BY ADAM SENNOTT
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
call from Sessions asking if they could meet
and discuss issues over coffee. Similar
overtures were made to Marc Morial,
President of the National Urban League,
and Cornell Brooks, President and CEO of |
the NAACP, Sharpton said.
“I said, ‘I don’t want a cup of coffee, you f
can meet with all of us and we can deal with
these issues as we have any other attorney
general,’” Sharpton said he told Sessions.
“His office has said that they were going to
set it up, we’re waiting to see. But it was
supposed to have happened by now.”
Sharpton said that if the meeting does
happen, he won’t go alone.
“I’ll only meet with him or Trump if
there’s other civil rights leaders (there),”
Sharpton said.
J311- 19, the eve of the Presidential
I 1 inauguration, the Rev. A1 Sharpton
stood outside Trump International
Hotel in New York City with Mayor Bill De
Blasio, filmmaker Michael Moore, actor Alec
Baldwin and thousands of protesters to kick
of their 100 days of resistance to the
president-elect’s agenda.
“We are sending you a message from your
hometown. You can try to turn back the
clock, but you won’t turn back time.’’
Sharpton said to the cheering crowd. “We
are not going backwards.”
Since then Sharpton has led protesters in
Washington, D.C., spoken out oil Twitter,
and personally expressed his concerns about
voting rights, federal cases and
investigations into thé deaths of Eric GarneT
and Walter Scott, and the auditing of police
departments to Attorney General Jeff
Sessions. This April, Sharpton said they will
begin gearing up for a “Spring offensive” to
maintain the movement’s momentum going
into the midterm elections. *
“The opponents, the adversaries of what
we believe in and stand for are counting on
us becoming distracted, or becoming one
that just give up or gives out,” Sharpton
said.
“I think that the only way movements
succeed is if there is a sustained
indignation,” Sharpton said.
The controversial and sometimes
polarizing Sharpton has grabbed his share of
the headlines during his lifetime. He was
often an advisor to President Barack Obama,
and now he brings a New York-sawy read on
the 45th president. He has known Trump
for 30 years, and he called the president a
“salesman, a promoter, a P.T. Barnum guy”
whose currency has always been hyperbole
and overstatement. This was evident during
his campaign when he said that black
communities were “absolutely in the worst
shape they’ve ever been in before,” a claim
Politifact rated “pants on fire.” Despite
Trump’s claim that he has a “great
relationship” with “the Blacks” Sharpton
said that he’s never seen him in any of New
York’s City’s minority neighborhoods
“I’ve never seen him in Harlem, or Bed-
Stuy,” Sharpton said. “Not one time. I can’t
t h in k of one event that I’ve seen him.”
Though it’s still early in Trump’s
presidency, Sharpton said he’s already been
discouraged by Trump’s actions towards
minority communities.
On Feb. 28, one day after the fifth
anniversary of the shooting death of 17-year-
old Trayvon Martin, Sessions indicated that
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‘We are not going backwards'
A l Sharpton talks about holding ground under renewed
threats to minority communities, police oversight
his office would no longer conduct audits of
troubled police departments.
“Here’s him saying that he’s going to - in
effect - reverse whatever advancement
we’ve made there,” Sharpton said. “And [he]
has no fear that anyone’s going to say
anything about it,
Sharpton noted that the decision was
made at a time when a police officer is
under indictment for the death of Walter
Scott, when there has been no conclusion to
the federal investigation into the death of
Eric Garner, and after the City of Baltimore
and the Department of Justice agreed on a
Consent Decree after the death of Freddie
Gray.
“And you want to stop all of this?”
Sharpton said “And it’s almost like, no
news. No one’s upset about i t No one’s
talking about it
“It’s very terrifying,” Sharpton said.
Sharpton said the timing either showed
the administration is either “tone deaf, or
they want to send signal that they want
people to understand that that day is over.
“I don’t know which it is,” Sharpton said.
The decision to stop auditing police
departments wasn’t the only incident that
Sharpton said bothered him.
In late January Trump marked the
beginning of Black History Month by
holding a “listening session” with about a
dozen African Americans, who were mostly
campaign supporters, according to the
Guardian. At the time, Sharpton said the
event was “tantamount to an insult” and
that past presidents did a lot more to
celebrate black culture.
A short time later, Trump came under
criticism when he said that Frederick
Douglass ”is an example of somebody who’s
done’an amazing job and is getting
recognized more and more.” Many,
including Sharpton, thought it sounded as
though Trump believed Douglass was still
alive.
“It’s a very dire situation,” Sharpton said.
“You couldn’t make it up, let me put it that
way.”
Though the situation may be “dire,”
Sharpton said Trump’s administration has
reached out to him and other civil rights
leaders.
In February Sharpton said he got a phone
in many ways realign, where our country is
going in terms of social justice, health care,
(and) voting rights.”
The Black community is particularly
vulnerable, Sharpton said, with much to lose
in the new administration.
“They have the right to vote to lose. They
have the right to public education being a
priority in this country which educates the
overwhelming majority of our young
people,” Sharpton said. “They have the right
of police accountability to lose - the right of
police being prosecuted if they break the
law they have that to lose. They have their
health care that disproportionally helped us
to lose, and they have our economic
standing to lose.
“Black unemployment was Cut in half
under Barack Obama,” Sharpton said.
“We’re hearing about a trillion dollars in
infrastructure, none of that said to be going
in our communities. If he does bridges and
tunnels that are not in inner cities, that’s
not jobs for us. That don’t impact us.
“We have a lot to lose,” Sharpton said.
Sharpton said he’d like to see the media
do a better job focusing on the issues “like
repealing Obamacare, like new tax codes”
instead of chasing the distractions that
Trump keeps feeding them.
“I think he throws so much at us,”
Sharpton said.
So far Trump’s strategy has worked,
Sharpton said.
“I think the media has become completely
predictable and gullible to whatever he
does,” Sharpton said. “In the interim
immigrants living under terror, people that
are afraid they’re going to lose their health
care, all of that is pushed [to the side] and
marginalized.”