Rev. Al Sharpton speaks about voter registration, suppression and election protection during the 'Paint The Polls Black' town hall.
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00:00Reverend Al, as we are getting closer and closer to election day, we know that you've
00:06been doing an extraordinary amount of work all over the country.
00:08You certainly have your television show on MSNBC, you have your radio show, you've been
00:13engaging with voters.
00:15We want to first welcome you to paint the polls black, and then if you can just give
00:18us your general thoughts on what you're seeing on the ground around the country.
00:24Well, thank you, Alfonso, and thank you, Sister Ebony, and all that have gathered, our colleagues
00:31in this fight for protecting our voting rights.
00:35We must remember that this is an election, and people often say, and I think sometimes
00:42people take it lightly, about how consequential an election is.
00:48But this is the first election that we're having after the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative
00:56action, which also put DEI on its deathbed, that we're trying to resurrect.
01:04It is the first time we've had an election since voting rights was taken out by the Supreme
01:12Court in terms of the guts of it.
01:15And it's the first time women's right to choose is taken out.
01:18I raise that to say that we have seen much of the gains around civil rights, voting rights,
01:26and women's rights wiped out in the last 18 months because we did not vote in the numbers
01:34we should have, could have, and in some ways, as Damon said, were blocked, or in many ways
01:43obstructed by local, state, and county election boards.
01:48They knocked us out, and then many of us did not vote at the numbers we could.
01:54And we ended up with a president that was able to nominate three Supreme Court justices,
02:01confirmed them through a Republican Senate, and was able then to surgically and strategically
02:09remove a lot of the rights that were gained.
02:12So when we talk about voter protection and fighting voter suppression, we're also talking
02:17about preserving what gains we already had.
02:21A lot of people are saying, what am I going to get out of voting?
02:26First we need to restore what we've lost, and then go forward on what we can gain.
02:32And I think as we in National Action Network have been engaged in a voter turnout tour
02:40in terms of our voting rights, we've already done Philadelphia, we've done Columbus, Ohio,
02:46we're on our way to eight other locations around the country, is to enlighten people
02:53what we have lost.
02:54I'm stunned that people don't realize how much this Supreme Court has surgically taken
03:01a lot of our rights away, literally taken our rights away, that people died and suffered
03:08to get us in the first place.
03:10So if anyone, any group, any race, any ethnic-identified group has a reason to come out and paint the
03:21polls black, it's us.
03:24Because we're the ones that have not only been ignored, we've been abused, and we've
03:29been neutralized.
03:30So what these groups that are on with you tonight, Ebony and Alfonso, represent is our
03:39line of protection and our line of defense against a war that was waged against our rights.
03:47The problem is that most of us don't realize the war has been in the process of even going
03:55further, and therefore we're not on the battlefield fighting.
03:59We have the numbers, we have the people that can do it if we can just inspire them to come
04:05out in big numbers and then protect these votes by the people you have on this line.
04:12This is critical.
04:13When you hear Donald Trump say, just vote for me and this will be the last time you
04:19have to vote, he means that, because they intend to restructure what voting will be
04:27like in this country.
04:29If they get one more term, we're talking about the possibility of two more Supreme Court
04:34seats up, if they have a seven to nine court, our grandchildren, great-grandchildren will
04:41not know the America that we knew.
04:44Right now, our grandchildren, and in some cases our children, will not enjoy the rights
04:51we grew up taking for granted.
04:53So this is a real urgency, a real emergency that we must fight to protect our right to vote.
05:03People tell me all the time, well, I'm not voting, I'm not into politics.
05:08No, you're in it, you're just not deciding what you're going to be able to have as a result.
05:15If you're on Social Security, if you're on unemployment, if you eat food, the very food
05:22you eat is approved by FDA.
05:25It's a government-appointed positions that determine the food you eat, the apparel you wear.
05:34All of that is controlled by government.
05:36All of that is controlled by politics, and politics, who has the political power, are
05:42those that vote.
05:43So it is a real problem of our being ignorant to the fact that we are all involved one way
05:51or another in the system, but we are not voting for people that would be empowered
05:56in the system to protect our interests.
05:59I have a friend that grew up with me and the movement.
06:03He was more anti-voting, anti-government.
06:06And I ran into him not long ago in Harlem, and he's around my age.
06:11And he said, man, I see you out there, y'all out there still marching, still doing things.
06:16I see you got a TV show.
06:19I'm not into the system.
06:21Can we debate a little bit like we did when we were younger?
06:25And then he said, man, I got to go.
06:26I got to go check on, did my Social Security check come?
06:30I said, I thought you weren't in the system.
06:32You cannot live in this country and not have to deal with what is in the system.
06:40So you ought to empower yourself by voting in the system.
06:44But we must protect that vote.
06:47And that's what some of the advocates and leaders you have on tonight are all about.
06:52We must protect what people died to give us.
06:56If I were to break in your house, I'm not going to steal your dirty washcloth.
07:02I'm going to steal your valuables, your jewelry, your money, your safe.
07:08People don't take from you what is not of value.
07:11They would not be trying so hard to take our vote if our vote was not of value.
07:18So we must emphasize the value of our vote, have our people come out and vote, and then
07:24protect that with our first line of defense.
07:28And that's what Damon Hewitt and others on this line are doing.
07:32If there ever was a time we need to paint the polls black, now is the time.
07:37And we are the people.
07:38We are born and we're in an era and an intergeneration where the baton is in our hands.
07:44We can break the baton or we can carry the baton.
07:48I say we ought to carry the baton and use that baton to paint the polls black.
07:54Rab, I want to address an issue that you have spoken about numerous times, and it's this
08:01contention that Black men are unlikely to vote for Vice President Harris.
08:06What do you think is driving this narrative?
08:09And do you see anything different this year with this narrative from prior years?
08:14Or is this just the same old song again that we hear?
08:17I think that what's driving it is that there's a lot of media attention that is really selling
08:24this idea.
08:25As I've traveled around the country, I've not seen a upsurge of Black men saying they're
08:33not going to vote for a Black woman.
08:36I see some.
08:38But if you look at any of the data, there was always a percentage of Blacks that would
08:44vote Republican.
08:46We've had that since Lincoln, and when we got the right to vote and voter protection
08:52in the 60s.
08:53So I think that they are using their bullhorn to try and convince us they're more of a problem
08:59than it is.
09:01First of all, you're saying you're not going to vote for a Black woman, and you're going
09:05to vote for a white man that called for the execution of five innocent young Black and
09:09brown young men, and even when they were cleared of DNA, he didn't take his position back.
09:16A man that the Justice Department had to settle that he was discriminating in his housing
09:23in terms of the real estate he owned wouldn't rent to Blacks in his buildings.
09:28A Black man that called African nations shithole countries, and Haiti a shithole country.
09:34I mean, how many who started his political career saying Barack Obama wasn't an American,
09:41he was born elsewhere, and said he had a birth certificate to prove it, that he never produced.
09:48Someone with a litany of racism, you're going to vote for or not vote to permit him to get
09:54back in in the name of you got a problem with a woman?
09:57Well, I've never met a Black man that a Black woman wasn't his mother.
10:02That's who brought you in the world and raised you.
10:05So we need to get that out of our systems, and we need to get that out of those low percentage
10:11of Black men talking that rhetoric.
10:14When you see every Black official, just about 98 percent of them, supporting not having
10:22us go back with a Trump presidency.
10:26And when you see credible people that have stood and fought for us saying that, and then
10:31who do you have on Trump's side?
10:33Maybe two or three people that he gave pardons to, that are paying their debt by endorsing
10:40him.
10:41I think we cannot be that foolish.
10:43We've got to look at the choices.
10:46And I think that the choices are clear, but we can't exercise that choice without protecting
10:51our voting rights.
10:53Rev, you have spent a lot of time on a specific case that I want to bring up, and you've referenced
10:59it once before, the Central Park Five.
11:01You have a lot of young people that are voting for the first time in this election.
11:05A lot of young people that were not around for Central Park Five don't know the history.
11:10And as we know, in many parts of the country, our history is being taken away from, you
11:15know, we're not learning about Black history in the same way that we were in the past.
11:20Can you talk to young folks that are watching right now?
11:24We had a town hall last week with HBCU students, and there was some interesting feedback about
11:31what they're thinking about, what the issues are that are important to them.
11:35But through the lens of the Central Park Five, because you've been involved with this issue
11:39for a long time, why is that case important in this year's election?
11:44It's important because in 1989, there was a vicious, despicable, inexcusable assault
11:53on a white woman in Central Park in New York.
11:57When this happened, the police came and grabbed five young Black and brown young teenagers
12:04in Central Park, arrested them, brought them to the precinct, and forced them to sign confessions.
12:12They later renounced those confessions, pled not guilty, and were convicted on some flimsy
12:18evidence.
12:20Many years later, 13 and a half years to be exact, a man in jail was telling his cellmate,
12:28they were just sitting and talking in the cell, said to his cellmate, you know, have
12:32you ever heard of the Central Park Five?
12:34You remember that a few years ago?
12:36Cellmate said, yeah, I remember that.
12:38He said, those guys didn't do that.
12:40He said, what do you mean?
12:41He said, no, they didn't do that.
12:42I did.
12:43The cellmate, trying to get out of jail, find some favor with the authorities, told
12:49the authorities, trying to cut a deal to get himself out.
12:53They had the dress and garments that woman had that night still in evidence after all
12:58those years.
13:00They took the DNA from the evidence, matched it to the evidence they had on those guys,
13:07one of whom had done 13 years in jail.
13:09A few of them had only done seven, which is seven years to do something that you are not
13:15guilty of.
13:16The DNA did not match.
13:19And that is why they had to exonerate them, because the evidence was clear.
13:23They were not the ones that did it.
13:25You could not rape a woman, beat a woman bloody, and there'll be no DNA on none of the five.
13:34Blacks at the time, Donald Trump, who was a real estate mogul at the time, never spoke
13:40out in 86, three years before that, when a black kid was killed in Howard Beach just
13:45for being in the neighborhood.
13:47Never spoke up in 89, the same year this happened, when a black young man named Yusef Hawkins
13:53was killed in Bensonhurst because they said, we don't allow blacks in the neighborhood.
13:57Donald Trump never stood up on a race issue in New York City, his hometown and my hometown.
14:04But he took out an ad, paid $85,000 for an ad saying, bring back the death penalty and
14:11execute these five young men.
14:14So it was, first of all, New York didn't even have a death penalty.
14:17He called for it to be returned.
14:20Secondly, if there was a death penalty, no one was murdered.
14:26They wouldn't have got a death penalty anyway.
14:28This showed the viciousness and how he looks at black young men.
14:33And I say to young people, how can you cosign someone that looks at you that way?
14:38He had buildings and real estate all over the country.
14:42You've not seen one black contractor, one black real estate agent, one black plumber
14:49or contractor say that I got a contract with Donald Trump.
14:54I worked on the Trump Plaza.
14:56I worked on Trump Estate.
14:58Nobody in our community got business opportunities for him.
15:02So how do you say he's aspirational?
15:05He's aspirational for him and his own only.
15:09You've not, in all of his trials, seen one black come to the witness stand and stand
15:14up and say, I did business with him, he's fair.
15:18When we would go and meet and debate him and argue with him about things, you'd never see
15:23a black executive in Trump towers.
15:26So how are you on somebody's side that was not on your side?
15:30I tell young black men and women, even in my own organization, National Action Network,
15:36that it's not about are you on Kamala's side or Trump's side, it's are you on your own
15:41side?
15:42You should be for who was for you.
15:45And if a man is 78 years old and has never shown he's for you, what makes you think he's
15:51going to be for you now?
15:52Lastly, let's remember, Alphonso, Donald Trump was the president for four years.
15:58We're not talking about somebody that we can say, well, let's see what he does when he
16:02gets in.
16:03He got in.
16:04He was president for four years.
16:06What did he do for black folks?
16:08Kamala Harris can lay out, she co-authored the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act
16:13that Republicans in the Senate 100% voted against it.
16:18It didn't get through because two moderate right-wing Democrats went with them.
16:24She was DA in San Francisco at the time for blacks for marijuana charges.
16:32Go all the way through her career, go all the way through his career.
16:35And the question is, are you on the side of who was on your side?
16:40That's what politics is.
16:43Rev, before you leave, just want to ask you, in politics, a lot of times we talk about
16:49the smoke and mirrors, things that we are focusing on that maybe is really a distraction.
16:53So I just want you to let our audience know, what are the things that you want us to be
16:58looking at or paying attention to that may not be getting as much attention as you think
17:02that it needs to be paying attention to?
17:05I think that for Donald Trump's approach to black voters is that you identified with
17:13my mugshot is to criminalize our whole community.
17:17Because what are you saying?
17:18That because you were arrested, we should relate to that because we're all thugs and
17:22criminals and all have mugshots?
17:24We ought to be insulted by that.
17:27When Donald Trump says that what do you have to lose, never laid out a policy program for
17:33what black people would gain.
17:36Never did it when he was the president.
17:38So it's a matter of your self-respect and your self-esteem.
17:42And I think that is not being raised, even in the media.
17:46And as you said, I host a TV show.
17:48I say all the time, Kamala Harris came out last week when all of this was raised in the
17:55media about black men and gave a methodical program, I'll do this with black men, from
18:02tax credits to investment in black businesses, those that don't have access to capital.
18:08We should give them an investment and give them a interest-free, forgiven loan investment
18:16to get them started.
18:18He has not laid out any policies, tax credit, HBCUs, none of that.
18:24All he has said is, y'all identified me because I have a mugshot.
18:28I've been indicted like y'all were.
18:30Yeah, he caused the indictment of five innocent young men.
18:34Why should we identify with that?
18:36All I'm saying is, put his plan for blacks against her plan for blacks, and you'd have
18:42a blank piece of paper against someone that came out with an outline of what they're standing for.
18:50Reverend Al Sharpton, thank you.
18:53Thank you for joining us.
18:54For folks who may not remember, the Reverend Al and I actually announced Paint the Poles
19:00Black at Essence Festival this past summer.
19:03We kick-started this initiative on the stage in the Superdome.
19:06I want to thank you for your support, for your advocacy, for all of the work that you
19:10continue to do, and thank you for carving out some time tonight to join us.
19:14Any last words?
19:16Yes, my last words are, I want everybody to know that Alfonso David was the attorney for
19:24some black women who were the victims of DEI being desecrated and destroyed, the Fearless
19:35Fund, who had a fund set up to give seed money to black women to start their businesses.
19:43When they were successful in getting Claudine Gay out at Harvard, when they overturned
19:49Affirmative Action, they went at DEI, companies then started following that.
19:55It was David that stood with those sisters that had that fund.
20:00This is tangible.
20:01This is a fact.
20:03How can we let them down?
20:05We had the sisters in the 60s that went to jail.
20:09Now we're having women put out a business for just helping other black women.
20:14Where is our pride?
20:16Where is our dignity?
20:18Where are we, particularly men, that's supposed to stand up and be the vanguard of our community,
20:24not some punks running around copping out?
20:29The last word.
20:30And if people say that Barack Obama was talking down the blacks, he was not.
20:36I am talking down the black men, because you couldn't be talked down to if you weren't down,
20:41and you're down if you're not standing up for your community.
20:45Don't get mad at Obama.
20:46Get mad at me, because I'm calling you out.
20:49You stand up for your mama.
20:50You stand up for your children.
20:52Otherwise, somebody needs to be talking down to you to make you lift yourself up.
21:00That's a whole word, Rev.
21:01That's a whole word.
21:05Rev, again, delivers.
21:08Thank you again for joining us tonight.
21:09Bless you.