When Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network convene their 15th annual convention April 3-6, they will be joined by an array of political and entertainment leaders, including members of the Barack Obama administration.
Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Surgeon General Regina M. Benjamin, Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are expected to represent the administration during the four-day confab, which will be held at New York’s Sheraton Hotel and Towers. Others scheduled to attend the four-day confab include actress Rosie Perez, director Spike Lee, Jazz at Lincoln Center director and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, Bishop T. D. Jakes, National Urban League president Marc Morial, NAACP President Ben Jealous, basketball legend Magic Johnson and Martin Luther King III.
“Ours is the first national gathering of civil and human rights activists to include top members of the administration and religious leaders since President Obama’s re-election,” Sharpton told theGrio. “There are two voting rights cases before the Supreme court and we need an action plan for voting rights, gun violence and to combat the imminent attacks on our civil rights in this country.”
National Action Network’s Convention 2013
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering challenges to Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, as well as part of the Defense of Marriage Act, and California’s Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage. And Congress is debating potential gun control legislation, with the president and victims’ advocacy groups pushing for action in the wake of the mass shooting that claimed the lives of 26 children and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut, as well as the killing of Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old who was shot to death near her Chicago school, days after performing with her high school marching band at Obama’s inaugural. Hadiya Pendleton, along with the family of Trayvon Martin, are also expected to attend the convention.
The convention, which is expected to attract members of Congress, along with several administration officials, will feature the 15th Annual Keepers of the Dream Awards, which each year are given to mark the anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. This year’s award will be held on April 4th, the date of King’s assassination in 1968.
In a recent poll commissioned by BET founder Bob Johnson, 24 percent of African-Americans chose Sharpton as the leader who most speaks for them.
Alfred Charles ”Al“ Sharpton, Jr., or as we who admire and follow him on MSNBC refer to him as….The Rev. Al, is a man who reminds me much of Malcolm X. Rev. Al has undergone a transformation over the years, from angry Black militant to mature, mellow, calm fighter for civil rights.
I admire Rev. Al because no matter the issue, or level of controversy, Rev. Al is right there to assist in any way necessary……”By Any Means Necessary.”
Sharpton’s supporters praise “his ability and willingness to defy the power structure that is seen as the cause of their suffering” and consider him “a man who is willing to tell it like it is”. Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, a one-time foe, said that Sharpton deserves the respect he enjoys among Black Americans: “He is willing to go to jail for them, and he is there when they need him.”
His critics describe him as “a political radical who is to blame, in part, for the deterioration of race relations”. Sociologist Orlando Patterson has referred to him as a racial arsonist,while liberal columnist Derrick Z. Jackson has called him the black equivalent of Richard Nixon and Pat Robertson. Sharpton sees much of the criticism as a sign of his effectiveness. “In many ways, what they consider criticism is complimenting my job,” he said. “An activist’s job is to make public civil rights issues until there can be a climate for change.”
What I do functionally is what Dr. King, Reverend Jackson
and the movement are all about; but I learned manhood
from James Brown. I always say that James Brown taught
me how to be a man.
”
—Sharpton on Brown as a father figure.
Al Sharpton, the “refined” agitator
Uploaded on May 22, 2011
The former street activist has tempered his style, become friends of the president and broadened his civil rights activism to include causes like immigration and same-sex marriage. Lesley Stahl reports.
Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. was born in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, to Ada (née Richards) and Alfred Charles Sharpton, Sr. He preached his first sermon at the age of four and toured with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.
In 1963 Sharpton’s father left his wife to have a relationship with Al Sharpton’s half-sister. Ada Sharpton took a job as a maid, but her income was so low that the family qualified for welfare and had to move from middle classHollis, Queens, to the public housing projects in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Bernhard Goetz shot four African-American men on a New York subway train on December 22, 1984, when they approached him and allegedly tried to rob him. At his trial Goetz was cleared of all charges except criminal possession of a weapon. Sharpton led several marches protesting what he saw as the weak prosecution of the case.
Sharpton and other civil rights leaders said Goetz’s actions were racist and requested a federal civil rights investigation. A federal investigation concluded the shooting was due to an attempted robbery and not race.
Howard Beach
On December 20, 1986 three African-American men were assaulted in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens by a mob of white men. The three men were chased by their attackers onto the Belt Parkway, where one of them, Michael Griffith, was struck and killed by a passing motorist.
A week later, on December 27, Sharpton led 1,200 demonstrators on a march through the streets of Howard Beach. Residents of the neighborhood, who were overwhelmingly white, screamed racial epithets at the protesters, who were largely black. Sharpton’s role in the case, which led to the appointment of a special prosecutor by New York Governor Mario Cuomo after the two surviving victims refused to co-operate with the Queens district attorney, helped propel him to national prominence.
Bensonhurst
On August 23, 1989, four African-American teenagers were beaten by a group of 10 to 30 white Italian-American youths in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood. One Bensonhurst resident, armed with a handgun, shot and killed sixteen-year-old Yusef Hawkins.
In the weeks following the assault and murder, Sharpton led several marches through Bensonhurst. The first protest, just days after the incident, was greeted by neighborhood residents shouting “Niggers go home” and holding watermelons to mock the demonstrators.
Sharpton also threatened that Hawkins’ three companions would not cooperate with prosecutor Elizabeth Holtzman unless her office agreed to hire more black attorneys. In the end, they cooperated.
In May 1990 when one of the two leaders of the mob was acquitted of the most serious charges brought against him, Sharpton led another protest through Bensonhurst. In January 1991, when other members of the gang were given light sentences, Sharpton planned another march for January 12, 1991. Before that demonstration began, neighborhood resident Michael Riccardi tried to kill Sharpton by stabbing him in the chest. Sharpton recovered from his wounds, and later asked the judge for leniency when Riccardi was sentenced.
National Action Network
In 1991, Sharpton founded the National Action Network, an organization designed to increase voter education, to provide services to those in poverty, and to support small community businesses.
The Crown Heights riot began on August 19, 1991 after a car driven by a Jewish man, and part of a procession led by an unmarked police car, went through an intersection and was struck by another vehicle causing it to veer onto the sidewalk where it accidentally struck and killed a seven-year-old Guyanese boy named Gavin Cato and severely injured his cousin Angela. Witnesses could not agree upon the speed and could not agree whether the light was yellow or red. One of the factors that sparked the riot was the arrival of a private ambulance, which was later discovered to be on the orders of a police officer who was worried for the Jewish driver’s safety, removed him from the scene while Cato lay pinned under his car.
After being removed from under the car, Cato and his cousin were treated soon after by a city ambulance (without visibly Jewish EMTs). Caribbean-American and African-American residents of the neighborhood rioted for four consecutive days fueled by rumors that the private ambulance had refused to treat Cato. During the riot black youths looted stores, beat Jews in the street, and clashed with groups of Jews, hurling rocks and bottles at one another after Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting student from Australia, was stabbed and killed by a member of a mob while some chanted “Kill the Jew”, and “get the Jews out”. Sharpton marched through Crown Heights and in front of “770″, shortly after the riot, with about 400 protesters (who chanted “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “No justice, no peace!”), in spite of Mayor David Dinkins‘s attempts to keep the march from happening.
Freddie’s Fashion Mart
In 1995 a black Pentecostal Church, the United House of Prayer, which owned a retail property on 125th Street, asked Fred Harari, a Jewish tenant who operated Freddie’s Fashion Mart, to evict his longtime subtenant, a black-owned record store called The Record Shack. Sharpton led a protest in Harlem against the planned eviction of The Record Shack. Sharpton told the protesters, “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.”
On December 8, 1995 Roland J. Smith Jr., one of the protesters, entered Harari’s store with a gun and flammable liquid, shot several customers and set the store on fire. The gunman fatally shot himself, and seven store employees died of smoke inhalation. Fire Department officials discovered that the store’s sprinkler had been shut down, in violation of the local fire code. Sharpton claimed that the perpetrator was an open critic of himself and his nonviolent tactics. Sharpton later expressed regret for making the racial remark, “white interloper,” and denied responsibility for inflaming or provoking the violence.
In 1999, Sharpton led a protest to raise awareness about the death of Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea who was shot to death by NYPD officers. Sharpton claimed that Diallo’s death was the result of police brutality and racial profiling. Diallo’s family was later awarded $3 million in a wrongful death suit filed against the city.
In 2001 Sharpton was jailed for 90 days on trespassing charges while protesting against U.S. military target practice exercises in Puerto Rico near a United States Navy bombing site. Sharpton, held in a Puerto Rican lockup for two days and then imprisoned at Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn on May 25, 2001, has theFederal Bureau of Prisons ID# 21458-069. He was released on August 17, 2001.
Ousmane Zongo
In 2002 Sharpton was involved in protests following the death of West African immigrant Ousmane Zongo. Zongo, who was unarmed, was shot by an undercover police officer during a raid on a warehouse in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Sharpton met with the family and also provided some legal services.
On November 25, 2006 Sean Bell was shot and killed in the Jamaica section of Queens in New York City by plainclothes detectives from the New York Police Department in a hail of 50 bullets. The incident sparked fierce criticism of the police from the public and drew comparisons to the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo. Three of the five detectives involved in the shooting went to trial in 2008 on charges ranging from manslaughter to reckless endangerment but were found not guilty.
On March 11, 2007 Sharpton held a press conference to highlight what he said was unequal treatment of four suspected rapists in a high-profile crime in the Dunbar Village Housing Projects in West Palm Beach, Florida. The suspects, who were young black men, were arrested for allegedly raping and beating a black Haitian woman at gunpoint. The crime also involved forcing the woman to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son.
At his press conference Sharpton said that any violent act toward a woman is inexcusable but he felt that the accused youths were being treated unfairly because they were black. Sharpton contrasted the treatment of the suspects, who remain in jail, with white suspects involved in a gang rape—which he claimed was equivalent to the Dunbar Village attack—who were released after posting bond.
Reclaim the Dream commemorative march
On August 28, 2010 Sharpton and other civil rights leaders led a march to commemorate the 47th anniversary of the historic March on Washington. After gathering at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., thousands of people marched five miles to the National Mall.
Tanya McDowell
In June 2011 Sharpton spoke at a rally in support of Tanya McDowell, a Bridgeport, Connecticut, woman who was arrested and charged with larceny for registering her son for kindergarten in neighboring Norwalk.
George Zimmerman
Following the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, Sharpton issued a statement of concern that there had not been a thorough investigation. Sean Hannity accused Sharpton and MSNBC of “rushing to judgment” in the case. MSNBC issued a statement in which they said Sharpton “repeatedly called for calm” and further investigation.
Political views
2008 presidential race
In September 2007 when he was asked whether he thought it was important for the US to have a black president, Sharpton said, “It would be a great moment as long as the black candidate was supporting the interest that would inevitably help our people. A lot of my friends went with Clarence Thomas and regret it to this day. I don’t assume that just because somebody’s my color, they’re my kind. But I’m warming up to Obama, but I’m not there yet.”
AL SHARPTON AND CORNEL WEST GO AT IT OVER OBAMA!
Gay rights
Sharpton is a supporter of equal rights for gays and lesbians, including same-sex marriage. During his presidential campaign in 2003, Sharpton said he thought it was insulting to be asked to discuss the issue of gay marriage. “It’s like asking do I support black marriage or white marriage…. The inference of the question is that gays are not like other human beings.”
Sharpton is leading a grassroots movement to eliminate homophobia within the Black church.
During the Crown Heights Riot, Sharpton (who arranged a rally in Crown Heights after Cato’s death) has been seen by some commentators as inflaming tensions by making remarks that included “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house”.
Comments on gays
Sharpton was quoted as saying to an audience at Kean College in 1994 that, “White folks was [sic] in caves while we was building empires…. We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.” Sharpton defended his comments by noting that the term “homo” was not homophobic but added that he no longer uses the term. Sharpton has since called for an end to homophobia in the African-American community.
Comments on Mormons
During 2007 Sharpton was accused of bigotry for comments he made on May 7, 2007, concerning presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his religion, Mormonism:
“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.”
In response, a representative for Romney told reporters that “bigotry toward anyone because of their beliefs is unacceptable.” The Catholic League compared Sharpton to Don Imus, and said that his remarks “should finish his career”.
On May 9 during an interview on Paula Zahn NOW, Sharpton said that his views on Mormonism were based on the “Mormon Church’s traditionally racist views regarding blacks” and its interpretation of the so-called “Curse of Ham“. On May 10, Sharpton called two apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and apologized to them for his remarks and asked to meet with them. A spokesman for the Church confirmed that Sharpton had called and said that “we appreciate it very much, Rev. Sharpton’s call, and we consider the matter closed.” He also apologized to “any member of the Mormon church” who was offended by his comments. Later that month, Sharpton went to Salt Lake City,Utah, where he met with Elder M. Russell Ballard, a leader of the Church, and Elder Robert C. Oaks of the Church’s Presidency of the Seventy.
On November 28, 1987, Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old African-American girl, was found smeared with feces, lying in a garbage bag, her clothing torn and burned and with various slurs and epithets written on her body in charcoal. Brawley claimed she had been assaulted and raped by six white men, some of them police officers, in the town of Wappinger, New York.
Al Sharpton: Tawana Brawley and Media Manipulating [In His Own Words]
Attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason joined Sharpton in support of Brawley. A grand jury was convened; after seven months of examining police and medical records, the jury found “overwhelming evidence” that Brawley had fabricated her story. Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason had accused the Dutchess County prosecutor, Steven Pagones, of racism and of being one of the perpetrators of the alleged abduction and rape. The three were successfully sued for defamation, and were ordered to pay $345,000 in damages, with the jury finding Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, Maddox for two, and Mason for one. Sharpton refused to pay his share of the damages; it was later paid by a number of black business leaders including Johnnie Cochran.
In 2007 Sharpton said he would have taken the case the same as he would today, with the only difference being that he would not have made it so personal against Pagones. He said that he still felt Brawley had a good case to go to trial. “I disagreed with the grand jury on Brawley,” said Sharpton in an interview. “I believed there was enough evidence to go to trial. Grand jury said there wasn’t. Okay, fine. Do I have a right to disagree with the grand jury? Many Americans believe O.J. Simpson was guilty. A jury said he wasn’t. So I have as much right to question a jury as they do. Does it make somebody a racist? No! They just disagreed with the jury. So did I.”
Personal life
In 1971 while touring with James Brown, he met his future wife, Kathy Jordan, who was a backup singer. Sharpton and Jordan married in 1980. The couple separated in 2004.
Sharpton is an honorary member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.
Religion
Sharpton was licensed and ordained a Pentecostal minister by Bishop F.D. Washington at the age of nine or ten. After Bishop Washington’s death in the late 1980′s, Sharpton became a Baptist. He was re-baptized as a member of the Bethany Baptist Church in 1994 by the Reverend William Jones and became a Baptist minister.
On January 12, 1991 Sharpton escaped serious injury when he was stabbed in the chest in the schoolyard at P.S. 205 by Michael Riccardi while Sharpton was preparing to lead a protest through Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York. The intoxicated attacker was apprehended by Sharpton’s aides and handed over to police, who were present for the planned protest. Sharpton, although forgiving his attacker and pleading for leniency on his behalf, filed suit against New York City alleging that the many police present had failed to protect him from his attacker. In December 2003, he finally reached a $200,000 settlement with the city just as jury selection was about to start.
In 1992, Riccardi was convicted of first-degree assault. Sharpton asked the judge for leniency when sentencing Riccardi. The judge sentenced Riccardi to five to 15 years in jail, and he served ten years in prisonbeing released on parole on January 8, 2001.
Indirect familial relation to Strom Thurmond
In February 2007 genealogist Megan Smolenyak discovered that Sharpton’s great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond‘s great-great-grandfather. Coleman Sharpton was later freed.
Thurmond was notable as the longest serving Senator (at the time of his death) who was a major advocate of racial segregation during the middle of the 20th century. Thurmond’s illegitimate daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, stated she would welcome Sharpton to the family if a DNA test shows he is a relative. In an interview, Sharpton said he has no plans for the DNA test to see if he is related.
The Sharpton family name originated with Coleman Sharpton’s previous slave-owner, who was named Alexander Sharpton.
Tax issues
On May 9, 2008 the Associated Press reported that Sharpton and his businesses owed almost $1.5 million in unpaid taxes and penalties. Sharpton owed $931,000 in federal income tax and $366,000 to New York, and his for-profit company, Rev. Al Communications, owed another $176,000 to the state.
On June 19, 2008 the New York Post reported that the Internal Revenue Service had sent subpoenas to several corporations that had donated to Sharpton’s National Action Network. In 2007 New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo began investigating the National Action Network, because it failed to make proper financial reports, as required for non-profits. According to the Post, several major corporations, including Anheuser-Busch and Colgate-Palmolive, have donated thousands of dollars to the National Action Network. The Post asserted that the donations were made to prevent boycotts or rallies by the National Action Network.
Sharpton countered the investigative actions with a charge that they reflected a political agenda by United States agencies.
On September 29, 2010 Robert Snell of The Detroit News reported that the Internal Revenue Service had filed a notice of federal tax lien against Sharpton in New York City in the amount of over $538,000. Sharpton’s lawyer asserts that the notice of federal tax lien relates to Sharpton’s year 2009 federal income tax return, the due date of which has been extended to October 15, 2010, according to the lawyer. However, the Snell report states that the lien relates to taxes assessed during 2009.
Political campaigns
Sharpton has run unsuccessfully for elected office on multiple occasions. Of his unsuccessful runs, he said that winning office may not have been his goal. “Much of the media criticism of me assumes their goals and they impose them on me,” said Sharpton in an interview. “Well, those might not be my goals. So they will say, ‘Well, Sharpton has not won a political office.’ But that might not be my goal! Maybe I ran for political office to change the debate, or to raise the social justice question.” Sharpton ran for a United States Senate seat from New York in 1988, 1992, and 1994. In 1997, he ran for Mayor of New York City. During his 1992 bid, he and his wife lived in a home in Englewood, New Jersey, though he said his residence was an apartment in Brooklyn.
On December 15, 2005 Sharpton agreed to repay $100,000 in public funds he received from the federal government for his 2004 Presidential campaign. The repayment was required because Sharpton had exceeded federal limits on personal expenditures for his campaign. At that time his most recent Federal Election Commission filings (from January 1, 2005) stated that Sharpton’s campaign still had debts of $479,050 and owed Sharpton himself $145,146 for an item listed as “Fundraising Letter Preparation — Kinko’s.”
In 2009 the Federal Election Commission announced it had levied a fine of $285,000 against Sharpton’s 2004 presidential campaign for breaking campaign finance rules during his presidential campaign.
On April 2, 2007 Sharpton announced that he would not enter the 2008 presidential race. “I am not going to run,” he said.
In June 2005 Sharpton signed a contract with Matrix Media to produce and host a live two-hour daily talk program, but it never aired. In November 2005, Sharpton signed with Radio One to host a daily national talk radio program, which began airing on January 30, 2006, entitled Keepin It Real with Al Sharpton.
On August 29, 2011 Sharpton became the host of PoliticsNation, the MSNBC show scheduled for the 6:00 p.m. slot.
Until the time comes that Rev Al becomes unnecessary, when we no longer need fighters/warriors for the common man, I am damn glad we have this man marching, fighting and being a voice for ALL Americans.
Sloth, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony, Lust, Envy, Pride – and Compromise.
If you’ve spent your life living it for other people, then getting to a level where you start to say what you want then negotiate down – the level of compromise – might seem like a step up.
Don’t get me wrong, learning to say what you want and stand up for what you believe in is a huge advancement…
…but learning to compromise definitely isn’t.
In fact, in the grand scheme of things, compromise is actually a huge step backwards.”
Of course I strongly disagree with TheArtOfLiving.
Compromise
“To compromise is to make a deal between different parties where each party gives up part of their demand. In arguments, compromise is a concept of finding agreement through communication, through a mutual acceptance of terms—often involving variations from an original goal or desire.Extremism is often considered as antonym to compromise, which, depending on context, may be associated with concepts of balance and tolerance. In the negative connotation, compromise may be referred to as capitulation, referring to a “surrender” of objectives, principles, or material, in the process of negotiating an agreement. In human relationships “compromise” is frequently said to be an agreement that no party is happy with, this is because the parties involved often feel that they either gave away too much or that they received too little.”
Political Compromise
In international politics, the compromises most often discussed are usually regarded as nefarious deals with dictators, such as Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. Margalit calls these “rotten compromises.” In democratic politics, compromises are necessary if any progress is to be made. Politicians campaign standing on principle and demonizing their opponents, which is to be expected in a robust democracy. But then they have to be able to adjust their principles and work with their opponents if they are to govern at all. This tension is one of the great challenges of contemporary democracy and has become more difficult in the era of the permanent campaign, as Gutmann and Thompson show. The problem of political compromise in general is an important subject in political ethics.
If you are dead against compromise, you really have no business being in politics in any capacity whatsoever. in fact, being a politician means knowing when diplomacy and compromise should best be used in order to reach common ground.
Yesterday’s compromise by President Barack Hussein Obama & the Democrats, and House Of Representatives Speaker John Boehner & The TeaTardedRepubliCANTS, was and is the epitome of the word compromise.
I have watched the “expert pundits” on TV all day long, sit and do what they do best: Monday Morning Quarterback. I have read the words written by the Reich Wing and the Looney Left bloggers and reporters. I have come to one very clear and vital conclusion that Rev. Al Sharpton hit on when doing his show PoliticsNation: To a man/woman, every person I have talked to about the Tax Relief Extension Bill “compromise”, has said it was exactly the result they wanted. A compromise.
That seems to be the overall desire of just about every average Joe & Jane on the street of America. Stop the fighting between political parties and inside each political party and work together to accomplish forward progress for America. Now if only our elected politician were able to hear what Americans want.
Lefty Loonys & Reich Wingers are upset that their sides didn’t whoop the asses of their opponents to a pulp. Thats not what politics is about. Nobody got everything they wanted last night in this deal. Thats not what this fight was about either.
The racist caucasian politicians on the TeaTardedRepubliCANT side, and you know them by name, were pissed off that Barack. Hussein. Obama. Saved the day once again.
Why?
Barack Hussein Obama has a skin tone that is NOT caucasian.
For people like TheArtOfLiving, who think compromise is a bad idea….learn what politics is all about first, then attempt to offer an opinion on politics.
Politics is all about compromise & diplomacy. Don’t think so….then explain to me exactly how President Barack Hussein Obama has accomplished this…….
Perhaps the single most influential and most celebrated member of the black intelligentsia, Dr. Cornel West, is under fire for some highly controversial remarks he made concerning President Barack Obama. Here’s what he said.
“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening. And that’s true for a white brother.”
First of all, what so many of us, as well as our African-American leaders forget is that President Obama is the president of the entire country. He was NOT elected President of Black America only. In fact, he didn’t even really begin to gain the support of African-American voters until he had begun to prove himself as a viable candidate due to his popularity among White voters in the early primaries.
Name a POTUS (even Bill Clinton, who we claimed as the first Black president based mainly on stereotypical behavior such as smoking marijuana, playing the sax, and sleeping around—a post for another day) who was able to really focus on the types of issues we’re asking our current president to deal with, including a grossly race-biased justice system, the strength of the Black dollar, lack of jobs and education.
The rest of this article can be found at Dr. Jays.com
I vote for West has lost him mind. Jealousy is a bitch called envy.
Lets get into this latest issue among Black America…..chin deep:
Cornel West took aim at MSNBC’s black anchors in an appearance on “Democracy Now” on Friday.
West made headlines when, during the interview with Amy Goodman, he called President Obama a “Rockefeller Republican in black-face.” But he also reserved very harsh words for Al Sharpton, Melissa Harris-Perry and frequent MSNBC guest host Michael Eric Dyson. Goodman played a clip of Dyson defending Obama’s record, and asked West and fellow guest Tavis Smiley to comment. (Jump to 11:35 in the video below)
Tavis Smiley & Cornel West on Election, Why Calling Obama Progressive Ignores His Record 1/2
Published on Nov 9, 2012
Visit http://www.democracynow.org to watch more reports on Democracy Now!, an independent, global news hour that airs weekdays on 1,100+ TV and radio stations.
As the most expensive presidential election in U.S. history comes to an end, broadcaster Tavis Smiley and professor, activist Dr. Cornel West join us to discuss President Obama’s re-election and their hopes for a national political agenda in and outside of the White House during Obama’s second term. At a time when one in six Americans is poor, the price tag for combined spending by federal candidates — along with their parties and outside groups like super PACs — totaled more than $6 billion. Together, West and Smiley have written the new book, “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto.”
Tavis Smiley & Cornel West on Election, Why Calling Obama Progressive Ignores His Record 2/2
Both Tavis and Smiley single out prominent progressives whom they accuse of overlooking Obama’s actual record. “We believe if [Obama] is not pushed, he is going to be a transactional president and not a transformational president,” Smiley says. “We believe the time is now for action and no longer accommodation… To be the most progressive means you’ve taken some serious risk. And I just don’t see the example of that.” West says that some prominent supporters of Obama “want to turn their back to poor and working people. It’s a sad thing to see them as apologists for the Obama administration in that way.
West has clashed heatedly with both Sharpton and Harris-Perry before. He and Sharpton had a legendarily hostile encounter about the Obama administration’s record on MSNBC in 2011. In February 2012, he calledHarris-Perry a “fake and a fraud,” which may have had something to do with a 2011 column she wrote calling him a “self-aggrandizing” man who “offers thin criticism of President Obama and stunning insight into the delicate ego of the self-appointed black leadership class that has been largely supplanted in recent years.”
Professor Cornel West is President Obama’s silenced, disregarded, disrespected moral conscience, according to Chris Hedge’s recent column, “The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West went Ballistic.” In an self-aggrandizing, victimology sermon deceptively wrapped in the discourse of prophetic witness, Professor West offers thin criticism of President Obama and stunning insight into the delicate ego of the self-appointed black leadership class that has been largely supplanted in recent years.
West begins with a bit of historical revision. West suggests that the President discarded him without provocation after he offered the Obama for America campaign his loyal service and prayers. But anyone with a casual knowledge of this rift knows it began during the Democratic primary not after the election. It began, not with a puffed up President, but when Cornel West’s “dear brother” Tavis Smiley threw a public tantrum because Senator Obama refused to attend Smiley’s annual State of Black America. Smiley repeatedly suggested that his forum was the necessary black vetting space for the Democratic nominees.
He needed to ask Obama and Clinton tough questions so that black America could get the answers it needed. But black America was doing a fine job making up its own mind in the primaries and didn’t need Smiley’s blessing to determine their own electoral preferences. Indeed, when Smiley got a chance to hold candidate Clinton “accountable” he spent more time fawning over her than probing about her symbolic or substantive policy stances that impacted black communities.
Fiercely loyal to his friend, Professor West chose sides and began to undermine candidate Obama is small and large ways. Candidate Obama ceased calling West back because he was in the middle of a fierce campaign and West’s loyalties were, at best, divided. I suspect candidate Obama did not trust his “dear brother” to keep the campaign secrets and strategies. I also suspect he was not inaccurate in his hesitancy.
Furthermore, West’s sense of betrayal is clearly more personal than ideological. In Hedges’ article West claims that a true progressive would always put love of the people above concern with the elite and privileged. Then he complains, “I couldn’t get a ticket to the inauguration with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration… We had to watch the thing in the hotel.”Let me get this straight–the tenured, Princeton professor who collects five figures for public lectures was relegated to a hotel television while an anonymous hotel worker got tickets to the inauguration! What kind of crazy, mixed up class politics are these? Wait a minute…
As tenured professors Cornel West and I are not meaningfully accountable, no matter what our love, commitment, or self-delusions tell us. President Obama, as an elected official, can, in fact, be voted out of his job. We can’t. That is a difference that matters. As West derides the President’s economic policies he remains silent on his friend Tavis Smiley’s relationship with Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, and McDonald’s–all corporations whose invasive and predatory actions in poor and black communities have been the target of progressive organizing for decades.
I have never heard him take Tavis Smiley to task for helping convince black Americans to enter into predatory mortgages. I’ve never heard him ask whether Tavis’ decision to publish R. Kelley’s memoirs might be a less than progressive decision. He doesn’t hold Tavis accountable because Tavis is his friend and he is loyal. I respect that, but I also know that if he were in elected office the could not get off so easily.
Opposition research would point out the hypocrisy in his public positions in a way that would make him vulnerable come election time. As a media personality and professor he is safely ensconced in a system that can never vote him off the island. I think an honest critique of Obama has to begin by acknowledging his own privileges.
In a recent interview with Diverse magazine, Professor Cornel West attacked his former Princeton colleague and newly minted MSNBC host Professor Melissa Harris-Perry.
West called Harris-Perry a “liar” and said that, ”she’s become the momentary darling of liberals, but I pray for her because she’s in over her head. She’s a fake and a fraud. I was so surprised how treacherous the sister was.”
West and Harris-Perry have disagreed publicly before in their varying assessments of President Barack Obama. West and talk show host Tavis Smiley have consistently been harsh on Obama and what they see as his lack of concern for the black community and the poor.
West sees Harris-Perry, and her MSNBC colleague Reverend Al Sharpton, as conciliators to the administration. He also wonders why a civil rights activist like Sharpton wouldn’t be more harsh in his critique of Obama, questioning why he is so close to the administration.
In an interview with the Grio, Rev. Sharpton responded sternly to the assertion that he and Dr. Harris-Perry were somehow rewarded for their support of the Obama administration with shows on MSNBC. “Rewarded by who?,” Sharpton says. “I don’t know if having access to the Obama administration means that one is rewarded… All of these conspiracy theorists need to check facts more clearly.”
Sharpton also posed this rhetorical question, ”[w]ho rewarded Tavis Smiley with his show?… Tavis can have a show [and] that’s fine. But if Dr. [Harris] Perry [and] I have a show all of a sudden it’s some kind of a conspiracy theory?… black people are not that stupid.”
Sharpton added that many prominent civil rights leaders of the past have had access to presidents:
This whole thing that I’m too close to the White House for a civil rights leader. Frederick Douglass had access to Abe Lincoln. Booker T. Washington had access to Teddy Roosevelt and Martin Luther King had access to John Kennedy to the degree that Kennedy told him the FBI was trying to do some things to Bayard Rustin and Jack Odell’s reputation. Andrew Young worked as the ambassador for Jimmy Carter. Jesse Jackson worked as an envoy for Bill Clinton. They need to study civil rights history. I don’t work for Obama. And every president has had civil rights leaders with access so now we get to the black president and there is a different set of rules. He shouldn’t have civil rights leaders he relates to. I think it’s surprising that scholars are not doing their scholarly inquiry here.
Sharpton also finds West’s scathing critique of President Obama “personal.”
We are not arguing about issues here, we’re arguing about personality. I supported President Obama in 2008. And I support him now not because I got some reward but because we won the election. That’s what I supported him to do. He’s doing many of the things that I supported him for. Some of the things he can’t do because of being blocked. So how do you support somebody in the election, they win, and all of a sudden you’re against them? It’s almost like they have this psychological positioning that they have to always be outsiders rather than saying that the goals are to be achieved whether you do it outside, inside, or a combination… I’m oriented toward achieving goals for the people, not worrying about how I’m positioned.
In a defense of Cornel West, Dr. Boyce Watkins wrote for News One, “Since Harris-Perry and her friends had no legitimate defense to the critiques of Dr. West, they presumed that it would be easier to simply discredit him. You see, if you kill the messenger, you never have to deal with the message itself… Harris-Perry allowed herself to be used by the liberal establishment and their media channels to paint Professor West as irrelevant, petty, and ignorant in his critiques.”
Sharpton responded to Watkins’ comment by saying, “Cornel has a right to disagree with the president, but why does he have to go out and disparage everyone who disagrees with him? Boyce Watkins has the right to support Cornel, but why does everybody that disagrees with him have to be all of these other things?”
Melissa Harris-Perry has declined to comment in response to the remarks from West and Watkins.
Updated by The Plainsman at Tue May 17, 2011 at 09:01 PM PDT
Thanks for the rec list. I get tired of elite black folks like Cornel West, who I have a lot of respect for, and Tavis Smiley, who I have no respect for, acting like “crabs in a bucket” as my late father used to say.
ORIGINALLY POSTED TO THE PLAINSMAN ON TUE MAY 17, 2011 AT 06:27 PM PDT.
I have been a long time admirer and fan of Ms. Harris-Perry, and anyone who knows me can testify that I dislike both Mr. Smiley & Dr. West for their shucking, jiving and profiteering motives.
Both men have forgotten that simple creed of being Black….once you make it, help others make it.
Instead of criticizing The President for their much imagined faults of Barack Hussein Obama as President, why not donate every red cent from their joint book…”The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto”, to the Black community, that they profess to care so much about?
To Dr. Cornell West & Mr. Tavis Smiley: You can talk the talk all day….but at the end of that day, can you walk the walk?
President Barack Hussein Obama walks the walk every day of his life.
AND don’t forget, Sistah Melissa Harris-Perry ain’t no punk. Boys.
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