Attorney General Robert Abrams be removed from the case
because of an alleged “relationship” between Abrams and the Dutchess
County sheriff who was, according to Sharpton, “a suspect in this case.”
Sharpton insisted that there was “absolutely no way” that his client
would talk to Abrams. “That’s like asking someone who watched someone
killed in the gas chamber to sit down with Mr. Hitler,” he said.
The case
dragged on,
week after week, with Brawley refusing to speak to even a single
investigator—ostensibly because she feared that as an African American
she would be unable to get a fair hearing.
Then at a March 1988
news conference,
Sharpton and the attorneys fingered Stephen Pagones, Dutchess County’s
assistant district attorney, as one of their client’s attackers. When
Sharpton was criticized for accusing Pagones without offering a shred of
proof, he
retorted:
"We stated openly that Steven Pagones did it. If we're lying, sue us,
so we can go into court with you and prove you did it. Sue us -- sue us
right now."
Further
accusing
district attorney William Grady of trying to cover up Pagones’
involvement in the crime, Sharpton, Mason, and Maddox demanded that
Governor Mario Cuomo immediately arrest the two “suspects.” When asked
what evidence they could provide to substantiate their charges, Sharpton
and his cohorts were evasive, saying only that they would reveal the
facts when the time was right.
In a speech he delivered when the Brawley case was dominating news headlines, Sharpton
derided
his white critics as racists: "They looked up and they saw Maddox,
Mason, and Sharpton. What's wrong with them? What was wrong with us was
[that] crackers didn't choose us!"
On another occasion,
Sharpton appeared on the late Morton Downey's television program and
publicly used an anti-gay slur. The incident occurred when Sharpton got
into a shouting match with an audience member and
yelled,
while gesturing to that individual to come up to the stage and fight:
“You ain’t nothing! You a punk faggot! Now come on and do something!”
In June 1988, a Sharpton aide named
Perry McKinnon
stepped forward to make a remarkable series of disclosures. A former
police officer, private investigator, and director of security at a
Brooklyn Hospital, McKinnon revealed that “Sharpton acknowledged to me
early on that ‘The [Brawley] story do sound like bull---t, but it don’t
matter. We’re building a movement. This is the perfect issue. Because
you’ve got whites on blacks. That’s an easy way to stir up all the
deprived people, who would want to believe and who would believe—and all
[you’ve] got to do is convince them—that all white people are bad. Then
you’ve got a movement.” Explaining that Sharpton was methodically
“building an atmosphere” for a race war, McKinnon continued: “Sharpton
told me it don’t matter whether any whites did it or not. Something
happened to her...even if Tawana done it to herself.” To prove his
truthfulness, McKinnon submitted to a lie detector test administered on
camera and passed all questions.
In the autumn of 1988, after conducting an exhaustive review of the facts, a
grand jury
released its report showing beyond any doubt that the entire Tawana
Brawley story had been fabricated, and that at least $1 million of New
York taxpayers’ money had been spent to investigate a colossal hoax.
Sharpton, however, would concede nothing. He continued to
reiterate his claim that Brawley had been brutalized by a gang of whites. In February 1989, he told a
Spin
magazine interviewer, without the barest shred of proof, that Stephen
Pagones had privately confessed to the crime. Sharpton further asserted,
falsely, that Brawley’s gang-rape allegations had been confirmed by
medical tests whose results were in C. Vernon Mason’s exclusive
possession. And finally, for good measure, he lamented that Miss Brawley
had tragically fallen prey to a barbaric “white supremist [
sic] cult ritual.”
When Stephen Pagones in 1997
sued
Sharpton (as well as Maddox and Mason) for defamation of character,
Sharpton, under oath, said he could “no longer recall” having made a
number of his slanderous accusations against Pagones and other
law-enforcement officials years earlier.
When
asked whether he had made even the slightest attempt to verify
Brawley’s allegations about Pagones before going public with them,
Sharpton retorted, “I would not engage in sex talk with a 15-year-old
girl.”
Pagones won a $345,000 court judgment against Sharpton and his two accomplices, of which Sharpton was responsible for
$65,000. But Sharpton, claiming poverty,
never paid his debt. When asked in a deposition how he could afford the expensive suits he wore, he
replied
that he did not own the garments but was merely granted “access” to
them as needed. The same, he said, applied to all his other belongings.
Ultimately, Sharpton's $65,000 debt was paid (along with $22,000 in
interest) in 2001
by a group of wealthy Sharpton supporters.
It should be noted that during the decade prior to Pagones’ long-awaited vindication in court, the former prosecutor had
suffered
constant stress and anxiety (exacerbated by numerous death threats from
Sharpton’s credulous followers) that contributed heavily to the
devastating dissolution of Pagones’ marriage and the virtual ruination
of his life.
Notably, Sharpton has never apologized for the way he conducted himself throughout the Brawley hoax, because to apologize, he
explains,
would be “all about submission” to white people eager to “forc[e] a
black man coming out of the hardcore ghetto to his knees.” Reflecting on
the Brawley case 12 years after it first made headlines, Sharpton
said: “If I had to do it again, I’d do it in the same way.”
[1]
In October 2013, Sharpton appeared on MSNBC’s
Morning Joe program to promote his new book,
The Rejected Stone. When MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski raised the issue of the Brawley case, Sharpton
replied:
"I think that what I learned in Brawley, and it’s a case
where if I was called today by a young lady who made those claims, I
would respond the same way, but what I wouldn’t do is get into a back
and forth with name calling with the prosecutor, and go for the quick
from the hip kind of flippant attitude with the press. You learn to do
what you do better….Whereas 25 years ago, it was 'I don’t care what you
think, I feel I’m right, I feel I’ve gotta do what I’ve gotta do,' now
I’m not talking to the prosecutor."
Asked if he regretted the anguish he caused for the innocent Stephen Pagones, Sharpton
answered:
"... Why would I say that I should not come to the defense
of someone who had made a claim and those who had accused never would
have come forth in the grand jury at that time that we got involved….
Any of the cases we get involved with, we’re not the investigators, but
we have the basis of coming in based on we feel there has been a civil
rights violation."
Pressed again on whether he would have acted similarly if he had known then what he knew now, Sharpton became
animated:
"Well, what do I know now? A grand jury didn’t believe
her?... You’ve got to remember the same prosecutor came after me on
situations I knew was wrong. Why would I believe the jury that he used
there?....Why wouldn’t civil rights leaders respond? That’s what we’re
about... I believe that the basis of our involvement, of saying that
this prosecutor should have moved forward and brought this into court
was absolutely the right position to take, and that’s the position we
took."
The Central Park Jogger CaseIn April 1989 a 28-year-old white woman, dubbed the "
Central Park jogger,"
was brutally gang-raped and nearly beaten to death in New York's
Central Park by a group of black teenagers. Despite the defendants'
graphic and detailed confessions, which were captured on videotape and
delivered in the presence of their parents or guardians, Sharpton
insisted that the boys were innocent victims of "a fit of racial
hysteria" that was sweeping the criminal-justice system and all of
American society. Charging that the jogger's boyfriend was the real
rapist in the case, Sharpton organized protests outside the courthouse
where the five suspects were being tried, chanting, "The boyfriend did
it!" and smearing the victim as a "whore!" Further, Sharpton
appealed for a psychiatrist to examine the victim, saying: "It doesn't
even have to be a black psychiatrist." All five suspects were convicted
for their involvement in the crime and were sentenced to prison terms
ranging from 5 to 15 years apiece. Their convictions would later be
overturned in 2002 when another man, Matias Reyes, who was already
serving
a life prison sentence, confessed to having committed the 1989 rape
alone. For explicit details about the confessions of the five youths in
question -- and about their obvious involvement in the 1989 assault --
click here.
Forming the National Action Network
In 1991 Sharpton formed the
National Action Network (NAN), whose
platform
"revolves around activism against racial profiling, police brutality,
women’s issues, economic reform, public education, international
affairs, including abolishing slavery in Africa, job awareness, AIDS
awareness, and more."
Emphasizing the urgent need for aggressive left-wing activism, Sharpton during this period
derided moderate black politicians with close ties to the Democratic Party as "cocktail-sip Negroes" or "yellow niggers."
The Anti-Semitic Riots in Crown Heights
In the summer of 1991, Sharpton injected himself into the unrest that
followed an August 19 incident where a Hasidic Jewish driver had
accidentally run over and killed a 7-year-old black boy named Gavin Cato
in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. Scarcely three
hours after that accident, a mob of local blacks seeking retribution
hunted down and murdered a 29-year-old Australian-born rabbinical
student named Yankel Rosenbaum, who was not in any way involved in
Cato's death. Shortly thereafter, Sharpton exploited the interracial
angle of the boy's death to further fan the flames of racial animus. He
organized angry protest demonstrations and challenged local Jews to “
pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house” to settle the score if they were displeased with his actions.
Stirred, in part, by Sharpton's contentious anger, hundreds of Crown
Heights blacks subsequently took to the streets for three days and
nights of violent rioting. Sharpton reacted to the chaos by
repeatedly shouting the mantra, “No justice, no peace!” “We must not reprimand our children for outrage,” he
declared, “when it is the outrage that was put in them by an oppressive system.”
Years later,
Norman Rosenbaum,
brother of the murdered Yankel Rosenbaum, reflected on the events of
August 1991: "Based on everything we have seen and read, Sharpton never
called upon the rioters to stop their anti-Semitism-inspired violence.
He never called on the rioters to go home." Rosenbaum
elaborated:
"The riots were the product of anti-Semites taking advantage
of the tragic death of a child to justify inflicting their violence on
innocent people -- the Jewish community of Crown Heights -- and
murdering Yankel Rosenbaum, a Jew from Australia, amid the cries of
'Kill the Jew!'"[2]
Notwithstanding the mass violence that had engulfed Crown Heights in
the wake of Gavin Cato's death, Sharpton, delivering the eulogy at the
boy's funeral on August 26, persisted with his racially charged
rhetoric. He told the mourners, for instance, that it was not merely a
car accident that had killed the child, but rather the "
social accident" of "an
apartheid
[Jewish] ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights" that
allegedly did not care enough to do everything in its power to help
black victims in need.
Added Sharpton:
"Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight
to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown
Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid.... All
we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little
ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no coffee
klatsch, no skinnin' and grinnin'. Pay for your deeds."
Failed Senate Bid
Sharpton ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in
1992 and 1994, and he received
32 percent of the vote in the 1997 Democratic mayoral primary in New York City.
Sharpton Derides Mayor Dinkins As a "Ni**er Whore"
During the administration (1989-93) of New York City mayor David Dinkins (an African American), Sharpton angrily
denounced Dinkins (when the latter was unsupportive of Sharpton's activism) in the following terms:
“David Dinkins, you wanna be the only ni**er on television,
only ni**er in the newspaper, only ni**er that can talk. Don’t cover
them, don’t talk to them, ’cause you got the only ni**er problem. ‘Cause
you know if a black man stood up next to you, they would see you for
the whore that you really are.” (Click here for audio.)
On another occasion, Sharpton
referred to Dinkins as "that ni**er whore turning tricks in City Hall."
Becoming a Baptist Minister
In
1994 Sharpton was re-baptized into the Baptist faith and
became a minister of that denomination.
The Racist Kean College Speech
Also in 1994, Sharpton delivered an incendiary speech at New Jersey’s Kean College, where he said:
“White folks was in the cave while we [blacks] was building empires …
We built pyramids before Donald Trump ever knew what architecture was …
we taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and
them Greek homos ever got around to it.”[3]
Sharpton subsequently explained that while his use of the word
“homos” may have been “irresponsible,” it “is not a homophobic term”
[4]
The Kean College speech also featured Sharpton explaining that
America’s founders consisted of “the worst criminals, the rejects they
sent from Europe ... to the colonies.”
[5]
“So [if] some cracker,” he continued, “come and tell you ‘Well, my
mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,’ you better hold you
pocket. That ain’t nothing to be proud of, that means their forefathers
was crooks.”
[6] Sharpton later defended his
use of the word “cracker,” calling it merely a “colloquial term used to
describe a certain kind of bigot, who hates both blacks and Jews. It’s
certainly not a racist term and certainly not an anti-Semitic term,
because a cracker hates Jews and blacks.”
[7]
Million Man March
In 1995 Sharpton -- along with such notables as
Barack Obama and
Jeremiah Wright --
helped organize
Louis Farrakhan's October 16th Million Man March.
The Deadly Boycott of Freddy's Fashion Mart
Also in 1995, Sharpton led his NAN in a racially charged boycott
against Freddy’s Fashion Mart, a Jewish-owned business in Harlem. The
boycott started when Freddy’s owners announced that because they wanted
to expand their own business, they would no longer sublet part of their
store to a black-owned record shop. The street leader of the boycott,
Morris Powell, was also the head of Sharpton’s “
Buy Black”
Committee.
Powell and his fellow protesters repeatedly and menacingly told
passersby not to patronize the “crackers” and "the greedy Jew bastards
[who are] killing our [black] people." Some boycotters openly threatened
violence against whites and Jews––all
under the watchful, approving eye of Sharpton, who referred to the proprietors of Freddy's as "
white interlopers." The subsequent picketing became ever-more menacing in its tone until one of the participants eventually shot (
non-fatally) four whites inside the store and then set the building on fire––
killing seven employees, most of whom were Hispanics.
Appearance at a Socialist Scholars Conference
In 1998 Sharpton was a
featured speaker at the
Socialist Scholars Conference in New York.
"Redeem the Dream" Rally
In August 2000, Sharpton held a "
Redeem the Dream" rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, where one the the featured speakers was
Malik Zulu Shabazz. At that
event,
Shabazz called on black young people, including "gang members," to
unite against their "common enemy" -- "white America" and its allegedly
racist police departments. He also articulated a "black dream that when
we see caskets rolling in the black community … we will see caskets and
funerals in the community of our enemy as well."
Characterizing White Republicans As Racists
In a May 2003
speech sponsored by
Harvard
Law School, Sharpton characterized Republicans as racists who “cut
taxes for the rich while [they] strangle the poor”; he likened black
Republicans Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to subservient house
slaves; he called for “$50 billion a year” in tax hikes so that America
could “invest in working-class people, not multi-billionaires”; he
proclaimed that “white male land owners” were in control of the United
States; and he asserted that the descendants of the white men who “used
to buy [blacks], now they rent 'em.”
Failed Presidential Campaign
A harsh
critic of the
Iraq War and the
Patriot Act (which he
called
"unpatriotic" and "illegitimate" legislation), Sharpton campaigned for
the U.S. presidency in 2004. Though his candidacy was unsuccessful, the
Democratic Party establishment allowed him to speak in the prime-time slot on the third day of its national convention.
Supporting Cindy Sheehan
In August 2005 Sharpton
visited activist
Cindy Sheehan in Crawford, Texas to show support for her anti-war, anti-Bush protest campaign.
Speech at an Anti-War Rally Organized by Pro-Communist Coalitions
On September 24, 2005, Sharpton spoke at the "Call to United Mass
Action," an anti-Iraq War rally in Washington, DC that was co-organized
by
International ANSWER and
United for Peace and Justice. Other
speakers at the event, which was attended by an estimated 300,000 people, included
Brian Becker,
Michael Berg,
Mahdi Bray,
Ramsey Clark,
Cindy Sheehan,
George Galloway,
Larry Holmes,
Dolores Huerta,
Ralph Nader,
Elias Rashmawi,
Michael Shehadeh, and
Lynne Stewart.
The Duke Lacrosse Case
In March 2006, a black stripper
accused
three white members of the Duke University lacrosse team of having
beaten, raped and sodomized her during an off-campus party. These
charges triggered an instantaneous eruption of outrage among left-wing
civil-rights activists. Sharpton, for his part,
declared
that these ”rich white boys” had attacked a ”black girl,” and warned
that if arrests were not made immediately, there would be no peace. He
further
claimed
that "this case parallels Abner Louima, who was raped and sodomized in a
bathroom [by a New York City police officer] like this girl has alleged
she was.... and just like in the Louima case, you have people here
saying she fabricated it...." It later became evident, however, that the
plaintiff's charges were indeed entirely fabricated, and all charges
against the defendants were dropped.
Disparaging Mormonism
When Mitt Romney, a Mormon, ran for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Sharpton
said:
“As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in
God will defeat him anyways, so don’t worry about that; that’s a
temporary situation.”
Charging Racism in Major League Baseball's Steroid Investigations
In February 2008, Sharpton
asserted
that the federal government was seeking to prosecute black athletes
more aggressively than white athletes in scandals over their alleged use
of performance-enhancing drugs. Specifically, Sharpton claimed that
members of Congress, in their recent questioning of white pitcher Roger
Clemens, had acted as if "they were at a fan club meeting," as compared
to the allegedly harsher treatment which black outfielder Barry Bonds
was receiving. "You've got to understand that the fight has always been
about the criminalization of black men," said Sharpton.
Supporting Barack Obama
In March 2008, Sharpton, a strong supporter of
Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, stated that he was accustomed to speaking with Obama on a regular basis -- "
two or three times a week."
Shakedowns and Extortions
Sharpton often threatens to organize black boycotts of corporations on
grounds that they supposedly discriminate against African Americans.
Those companies,
in turn, typically try to pacify Sharpton with cash; sometimes they hire him as a consultant. For example:
- In June 1998 Sharpton threatened
to call for a consumer boycott of Pepsi, alleging that blacks were
underrepresented in the company's advertising. Less than a year later,
Pepsi hired Sharpton as a $25,000-per-year adviser until 2007.
- In November 2003, Sharpton threatened
to lead a boycott of DaimlerChrysler over the allegedly pervasive
“institutional racism” in the company’s car loan practices. Within six
months, Chrysler began supporting Sharpton's NAN conferences.
- Also in 2003, Sharpton complained that
American Honda had too few blacks in management positions. Company
executives met with Sharpton, and within two months they began to
sponsor NAN events.
- According to
one General Motors spokesman, NAN repeatedly asked his company for
contributions every year from 2000 through 2006, and GM each time
declined to pay anything. Then, in December 2006 Sharpton threatened to
call a boycott to protest the carmaker’s closing of an African
American-owned GM dealership in the Bronx. In 2007 and 2008, General
Motors made monetary donations to NAN.
Violating Federal Election Laws
In April
2009, Sharpton and his NAN were fined $285,000 for having violated
election rules during Sharpton's 2004 presidential bid. According to the
Federal Election Commission:
The National Action Network's Overdue Payroll TaxesThough Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN) owed some $1.1 million in overdue payroll taxes as of 2009, Sharpton at that time began
collecting a salary of $250,000 from the organization. An August 2014 Treasury Department
report
indicated that only 1,200 groups in the United States owed more than
$100,000 in unpaid payroll taxes, meaning that NAN ranked among the most
delinquent nonprofits in the country.
Calling for Economic Equality
On May 2, 2010, Sharpton addressed a church congregation in Danbury,
Connecticut, where he said that the late Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream
"was not to put one black president in the White House," but rather "
to make everything equal in everybody’s house."
The Trayvon Martin Case
Sharpton reacted passionately to a February 26, 2012 incident in Sanford, Florida, in which a "
white Hispanic"
neighborhood-watch captain named George Zimmerman shot and killed a
17-year-old African American named Trayvon Martin. When subsequent
reports suggested that Martin had merely been in Zimmerman's
neighborhood to purchase a bag of Skittles at a local shop, Sharpton
said:
“It is an unbelievable burden, and hard to articulate, that [if you
are black] you’re born automatically a suspect, and you have to operate
and behave in a way that does not exacerbate or incite someone’s
paranoia. We have come so far in this country that we can put a black
man in the White House, but we can’t walk a black child down the
neighborhood street to get a bag of Skittles.”
When Zimmerman was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges in a July 2013 trial, Sharpton blasted the verdict as an “
atrocity”
and “a slap in the face to those that believe in justice in this
country.” Moreover, Sharpton announced that he and his National Action
Network would soon be "
mobilizing" protests in 100 U.S. cities.
Likening Republicans to Hitler
On May 25, 2012, Sharpton
told a radio audience that Republicans view black people as subhumans, much as Adolf Hitler saw Jews:
"It seems like they [some of the right wing] act as though some
wiping out of people ... is alright. It's not alright to do to any
innocent people.... [T]o wipe out innocent people just 'cause of who
they are, like was done in Hitler's Germany, or was done to Native
Americans, is not justified."
Strategizing with Obama to Push Tax Hikes on the Wealthy
On December 4, 2012, Sharpton and several other "
influential progressive" advisors (as described by White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest) met with President
Barack Obama
to strategize on how to best sell the American public on the need to
raise taxes on people earning $250,000 or more, while extending the
Bush-era tax cuts for all other U.S. residents. Also in attendance at
the meeting were MSNBC hosts
Rachel Maddow,
Lawrence O'Donnell and Ed Schultz, and
Arianna Huffington.
Gun Control
Later in December 2012, Sharpton spoke out publicly about a recent
incident where a deranged gunman had shot and killed 26 people
(including 20 children) at a Connecticut elementary school. Calling for
stricter gun control measures, he
said:
"In any civilized society, you do not see massacres continue to happen
... and you keep the same laws when clearly they're not working." A
questioner then asked Sharpton, "What happens when the criminal goes to
knives?" Sharpton replied: "Then you deal with knives. The same thing
you do if you have a head cold, and the cold is gone and you have a
headache. Then you take headache medicine."
Claiming that President Obama's Likeness Belongs on Mount Rushmore
In January 2013, Sharpton
stated
that Barack Obama was at least as deserving as President Theodore
Roosevelt of having his likeness appear on Mount Rushmore: "[Obama]
stopped two wars and the whole question of finance reform on Wall Street
and health care. I mean, he has done some concrete things.... [A] lot
of people could say that Teddy Roosevelt was more of a character than a
transformative president. I can name, literally, things that President
Obama has done. Now, I’m going to say that if Teddy Roosevelt is the
measure, I think it strengthens the case for President Obama."
Addressing the "Knockout Game"
In the fall of 2013, media outlets like Breitbart News, Truth Revolt, and Fox News reported
extensively
on the growing prevalence of the so-called "knockout game," whereby
groups of black teenagers were targeting defenseless and unsuspecting
white, Jewish, and Asian pedestrians and blindsiding them with
roundhouse punches designed to render the victims unconscious.
Accomplices to the perpetrators commonly captured these attacks on video
and posted them, as a form of celebration, to the website YouTube.
Hundreds
of these knockout-game incidents had occurred in cities nationwide
since 2010. Many had resulted in serious injuries, and in several cases
the victims had died.
On November 22, 2013, former U.S. Congressman Allen West, a black conservative, publicly
criticized Sharpton for his silence on the knockout game. The very next day, Sharpton spoke out against the violence,
saying:
“If someone was running around talking about knocking out blacks, we
would not be silent. We cannot be silent.” Two days later, Sharpton
penned an
op-ed in the
Huffington Post
denouncing the "racist" and "inhumane" behavior that "in many cases
specifically target[s] Jewish folks" and "has no place in our country or
the world." He further condemned the practice as a "deplorable,
reprehensible and inexcusable" form of "insane thuggery."
Sharpton Embraces Convicted Voter-Fraud Perpetrator at Anti-Voter ID Rally
Sharpton was the
keynote speaker at a March 2014
event condemning
Voter ID laws and honoring Melowese Richardson, an Ohio poll worker
convicted of voter fraud, as what one Democrat executive called "a
martyr." Firmly convinced that Barack Obama had earned the “right to sit
[a second term] as president of the United States,” Richardson in 2012:
(a) voted twice in her own name and three times on behalf of her
comatose sister; (b) filled out and mailed an absentee ballot on behalf
of her granddaughter, who subsequently voted in person on election day;
and (c) was likely responsible for three additional absentee ballots
generated from her home address, all of which bore similar handwriting.
(Richardson was originally
sentenced
to a five-year prison term for these crimes, though that punishment was
later reduced to mere probation after Democratic activists pressed for
leniency.)
Sharpton's Reaction to the Death of Eric Garner
Sharpton
became deeply involved in the protests that followed a July 17, 2014
incident where a 43-year old African American named Eric Garner died in
Staten Island, New York, after having resisted several white police
officers' efforts to arrest him for illegally selling “loosies,” single
cigarettes from packs without tax stamps. One of the officers at the
scene put his arms around the much taller Garner's neck and took him
down to the ground with a headlock/chokehold. While lying facedown on
the sidewalk surrounded by four officers, Garner repeatedly said, "I
can't breathe." A black female NYPD sergeant
supervised
the entire altercation and never ordered that officer to release the
hold. Garner was pronounced dead approximately an hour later at a local
hospital. City
medical examiners
subsequently concluded that he had died as a result of an interplay
between the police officer’s hold and Garner’s multiple chronic
infirmities, which included bronchial asthma, heart disease, obesity,
and hypertensive cardiovascular disease.
On August 24, 2014 in New York City, Sharpton led at least 2,500 marchers in a
rally condemning “a society where police are automatically excused” for wrongdoing.
Chaos after White Police Officer Kills Black Teen in Missouri
Shortly
after a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri had shot and killed
an unarmed 18-year-old black male named Michael Brown on August 9, 2014
in circumstances that were not yet clear, violent riots and looting
erupted in that town for a number of days and nights. On
August 12, Sharpton himself arrived in Ferguson and demanded that the officer who had shot Brown be brought to justice.
Noting
that a witness had stated that Brown had his hands raised above his
head just prior to being shot, Sharpton said on August 17: "We know that
this was an
execution.
This [hands up] means 'Surrender! Don't shoot!' And the most hardened
criminals in history, when they put their hands up, we didn't execute
them."
In a speech that same day at Greater Grace Church in St. Louis, Sharpton
emphasized,
“We…have…had…enough!” And he urged people who agreed with him to make
their feelings known at the ballot box in November. “Nobody can go to
the White House until they stop by our house!” he thundered.
Also
on August 17, Sharpton addressed a large gathering at the Greater St.
Marks Family Church, where he condemned the police department's recent
release of a store surveillance video showing Michael Brown forcibly
robbing a convenience store just minutes before he was fatally shot.
Said Sharpton:
"Michael Brown is
gone. You can run whatever video you want. He is not on trial. America
is on trial! I have never in all my years seen something as offensive
and insulting as a police chief releasing a tape of a young man, trying
to smear him before we even have his funeral.
"America as a
nation, Missouri as a state, Ferguson as a city, is at a defining moment
on whether or not we know and are mature enough to handle policing —
whether it goes over the line or not. We cannot lecture nations around
the world about how they handle policing and we have an inability of
handling it in our own nation. All policemen are not bad; most policemen
are not bad. But all of them are not right all the time. And when
they're wrong, they must pay for being wrong just like citizens pay when
they're wrong....
"Looting is wrong. We condemn the looters. But
when will law enforcement condemn police who shoot and kill our young
people? We got to be honest on both sides of this discussion."
When compelling ballistic, eyewitness, and forensic
evidence
eventually (in late October 2014) indicated that Michael Brown in fact
had assaulted the officer and tried to steal his gun just prior to the
fatal shooting, Sharpton's outrage over the incident—and his
determination to make it the focal point of a civil-rights crusade—was
undiminished.
And when a grand jury announced on November 24,
2014 that it would not indict the officer who had gunned down Michael
Brown—because of overwhelming evidence indicating that the shooting was
done in self-defense—Sharpton
denounced
the entire grand jury process and condemned the prosecutor for trying
to "discredit a young teenager [Michael Brown] who can't speak for
himself." Charging that police brutality "is a problem all over the
country," Sharpton announced that he would soon be convening an
"emergency civil rights leadership meeting" in Washington; that he and
other activists would devise "a plan that will constructively help to
change this nation"; and that he would pursue an "ongoing strategy" of
"mass and regular marches, legislation, and economic boycotts" to keep
the issue of police misconduct against African Americans in the public
spotlight. Stating that "Michael Brown has lit a new energy for police
accountability" in the United States, Sharpton added: "We may have lost
one round, but the fight is not over."
Sharpton Is Outraged by the Grand Jury Decision Not to Indict the Officer Who Had the July 2014 Altercation with Eric GarnerOn
December 3, 2014, a grand jury decided not to indict the police officer
who had been involved in the aforementioned altercation that ultimately
resulted in the death of black New Yorker Eric Garner more than four
months earlier. In response to that decision, an outraged Sharpton
said:
"We want the justice department and the federal government to deal with
the fact that the grand jury systems on a state level are broken."
Sharpton Is Rebuffed by the Grieving Family of Another Black New Yorker Who Died As a Result of Police GunfireIn late November and early December 2014, Sharpton put out
press releases
indicating that he would deliver the eulogy at the funeral of the late
Akai Gurley -- a 28-year-old African American who had been shot and
killed on November 20 by a rookie NYPD officer who fired his gun blindly
into the darkness of an unlit stairwell in a Brooklyn housing project.
But Sharpton never consulted Gurley's family regarding the matter. Then, on December 5, the family
instructed Sharpton to keep his “circus” and “chaos” away from the funeral altogether. “It’s been a nightmare,” Gurley’s aunt told the
New York Post.
“He just wants to take credit for this when he’s never even contacted
my sister [Gurley’s mother]. Who made you [Sharpton] the spokesperson of
our family? We just want to bury our nephew with dignity and
respect.... How can you do a eulogy for someone you don’t even know?
It’s heartbreaking.” Depicting Sharpton as a publicity hound who felt no
genuine concern for her dead nephew, the woman also said, “There is no
piece of the pie for Mr. Sharpton here.” She then added that whenever
Sharpton becomes involved in tragic cases, “It’s not pretty — there’s
confusion.... It’s about control and power. We’re not here for that.”
Sharpton's Status As President Obama's Chief Advisor on Racial Issues
In August 2014, Politico.com published a feature story titled, “
How Al Sharpton Became Obama's Go-To Man on Race.”
The piece stated that “Sharpton not only visits the White House
frequently, he often texts or emails with senior Obama officials such
as
[Valerie] Jarrett and Attorney General
Eric Holder.” It quoted
Jesse Jackson
saying, “I’ve known Al since he was 12 years old, and he’s arrived at
the level he always wanted to arrive at, which is gratifying. He’s the
man who’s the liaison to the White House, he’s the one who’s talking to
the Justice Department.” Sharpton himself, meanwhile, offered his own
assessment of how he had bonded with Obama: “The relationship evolved
over time.... The key for him was seeing that I wasn’t insincere, that I
actually believed in the stuff I was talking about.”
Sharpton Advises Obama on Naming Replacement for Eric HolderOn September 24, 2013, Eric Holder
announced that he would be resigning from his post as Attorney General as soon as a successor could be named and confirmed by the Senate. Immediately after Holder's announcement, Sharpton said that his own civil rights organization, the
National Action Network, was already "
engaged
in immediate conversations with the White House on deliberations over a
successor whom we hope will continue in the general direction of
Attorney General Holder." "The resignation of Attorney General Eric
Holder is met with both pride and disappointment by the Civil Rights
community," added Sharpton. "We are proud that he has been the best
Attorney General on Civil Rights in U.S. history, and disappointed
because he leaves at a critical time when we need his continued
diligence most."
TV and Radio
In addition to his social activism, Sharpton is also a broadcaster. In July 2011 he
replaced Cenk Uygur as the
host of a nightly MSNBC news/talk television program titled
Politics Nation. Moreover, he hosts his own daily radio program,
Keepin' It Real with Al Sharpton, which began airing in January 2006. And he hosts a weekly radio show titled
Hour of Power on Sunday nights.
Sharpton's Wealth
As of 2013, Sharpton earned an annual salary of just over
$241,000 from the National Action Network (NAN), even while the organization was
$1.1 million in debt. His exact MSNBC salary has not been publicly disclosed, but it is believed to be a
six-figure sum that exceeds his income from NAN. In August 2014, CelebrityNetWorth.com listed Sharpton's net worth as being
$5 million.
$4.5 Million in Tax Liens
In November 2014, a
New York Times investigation reported that Sharpton had more than
$4.5 million
in tax liens against him and his businesses. His National Action
Network, for instance, owed approximately $1.1 million in overdue
payroll taxes. Moreover, Sharpton had repeatedly failed to pay money
that he owed to hotels, travel agencies, and landlords. Indeed he had
been sued twice by his landlord for a cumulative $98,000, and had relied
on friends and his nonprofit to pay his daughter’s education expenses.
NOTES:
[1] Sharpton was not the only
person involved in the Brawley case to be required by a court to pay
restitution to Pagones. Indeed, Alton Maddox was found
liable
for $97,000, C. Vernon Mason for $188,000, and Ms. Brawley herself was
ordered in 1998 to pay Pagones more than $190,000 plus 9 percent annual
interest. The woman, however, made no payments at all on that debt until
2013, at which time a Virgina
court
forced her to begin paying Pagones $627 each month in garnisheed wages.
By then, she owed the former district attorney a total of $431,492.
Notably, Pagones indicated that he would be willing to forgive the debt
if Brawley were to publicly admit that her 1987 accusations against him
were fabricated.
[2] Sharpton himself eventually (in 2011)
acknowledged
that during the 1991 riots, he had not made any statements to indicate
"that there was no justification or excuse for violence or for the death
of Yankel Rosenbaum."
[3] Jonathan Mahler, “Sharpton’s Image As New Moderate Dimmed by Video,”
Forward (December 22, 1995), p. 4. (
Click here for audio.)
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
