National Action Network | No Justice, No Peace... aka Al Sharpton Network
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http://nypost.com/2015/01/04/how-sharpton-gets-paid-to-not-cry-racism-at-corporations/
Want to influence a casino bid? Polish your corporate image? Not be labeled a racist?
Then you need to pay Al Sharpton.
For more than a decade, corporations have shelled out thousands of dollars in donations and consulting fees to Sharpton’s National Action Network. What they get in return is the reverend’s supposed sway in the black community or, more often, his silence.
Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal met with the activist preacher after leaked emails showed her making racially charged comments about President Obama. Pascal was under siege after a suspected North Korean cyberattack pressured the studio to cancel its release of “The Interview,” which depicts the assassination of dictator Kim Jong-un.
Pascal and her team were said to be “shaking in their boots” and “afraid of the Rev,” The Post reported.
No payments to NAN have been announced, but Sharpton and Pascal agreed to form a “working group” to focus on racial bias in Hollywood.
Sharpton notably did not publicly assert his support for Pascal after the meeting — what observers say seems like a typical Sharpton “shakedown” in the making. Pay him in cash or power, critics say, and you buy his support or silence.
“Al Sharpton has enriched himself and NAN for years by threatening companies with bad publicity if they didn’t come to terms with him. Put simply, Sharpton specializes in shakedowns,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal & Policy Center, a Virginia-based watchdog group that has produced a book on Sharpton.
And Sharpton, who now boasts a close relationship with Obama and Mayor Bill de Blasio, is in a stronger negotiating position than ever.
“Once Sharpton’s on board, he plays the race card all the way through,” said a source who has worked with the Harlem preacher. “He just keeps asking for more and more money.”
Horse in the race
One example of Sharpton’s playbook has emerged in tax filings and a state inspector general’s report.
In 2008, Plainfield Asset Management, a Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund, made a $500,000 contribution to New York nonprofit Education Reform Now. That money was immediately funneled to the National Action Network.
The donation raised eyebrows. Although the money was ostensibly to support NAN’s efforts to bring “educational equality,” it also came at a time that Plainfield was trying to get a lucrative gambling deal in New York.
Plainfield had a $250 million stake in Capital Play, a group trying to secure a license to run the coming racino at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Capital Play employed a lobbyist named Charlie King, who also was the acting executive director of NAN.
Sharpton has said that most of the Plainfield contribution went to pay King’s salary.
King’s company, the Movement Group, was paid $243,586 by NAN in 2008, tax records show.
Harold Levy, a former New York City schools chancellor who was a managing director at Plainfield at the time, has denied the contribution was made to curry favor with Sharpton or anyone else. But a year later, as the battle for the racino license heated up, NAN raked in another $100,000 from representatives of the AEG consortium, which was the successor company to Capital Play.
One AEG member emailed another in 2009 saying, “Sharpton lobbied [then-Gov. David Paterson] hard over the weekend on our behalf,” according to the state inspector general’s 2010 report on the corrupt racino licensing process.
In order to discredit SL Green, one of the rival bidders whose plan included a Hard Rock Hotel, an AEG executive sent another email outlining tactics to conscript local leaders to its cause.
“We are going to need it, and we are going to need . . . Sharpton to piss on hard rock,” according to the undated email cited in the IG’s report.
Sharpton denied he lobbied on behalf of AEG.
The donations, meanwhile, came at an opportune time for Sharpton, as NAN was deep in debt to the IRS in 2008. It owed $1.3 million in unpaid federal, state and city payroll taxes including interest and penalties.
AEG viewed its payments to Sharpton as more of an insurance policy so he wouldn’t scuttle its chances by criticizing the group, said a source familiar with the racino controversy.
Cost of doing business
Sharpton raised $1 million for NAN at his 60th birthday bash in October, with donations rolling in from unions and a corporate roster of contributors including AT&T, McDonald’s, Verizon and Walmart.
Companies have long gotten in line to pay Sharpton. Macy’s and Pfizer have forked over thousands to NAN, as have General Motors, American Honda and Chrysler.
NAN had repeatedly and without success asked GM for donations for six years beginning in August 2000, a GM spokesman told The Post. Then, in 2006, Sharpton threatened a boycott of GM over the planned closing of an African-American-owned dealership in The Bronx. He picketed outside GM’s Fifth Avenue headquarters. GM wrote checks to NAN for $5,000 in 2007 and another $5,000 in 2008.
Sharpton targeted American Honda in 2003 for not hiring enough African-Americans in management positions.
“We support those that support us,” Sharpton wrote to the company. “We cannot be silent while African-Americans spend hard-earned dollars with a company that does not hire, promote or do business with us in a statistically significant manner.”
Two months later, car company leaders met with Sharpton, and Honda began to sponsor NAN’s events. The protests stopped.
Sharpton landed a gig as a $25,000-a-year adviser to Pepsi after he threatened a consumer boycott of the soda company in 1998, saying its ads did not portray African-Americans. He held the position until 2007.
As for Sony, Sharpton denied that his meeting with Pascal resulted in a donation to NAN.
“I have had no discussion with her about money,” Sharpton told The Post. “There was never even a remote discussion about money.”
Want to influence a casino bid? Polish your corporate image? Not be labeled a racist?
Then you need to pay Al Sharpton.
For more than a decade, corporations have shelled out thousands of dollars in donations and consulting fees to Sharpton’s National Action Network. What they get in return is the reverend’s supposed sway in the black community or, more often, his silence.
Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal met with the activist preacher after leaked emails showed her making racially charged comments about President Obama. Pascal was under siege after a suspected North Korean cyberattack pressured the studio to cancel its release of “The Interview,” which depicts the assassination of dictator Kim Jong-un.
Pascal and her team were said to be “shaking in their boots” and “afraid of the Rev,” The Post reported.
No payments to NAN have been announced, but Sharpton and Pascal agreed to form a “working group” to focus on racial bias in Hollywood.
Sharpton notably did not publicly assert his support for Pascal after the meeting — what observers say seems like a typical Sharpton “shakedown” in the making. Pay him in cash or power, critics say, and you buy his support or silence.
“Al Sharpton has enriched himself and NAN for years by threatening companies with bad publicity if they didn’t come to terms with him. Put simply, Sharpton specializes in shakedowns,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal & Policy Center, a Virginia-based watchdog group that has produced a book on Sharpton.
And Sharpton, who now boasts a close relationship with Obama and Mayor Bill de Blasio, is in a stronger negotiating position than ever.
“Once Sharpton’s on board, he plays the race card all the way through,” said a source who has worked with the Harlem preacher. “He just keeps asking for more and more money.”
Horse in the race
One example of Sharpton’s playbook has emerged in tax filings and a state inspector general’s report.
In 2008, Plainfield Asset Management, a Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund, made a $500,000 contribution to New York nonprofit Education Reform Now. That money was immediately funneled to the National Action Network.
The donation raised eyebrows. Although the money was ostensibly to support NAN’s efforts to bring “educational equality,” it also came at a time that Plainfield was trying to get a lucrative gambling deal in New York.
Plainfield had a $250 million stake in Capital Play, a group trying to secure a license to run the coming racino at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Capital Play employed a lobbyist named Charlie King, who also was the acting executive director of NAN.
Sharpton has said that most of the Plainfield contribution went to pay King’s salary.
King’s company, the Movement Group, was paid $243,586 by NAN in 2008, tax records show.
Harold Levy, a former New York City schools chancellor who was a managing director at Plainfield at the time, has denied the contribution was made to curry favor with Sharpton or anyone else. But a year later, as the battle for the racino license heated up, NAN raked in another $100,000 from representatives of the AEG consortium, which was the successor company to Capital Play.
One AEG member emailed another in 2009 saying, “Sharpton lobbied [then-Gov. David Paterson] hard over the weekend on our behalf,” according to the state inspector general’s 2010 report on the corrupt racino licensing process.
In order to discredit SL Green, one of the rival bidders whose plan included a Hard Rock Hotel, an AEG executive sent another email outlining tactics to conscript local leaders to its cause.
“We are going to need it, and we are going to need . . . Sharpton to piss on hard rock,” according to the undated email cited in the IG’s report.
Sharpton denied he lobbied on behalf of AEG.
The donations, meanwhile, came at an opportune time for Sharpton, as NAN was deep in debt to the IRS in 2008. It owed $1.3 million in unpaid federal, state and city payroll taxes including interest and penalties.
AEG viewed its payments to Sharpton as more of an insurance policy so he wouldn’t scuttle its chances by criticizing the group, said a source familiar with the racino controversy.
Cost of doing business
Sharpton raised $1 million for NAN at his 60th birthday bash in October, with donations rolling in from unions and a corporate roster of contributors including AT&T, McDonald’s, Verizon and Walmart.
Companies have long gotten in line to pay Sharpton. Macy’s and Pfizer have forked over thousands to NAN, as have General Motors, American Honda and Chrysler.
NAN had repeatedly and without success asked GM for donations for six years beginning in August 2000, a GM spokesman told The Post. Then, in 2006, Sharpton threatened a boycott of GM over the planned closing of an African-American-owned dealership in The Bronx. He picketed outside GM’s Fifth Avenue headquarters. GM wrote checks to NAN for $5,000 in 2007 and another $5,000 in 2008.
Sharpton targeted American Honda in 2003 for not hiring enough African-Americans in management positions.
“We support those that support us,” Sharpton wrote to the company. “We cannot be silent while African-Americans spend hard-earned dollars with a company that does not hire, promote or do business with us in a statistically significant manner.”
Two months later, car company leaders met with Sharpton, and Honda began to sponsor NAN’s events. The protests stopped.
Sharpton landed a gig as a $25,000-a-year adviser to Pepsi after he threatened a consumer boycott of the soda company in 1998, saying its ads did not portray African-Americans. He held the position until 2007.
As for Sony, Sharpton denied that his meeting with Pascal resulted in a donation to NAN.
“I have had no discussion with her about money,” Sharpton told The Post. “There was never even a remote discussion about money.”
https://capitalresearch.org/article...ia-democrats-and-some-republicans-play-along/
What a difference a decade made. In June 1998, Al Sharpton was complaining that Pepsico did not feature African-Americans in its commercials, and he threatened to call for a consumer boycott of all Pepsi products, including Frito Lay, Tropicana, and Quaker Oats. The boycott never took place. Instead, PepsiCo hired Sharpton as a consultant for $25,000 a year and it put him on its African-American advisory board where he served until 2007. (New York Post, June 15, 2008)
In 1998 NAN complained that department store giant Macy’s did not spend enough of its advertising budget on minority-owned media. Macy’s is now a NAN sponsor too, and Sharpton is on the company’s unpaid panel of diversity advisors.
Then there’s the MGM Mirage entertainment company. In 2001 and 2002 Sharpton threatened a national boycott if its officials did not meet with him to talk about racism in minority hiring at the MGM casino in Detroit. MGM management decided not to gamble. In 2003, it named NAN one of its diversity partners in Detroit.
The Detroit auto industry also recognized the benefits of being charitable to Sharpton. Beginning in 2000, NAN made repeated but unsuccessful requests for contributions from General Motors, a GM spokesman told the New York Post. Then, in December 2006, Sharpton threatened to call a boycott because the company had closed an African-American owned GM dealership in the Bronx. He even led a demonstration outside GM’s New York headquarters building. In 2007 and 2008, GM gave NAN $5,000, but it was not listed as a sponsor of the 2009 NAN convention.
Sharpton actually picketed Daimler Chrysler’s Chicago car show in November 2003 and threatened a consumer boycott because he said the company showed racial bias in making car loans. “This is institutional racism,” Sharpton said. By May 2004, Chrysler was contributing to NAN and sponsored the annual convention. In 2007, Chrysler also got an award for “corporate excellence.” (New York Post, July 15, 2008)
Clearly Corporate America finds it easier to buy off the Rev. Al Sharpton than to endure his threat of boycotts with their inevitable bad publicity and the possibility of costly legal action.
What a difference a decade made. In June 1998, Al Sharpton was complaining that Pepsico did not feature African-Americans in its commercials, and he threatened to call for a consumer boycott of all Pepsi products, including Frito Lay, Tropicana, and Quaker Oats. The boycott never took place. Instead, PepsiCo hired Sharpton as a consultant for $25,000 a year and it put him on its African-American advisory board where he served until 2007. (New York Post, June 15, 2008)
In 1998 NAN complained that department store giant Macy’s did not spend enough of its advertising budget on minority-owned media. Macy’s is now a NAN sponsor too, and Sharpton is on the company’s unpaid panel of diversity advisors.
Then there’s the MGM Mirage entertainment company. In 2001 and 2002 Sharpton threatened a national boycott if its officials did not meet with him to talk about racism in minority hiring at the MGM casino in Detroit. MGM management decided not to gamble. In 2003, it named NAN one of its diversity partners in Detroit.
The Detroit auto industry also recognized the benefits of being charitable to Sharpton. Beginning in 2000, NAN made repeated but unsuccessful requests for contributions from General Motors, a GM spokesman told the New York Post. Then, in December 2006, Sharpton threatened to call a boycott because the company had closed an African-American owned GM dealership in the Bronx. He even led a demonstration outside GM’s New York headquarters building. In 2007 and 2008, GM gave NAN $5,000, but it was not listed as a sponsor of the 2009 NAN convention.
Sharpton actually picketed Daimler Chrysler’s Chicago car show in November 2003 and threatened a consumer boycott because he said the company showed racial bias in making car loans. “This is institutional racism,” Sharpton said. By May 2004, Chrysler was contributing to NAN and sponsored the annual convention. In 2007, Chrysler also got an award for “corporate excellence.” (New York Post, July 15, 2008)
Clearly Corporate America finds it easier to buy off the Rev. Al Sharpton than to endure his threat of boycotts with their inevitable bad publicity and the possibility of costly legal action.
Why are you not posting about this protest on MLK Day instead of focusing on Sharpton????
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/13/opinions/kkk-plans-march-on-mlk-day-stern/
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/13/opinions/kkk-plans-march-on-mlk-day-stern/
Do you not get the difference at all? No one on here supports the actions of the Klan. Many on here, yourself likely chief among them support Sharpton's tactics.
Well, our president-elect received some harsh words from John Lewis.....and what does Trump do? He goes straight to TWITTER (when will he act "presidential" and not like a 15-year old girl?) and says "All Talk" in response to a guy who received beatings, jailed, etc. back in the 60's. I am pretty sure John Lewis has done more in his life than Trump......
He didn't say anything to Lewis that isn't true. Getting arrested isn't an accomplishment. Trump got elected President, that is more than anything Lewis has ever talked about.Well, our president-elect received some harsh words from John Lewis.....and what does Trump do? He goes straight to TWITTER (when will he act "presidential" and not like a 15-year old girl?) and says "All Talk" in response to a guy who received beatings, jailed, etc. back in the 60's. I am pretty sure John Lewis has done more in his life than Trump......
Perhaps proof that you are the dumbest individual on this board.....and that is quite an accomplishment.
John Lewis was beyond brave. He was able to stand up to those who oppressed him and his people, knowing that hundreds, if not thousands, before him were killed for doing just this. He stood in the face of death and didn't blink.
Trump, on the other hand, dodged the draft and has done NOTHING in comparison to Mr. Lewis.
Sad.....people compare the accomplishment of Trump to a true Civil Rights living icon......
John Lewis was beyond brave. He was able to stand up to those who oppressed him and his people, knowing that hundreds, if not thousands, before him were killed for doing just this. He stood in the face of death and didn't blink.
Trump, on the other hand, dodged the draft and has done NOTHING in comparison to Mr. Lewis.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and a lot of white people suffer white guilt that causes them to act like you do. I understand.
BTW, how did Trump dodge the draft? I know a lot of you fuktards say that but it has been proven time and time again to be false yet you keep repeating it. Do you think that helps you sit there at moron central and call me stupid?
White guilt? Whatever, man. John Lewis marched for equality. Got beaten for it. Got jailed for it. Many others lost their lives for it. And you want to call it "white guilt"? Get over yourself......
Being a hero of the civil rights movement doesn't excuse his behavior of disrespecting the office.
He is a moron too saying that Trumps presidency is illegitimate. Those are just words that mean nothing!
He's got an opinion, just like how your boy Trump tweets everything he doesn't agree with a negative response.
At the end of the day what he says are just words. Trump is still going to be president no matter what John Lewis says
Ok, Trump can disagree with Lewis' words. He can get angry about it. But you agree that him saying Lewis is "all talk" was the right thing to say? I mean, really? I don't agree with what Lewis said about Trump. He is our LEGITIMATE president. I agree 100%. But Lewis is not "all talk". He has backed up his "talk" with a lot of action in the past. PERIOD!
That's fine but just curious, what has John Lewis done during his tenure to help his district? Has crime rates risen or fallen? Has economic opportunities increases or decreased? Have more children graduated with a high school diploma? If the answer to those three questions are Risen, decreased and no then John Lewis is all talk.
Well, why not look at Mr. Mitch McConnell......pretty much the same could be said for him, too.
I can't stand McConnell now back to my previous question. Is John Lewis all talk?
No, he's not. His past shows that. He's done more for this country than Trump.....but I do not agree with his statements about Trump......
As for McConnell, doesn't matter what you think of him. You made the claim that Lewis is "all talk" because of his district's problems. Well, last year was Mr. McConnell's home district HIGHEST murder rate in 36 years. Not to mention the school system in Jefferson county is among the state of KY's WORST.
And here's an example of a person who acts like they are a 14-year old girl, gets on Twitter rants over TV shows......good grief.....
Now, who is "all talk"?????
Now, who is "all talk"?????
And here's an example of a person who acts like they are a 14-year old girl, gets on Twitter rants over TV shows......good grief.....
Now, who is "all talk"?????
DODGE!
What the F**K am I dodging? Good grief, I'm showing and proving who is "all talk".....the moron that gets on Twitter and acts like a juvenile bully.
I thought you were going to explain how Trump dodged the draft? What happened *******? No facts? Just running your mouth? Trying to be just like the racist John Lewis?
You are a little slow you racist, ISIS supporting moron. I will ask for the umpteenth time is John Lewis all talk as a congressman?
The Isis supporter MountaineerWv just keeps changing the subject. Poor little terrorist sympathizer.
I answered that you f**king moron. You even replied. Wow, you are a dipshit. The world will be better when you are not here........I disagree with a lot of people, but at least they don't call me "racist ISIS supporter" just because they cannot read.
Ummm.....why not read this.....
Wow......"dumb ***"......[thumbsup]
All you did was start talking about Mitch McConnel like the dumb *** you are.