Transcripts For RT Going Underground 20240712

Eulogy to george floyd killed by a us police i think british broadcasting regulators may allow me to say what a profound privilege it is for you to be on going underground but of course im going to ask you why is it not you rather than biden who is running against trump why do you call yourself a tree shaker in this new book of yours. I think that the history of dealing with movements in this country and even globally is that you need those of us that shake the tree in the sense of shaking up where a society has dealt in an unequal and unfair way and in many cases unjust way and you dont have those that pick up the fruit that falls d d from the tree and make jam out of it and i have in my role as an activist been more were trees shake their wonder picks up a fruit and becomes want to lead to the office or head of a corporate entity in the private sector and i think theres a legitimate role for both i feel my calling is to be the one shaking trees rather than picking up fruits trying to make jam out of lets get to the jam eaters in a 2nd this book in this book you blame yourself and others becoming complacent under the Obama Presidency at tell me a bit about that and how you see that complacency is creating donald trump well i think that many of us were very supportive then are still supportive of many of the initiatives of president obama during his presidency from health care to Police Reform to other areas and did not do as much as we could to hold the opposition accountable and to hold even some aspects of his own administration that was resistant to change accountable and that we should have always had the vigor to be continue to fight no matter who was in office even if it was someone that i felt was doing the right thing but you still had your National Action network the initials a behind you that running joining the abomb a presidency i know time. And time again in the book you talk about it is a model of grassroots action at the very local level to help a civil rights and social justice no i have we definitely were very active during his is 8 years Trayvon Martin we were out on the front lines of that from the beginning as well as the ferguson killing in ferguson missouri Michael Brown and aragon all of that have been doing the obama era what im saying is that we could do even more and i think that thats what i challenge us that we should never even modify what we do and i think we were very active but i think we could have been more active while everyone knows you did you did a lot because we had we had one of the tall trumps pastas a guy called Darrell Scott he said that trump has been the most pro black president ever and of course he reminded us how black lies might have began under the a bamma presidency when those horrific Police Killings across the world on t. V. Screens yeah i think the killing of aragon a in new york and Michael Brown by police theres the slogan the hashtag that laughing matter literally started at 3 very young women the night that we saw the. Acquittal of George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin in sanford florida so it started there but unlike the Obama Administration trump has not responded them the bomb administration came in and had federal investigations federal involvement and advocated against it even the president himself barack obama address Trayvon Martin said there could have been me at one point he said it could have been my son trump has denied that any of the. These issues events episodes were racist that there was any systemic racism still present and with drew in the Justice Department from things like consent to creese which is when the federal government says that Police Departments would have a pattern of inequality unfairness harassment or killings could no longer operate on their own that they must be under the supervision of the Justice Department trust suspended a trance suspended lawsuits by the Obama Administrations Justice Department that said that we are suing because you are inhibiting people from voting so in many ways you are by the initiation was moving forward as Lyndon Johnsons administration in some areas were in the days of dr king all of that came to an abrupt halt and reversal on the donald trump i mean i dont know where the trump said himself but he probably thinks he outdoes l. B. J. On civil rights i mean you dont take it seriously when i his people talk about 500000000000 dollars for people of color communities and 500000 new jobs these statistics when nothing to you as opposed to the questionable record of obama and joe biden well i date that you would be very very hard to prove that any of those figures are correct 1st of all the unemployment of blacks started going down under obama and biden and down trump just reaped the benefit of a an economy they have been say with one would have to ask themselves is how then do you explain that blacks are still more uninterrupted white there was initiatives by the Obama Administration to close the gap the troubled ministration had not only not had an initiative to close the gap even in a good economy with blacks im unemployed and whites he refuses to even acknowledge the any. Quality in terms of the other programs that he announced weve yet to see the results these announcements but on the ground were still more on employees still more incarcerated still a lot of victims of Police Brutality still the ones denied more rights to vote so they can make whatever proclamations they want the facts that they they have not resulted in any Movement Toward change we could have different opinions we cannot have different facts where the facts ill get to bible errors and a 2nd if i may tell me about the scene in the book whereas trump apparently gets upset that you call him a racist and his lawyer Michael Cohen gave you a phone call Michael Korda called me through a mutual friend and said that trump wanted to meet because he could not understand why i was attacking bertha risen as racist and bertha risen or as when donald trump which was the issue he entered form of into politics was saying that the president of United States barack obama was not a real american he was not born in america it was born in kenya when there is no evidence at all supporting that in fact the evidence is the contrary that he was born in the state of ohio and grew up there and i said this was trying to play into the us against them hes not one of us it was a donald trump that to god had calling for the execution of 5 black and brown young men for raping a white woman in central problem in manhattan that ended up not having done that even then donald trump refused to say that they should not be given a settlement and should not have gone free so i think that when Michael Cohen call through a mutual friend and trumpet i met i said to him that this is a racist lie and it is race based and youre playing to a crowd the us against. Them kind of rhetoric and he was denying it and he says when you and i have had bad days and we got along socially you know im not a racist i said 1st what i said which is saying is is racist and im not calling you by name a racist at that point but i concluded that he is a racist because hes comfortable using racism hes comfortable in of being around racists denies that and as you outlined the book he says on bill oreillys show on fox news you apologized. Not at all 1st of all i went that same night on my show and said that he was going to distort the meeting and i did not apologize and certainly ive not apologize since ive been very clear all over the country saying that i believe emphatically and ill repeat it donald trump is a racist and a big and that is my view so all for what reason would i have apologized if i was going right back on television the same day saying the same thing that ive said and ive repeated in sense even though you know ive talked since he denies hes a racist people who catch our interview with a totally exonerated central park 5 number yusef salaam on this show on our you tube channel because i imagine fox news that was hit by the me too scandal this book time and time again emphasizes the intersectional nature of the struggle l g b t q i Rights Movement people are going to be a bit shocked suddenly when they turn one of the pages in your book and you say you found yourself with Harvey Weinstein Robert Deniro and others. Join the 26 team the election that night just tell me how you were sitting next to Harvey Weinstein and these celebrities well there was a private party of those that had supported the Clinton Campaign to weiss the results i would buy to clinton headquarters it was very crowded and even in the reserved area so i decided to go to this private fire in my girlfriend and i and robin dinero and others were sponsoring a friday weinstein was there who had been a supporter of the campaign and thats how i found myself sitting that night just watching the returns this was way before any of the allegations against why stina gone public so i dont think any of us were aware of any of that what the wildstein was later accused of big donors to the Clinton Campaign you think of Hillary Clinton had one weinstein would be in jail right now i think that if Hillary Clinton won i dont know if hed be in jail i dont think she would have done anything to end a feel would an investigation or prosecution that is not been anything that i knew as a senator as 1st lady ive never seen a try to stop the gist of the investigations when seen it was denies a all the accusations of his that fighting the case brevin al sharpton ill stop you that more from the legendary civil rights activist after this short break. It was a very nice offer from president putin and i could have said no thank you or i could have said thank you and i said ill take it and now its time to include a slight bestial next time dont travel thank you says very much for the. Name whatever you want to name i mean i dont know how when i come that news thats dishonest telecom that a recorder or in a network thats totally dishonest c. N. N. Is says you know 100 percent negative i clearly theres a change faster changes so fast sometimes ill say wow thats going to be a great story be a pretty good report another as good as you. Will see what happened so who knows who knows what well see on the field will be a success. Welcome back im still here with the author of rise up reverend al sharpton why did you always have an affinity for the democrats given that Hillary Clinton certainly in the global south is known for a Foreign Policy that is has been devastating to countries all around the world i mean libya to name to name one country which doesnt doesnt feature in this book but its africas riches but having a country it now lies in ruins because of obama and clinton arguably well i disagreed with it and i said that i would have marched under Clinton Administration when they came with the omnibus crime bill that i think led to a lot of incarceration of blacks in in the ninetys i marched against clinton on welfare reform i think politics is about choices and i felt that they were a better choice than the opposition but i by no means. Well that they were not for a flawed in certain areas and would publicly take them to task on that as well as the reason i ran for president myself in 2004 was challenging the Democratic Party when i was born my parents were republican they became democrats in the sixtys when john kennedy and Lyndon Johnson supported the civil Rights Movement both johnson and kennedy had some baggage that we didnt like but they were better than nixon so i think that you deal with choice when youre trying to get where you can even if it is incremental steps you know youre not looking for perfection youre looking for liberation i mean how difficult has it been i mean theres a scene in this book when there you are trying to create a better world. And i understand al gore says to it what do i tell Jewish Voters just because youre meeting up with them seemingly believing all ng and tea shop in their propaganda is that is that what the d. N. C. Was like is that what the d. N. C. Is like today that was were part of the d. N. C. Was like if you go back into the 1980 s. It was bill clinton and al gore and others that formed a right wing to the Democratic Party called the democratic Leadership Conference Democratic Leadership Council which i talk about in the book and they were trying to bring the party away from what they felt was the left for the progressives and by lead with Jesse Jacksons campaign who was a mental mind i ran to try to bring it back from this triangulation is moving the party to the right and i think that it has been followed as i talk about in the book by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and others and i think that is of been an intra Party Struggle that has now moved the party more toward which should be but is still not all the way we ought to be but it is still in my judgment much better than the rip. Publications that dont move at all in any area toward the trying to have an equal and fair society you see we talk to young activists who want people to vote by them this time around they appear to say things havent changed that much theres all sorts of propaganda against Bernie Sanders supporters people on the left what is the Democratic Party so associated with the right in some ways now. I think that thats a great question that we challenge and i talk about that in the book i call them latte liberals those that are saying things but will not get into the work and i think that weve got to work those of us that relate to the Democratic Party to our defeat those right wing do it as we continue to do it a gradual list in the party and i think thats true in any Political Party but it as i say in the book if im in an abusive relationship that does not mean i leave the relationship and become someone that is going to go would have picked up i try to correct the relationship or build an alternative that answers my needs i think the republicans are not an alternative d they want to pick up on the deficiencies of the Democratic Party and awful blacks and others nothing ok maybe call the police and of the piece of relationship what do they make you feel when trump is on these rallies as he will be at time and time again hes the one going. Refugees from Central America dehumanizing the children denying them medical care hes the one who put those camps before donald trump did earlier in the book of course refugees feature as you call it has you say jesus was a Palestinian Refugee no doubt about it that jesus was a refugee and there were many of us that was opposed to some of what was done on the Obama Administration when he said he would not doubt at the level of down the trunk and if donald trump was of opposed to it he should have said that didnt he should not have duplicated he has not only do the created hes expanded it the and he has bragged about it and i think that it is in human you cannot have it saying that im doing some because somebody else allegedly did i think he says he reduced the number of. Cages in fran is to him less well i mean lets get on to the Green New Deal environmental ism again features in this book this existential crisis the world has what do we make of joe biden as he says to the world he opposes the Green New Deal he wants fracking. I think that we disagree with him on that and even some of the authors of the Green New Deal congresswoman ok as you know cortez and others have supported biden but say very strongly that they are going to fight for the Green New Deal again i support the Green New Deal i support what theyre about i disagree with biden of on some things but i think hes a better alternative than donald trump i mean maybe people from around the world after reading this book and reading other books may find it difficult to understand how biden can so easily rely on the black voters just to turn out interesting line in your book we say the average black voter is more centrist on issues not having to do with race they are driven by socialist ideas you think thats behind the behind the fact that biden doesnt need to even particularly campaign to have people of color this november i think he has campaigned i think that biden is spent an inordinate amount of time talking meaty and taken stands with us joe biden sent a video to the funeral of george floyd after flying in meeting with the family and i the day before the funeral where donald trump and others have not done that at all i dont think that joe biden has neglected talking and being held accountable to the black community in this campaign he and i disagree in the ninetys vehemently around the crime but i think that he has made many appearances in the black community including with National Action network and has come to turn to some of our critiques and criticisms yeah because you remember the crime bill but you never see much about it today do people of color in the United States have an easier about segregated schools the in fact im going to ask you about the Supreme Court we have the Supreme Court hearing going on at the moment wasnt it biden that facilitated the judge scalia and and john. Clarence thomas on the Supreme Court and we would tag bad and he has said that he was wrong he has said on the tin to kind of course were talking 2530 years ago that i think he was wrong but im talking about somebody who into treys scalia proteges now so the question is are we going to hold biden to a standard of what he did decades ago and said he misstep and therefore say we go with somebody that a that supports that right now and i think given the choices it would be unwise to go with the right now big it and not the one that says this was not my intentions it did leave the wrong place when youre a reverend you believe in redemption clearly well how about something more or more recent than kemal a harris you nicer in this book she fought to keep innocent people in jail she booked payments to wrongly convicted people as a prosecutor in california argued for keeping nonviolent offenders in jail as a cheap labor source she opposed d. N. A. Testing to exonerate prisoners on death row why are you so nice about chemical harris which i think she did not is the impact of some of that i think some of that many of us criticized her for and in support of many didnt support to be for those reasons donna primers but i think if you look at the overwhelming record in terms of Police Reform in terms of sentencing reform as attorney general california and d. A. She also did think that was very good but yes we differ with on some of her decisions and have been very public about that and i think that was a major issue during the Campaign Going to the primaries when she was running theres a lot of rewriting of history that you believe needs to be done many millions of people around the world need to be done donald trump doesnt think needs to be done tell me who surely chism is and why you see here is. No important crediting. With such as and such an inspiration to Shirley Chisholm was the 1st black woman elected to congress the year dr king was killed i was aboard for each in new york i was 13 years old and got to know i became wondered you directors in a campaign in 72 when she ran for president and i think that Shirley Chisholm changed the tenor of the country by running a credible race as a black woman that i think helped to add to a just a climate that led to Barbara Jordan others Getting National claim and ultimately led to a black woman on the National Ticket of one of the 2 major parties in the country today i do not think that if we didnt have a Shirley Chisholm changing the climate in the country we would have ever had a come of the haves and you think that some of the people in the d. N. C. Hierarchy understand the sacrifices you made in your activism you talked about the fact that on learning of your mothers death. Well to tell me what you were doing on the day you know i was on my way to sanford florida to lead the 1st National Rally around the killing the racial killing of Trayvon Martin and when i was en route to the airport on it got the text from my sister in alabama i was born and raised in brooklyn but my mother was d from dont and alabama that my mother had passed and she had been sick for a while and i started to turn around i decided that my mother would want me to go and stand up for trayvon and i went ahead and did it and in fact trayvon of casual surprise that i showed up and we had 10000 people there that night and i spoke lead that rally and then subsequent rallies ive i feel that sacrifice goes along with activism if youre not willing to sacrifice you ought to do Something Else with your life i mean and towards the end of the book you say go to more funerals than baptisms and the most common refrain you hear from the black community is who are black as matter change anything is it going to be any change can you not see that the reason there must be that apathy and that pessimism is partly because of the kind of political machinations that the played out income while at this korea in joe bidens career absolutely but i think that despite saying that you have to look at the fact that in my lifetime in my lifetime i went from a mother who couldnt vote in our native alabama until she was in the thirtys to her son being able in one generation to run for president and help reduce a lot of those so sometimes you have to look at the long arc of history it does lean toward progress i talk about what i met Nelson Mandela and thought about how he said deal 27 years as some of his colleagues along the neck and they did change the democratic principles in south africa not their konami so i was got yes i think youve got to deal with the fact that. Change does not happen overnight but if you can start making the change happen and continue to build on it change will come and is understandable people apathetic and pessimistic and think that one of the things that all people that are leading the change movements are on the vanguard of them have to do is keep giving people who have a hole because despair and conceding only helps those that are oppressing you they want you to get book and whatever you do you cant give up just finally. Whatever the past 3 and a half years of trump have done would you accept and you mentioned clinton the clinton crime bill area do you think that crime bill costs along a shadow over the communities of color in the United States and i know you talk about the roots of racism in Law Enforcement native americans the african genocide is it not that clinton crime bill that costs a far bigger shadow over the people of color than anything trump has done. Not at all i think dad the crime bill was wrong i think it hurt us for a long time but i think when barack obama came in and commuted more sentences many of whom were people incarcerated under that crime bill it began to turned around why wouldnt the obama. Commutations of hundreds of people some of which was done through National Action network my group why would that cast a shadow that was reversed down trump saying we ought to have National Stop and frisk policies and other policies where he defended the police no matter what when a young man just a couple of months ago was shot in the back 7 times on video going to his coffin could know she was concent and they shot him in the back and the communities all over the country we rose up calling for justice for blake donald trump went to that town and met with Law Enforcement and stood up for the Law Enforcement that you can compare that to any shadow that may have happened in the ninetys we were out in the ninetys against what clinton did we also was there when obama did a reversal in those kind of commuting of those sentences reverend al sharpton thank you thank you and thats it for the show will be back on saturday 214 yesterday of the assassination of haitian revolutionary joins act as i believe who made haiti not only the richest nation of the americas of the past to permanently of all the slavery to catch our interview about his inspiration to son of a tour as well as all our interviews on the egypt channel till then join the underground to that Facebook Instagram account. As the election approaches. The. Independent. Voters choice he is the true. Headline stories. Seen. Today with. Russias foreign minister. European. Language. Is making it. Was no good. The question is not just business as usual. Any business with the european union. The president