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It’s Cafe Mocha celebrating 15 years Angelique, Lonie Love, Yo-Yo. On the line is Reverend Al Sharpton. You can catch him on politics, nation on and MSNBC’s weekends at 5:00 PM. Welcome back to Cafe Mocha.
Well, thank you. Glad to be back.
You know, it’s a lot going on, Reverend. Now, first of all, let’s talk about the the meeting that you had with the target CEO, if we can, how did that go and what are your feelings about the boycott now?
Well, I think that that when we had said coming out of National Action Network’s convention or was that we were going to target certain companies. Pepsi Cola was one. We gave them 21 days to meet and they agreed to meet in 10 days the next day. I got a call from the CEO of Target and I know that there were some people in Minneapolis. And in Atlanta, that has started a boycott on them. And he said he wanted to meet with me. And he had met with other civil rights groups that have national or national base. And I said, well, I’ll call you back. I called the Reverend Bryant in Atlanta. And it was during the 40 day boycott fast. And ask him do you want me to meet or not meet? He said. No meat. I haven’t gotten to meet with the CEO, so I said alright. If you’ll come, I’ll do it. And we they met here in my office. Me and my chairman of the board saying that we wanted them to do what the demands were from all of the groups that are targeting them. National Action Network is not taking the lead on that. But we are supportive. That and had the meeting and then the follow up they were going to do. So we’re still focused on following up our meeting with Pepsi or whether we’re doing the a boycott there. We’re supportive of what is going on with target. I hope these groups are united and get together so that we all can speak with one. And lastly, I think that it is important that we understand that while all of this is going on, these companies are still selling their. Product in our community and if the worst thing that can happen is them to feel like they can cut us out and we not respond by saying fine, you don’t want diversity in the corporate world and your corporate suite, then you just shouldn’t have diversity with your consumer or market now. The thing we have done is say, let’s reward those that are doing right. So we started what we call boycotts. I brought 200 people to shop at Costco, Costco. So we will not stop the we brought them in Newark, NJ, with Mayor Roz Baraka. We did it here in Harlem. We did. And several other places we’ve been marching since last year, every Thursday on Bill Ackman, who started the fight against DUI and forced the Black woman president of Harvard University out of place of, of, of occupation. So we’ve been on this over a year before anybody. Because as soon as she was 5, we started marching on Bill Ackman on 11th Ave. every Thursday, and then it’s called some of his business. So we’re going to stay on this, but we hope everybody we can have different organizations, different routes, different paths. But let’s stay on the same direction.
It’s Cafe Mocha talking to Reverend Al Sharpton, Pastor Jamal in one of his services said that the target boycott is working, that you know stuff is going down and other stuff is rising is you know, how much of an effect is this? Having on target.
You’d have to ask him again. I just outlined to you what national action networks. No, I I do not know.
OK. Got you.
I had him in that meeting and beyond that I have not really talked with them on following up.
You know, Reverend Al though. Let’s let’s go back because you know the history of the boycott. And for a lot of our younger listeners. Can you give just a little bit of the history of how a boycott can actually help? I know it seems like crazy, but there are a lot of young people that maybe don’t understand. You know what it takes to be successful and why a boycott like this or anything can can actually be successful.
Yeah, well, you asked the right question because they can be successful if they’re doing right, if they’re done right, they cannot be successful. If they’re done just as a press release, a boycott is. I grew up in Operation Bread Basket. Was the economic arm of Martin Luther Kings organization. I was 12 years old and I was already a boy preacher, so I became used director of New York chapter under Jesse Jackson. Doctor King was already been killed, so I didn’t know him. I saw him a couple times. I was a kid, but I didn’t know. And I learned that if you. To target a a certain company.
MHM.
First thing you do is do you you do research information. Do we buy a lot of this product? How much of their gross sales come out of our community? Then you say what is the realistic things we want that company to do? Then you try to meet with them, lay it out. If they say no, then you come back and say. Can we hurt them now? How is that? If they have 30% of their products come from our community and the company exists on the 30 on the I’m sorry, a three to 5% margin of profit, then we don’t have to stop everybody from shopping at company A if we just stop 7 out of 10. He’s operating in the red. And if we can keep people from shopping there longer than he can operate in the red, it makes them come to the table and do what wants to be done is use is using economic leverage. What I’ve told some of the media is if y’all understand what Donald Trump’s talking about with tariffs that you’re going to give us a better deal, are we going up on the price? There’s a black version of tariff. You’re gonna do the right thing. Stay with diversity, equity and inclusion, or we’re gonna go with the black cap. We’re not gonna shop with you. I don’t have to get every black. I don’t have to get every Latino. Just enough to see how long you can go without that income. And that’s why. The. Boycott concept works and has worked in the past because the main objective of people in business is to stay in business and no CEO and no stockholder can survive if they’re operating in the red. It’s just business. It doesn’t mean they love us. It means we love ourselves and they going to do business with us. In a reciprocal way.
Love it. It’s Cafe Mocha on the line. Reverend Al Sharpton. You can catch his show politics nation on MSNBC, weekends at 5:00 PM, Reverend al for people that are going, you know, through this life and this administration, what can people do? To keep their spirits up, what can they do if they feel hope? Bliss because there’s so much going on with the tariffs, with the DI, you know, with the immigration. Ohh. In your opinion, what can listeners? What should we be looking out for? What can listeners do?
I think that the first thing we need to do is remember who we are. When we were brought here, we as African Americans. Brother and enslaved in 1619, we were stripped of everything we did not even know our names. We were stripped of our families. 1 Mother sold the Alabama Daddy sold the Florida never to reunite the families and two 264 years later we had no rights. Everyone was bound to respect by law. It was against the law to even teach us how to read and write. So if we survived all of that, didn’t know our real name, didn’t know what our family couldn’t read and write. If we survived all that, we could survive Donald Trump. This is many of us. I think many of our our people now are forgetting what we struggled through. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and them theater of Montgomery Bus Boycott in the 50s when they didn’t have social media. They never even knew where. Cell phone work. And they in the Deep South against whites that by law had them sitting in the back of the Bronx. By law, they couldn’t use a toilet downtown. They couldn’t eat restaurants. If they can take a Rotary phone phone and fight back and organized. And we got all sixty ways of communicating from TikTok to Instagram. 2 cell phones in your pocket. The problem is not that these forces against us are stronger is that we’ve gotten weaker. We need to start using our own ways of communicating and using our dollar. Yes, they have the White House, they have the majority of the Senate and the majority of the Congress. But they can’t tell us how to spend our money. And we got to use what we have, which is the only way we survive these funds. Years and quit having pity parties because the thing that I think we’ve got to tell people to not tell people is they where I go, they don’t care. You can do probably all you want. You can talk about. I’m dropping out of it. I’m tuning out. It’s too much. You can’t tune out. This is your job. They talking about taking money out of Medicaid and. Social Security. You can tune out when you tune back in. You are not going to have anything left. It’s time for us to get strong again and fight back.
Whoa.
Well, I feel like the Democrats aren’t doing anything. I understand our responsibility is, you know, citizens, but it just seems like the Democrats just rolled over, like, whatever. I mean, what’s going on with them?
Well, I I think I think well you got to ask them. I mean, I don’t hear the Democratic Party, I heard Nash action there were I think that we didn’t depend on the Democratic Party. And slavery, we ended up putting on them to end the segregation we didn’t depend on them to end affirmative action. The stuff we’ve done around the country, from Howard Beach, all the way to George Floyd. We didn’t wait. Democratic Party didn’t call me. And the George Floyd Floyd family did. So I think that we got to stop. Waiting on either party would the Democrats have done, which is better than the Republicans they did in reaction to our movie? They were not the movement. And I think a lot of us is expecting people to do for for us what we have to do for. Herself, Kennedy reacted to doctor King. He didn’t send Doctor King and then Lyndon Johnson reacted to them. We need to put enough heat on them. We’re boycotts. We’re right. We’re moving forward and using media to put the pressure on them. What are they doing now? You see whites, mostly all the whites. All over the country, marching and going to these town hall meetings, turning them out on Republicans, they’re standing up. They’re not waiting on the Republican Party television to do. They’re jumping on the Republican Party. That’s what we have to do. We cannot expect anyone to do for us what we need to be doing for our. Those.
Right now, Reverend Al Sharpton, can you talk to us a little bit more about what the national, your National Action Network is doing right now and how can we join?
We are involved in Sydney and dealing with fighting back the those against the we are also on our tour now mobilizing. We’re going to do a big March to challenge the corporate world. August 28th anniversary of the March on Washington. But we’re going to do it on wall. Because we’re going to say the private sector without saying to you as we go company by company we your margin of profit, we’re going to go and target you unless you do what is right in terms of jobs, contracts or deposits and black banks etcetera. And we are still dealing with criminal justice, we are still fighting. Police brutality cases, racial profiling cases, gun violence, art. A mother with a grandmother. I’m sorry, was killed just last week in Harlem, we embraced her family, brought them to our Saturday rally. We rally every Saturday. And taking care of making sure she’s buried with dignity and standing up against gun violence so people didn’t go to www.nationalactionnetwork.net, www.nationalactionnetwork.net and CI activities and join. I was in Detroit yesterday with our. Chapter there under RIM. Charles Williams. We’re all over the country. It’s time for us to just stand up and fight back. That’s the only way we ever made progress in this. Country.
Well, you’re also a reverend because that’s why we call you Reverend Al. And I was reading that Wendy Williams called you to pray about her guardianship battle. Is that true?
Yeah, Wendy called me last Thursday. Thursday. I believe it was. And it was funny. I had just finished my radio show and I number came up on my cell phone. I didn’t know. I didn’t answer it. Then they called two or three times. I finally answered. And I said hello. They said, dude, Reverend al, I said, yeah, said Wendy Williams. She had found an old phone and some of the packages they brought her and was trying people whose old number she had. She had my number from years ago. I’d done a radio show when she was at WBLS, New York. I used to do a TV show. And she told me what was happening with her. And that she couldn’t see people I said. Well, tell them you want a clergy visit. I’ve been to York. Just to advise her for a long time, they couldn’t deny her that I went, met with her, her prayer with her. I’m talking to her lawyers to find out what is the legal way we can help all with the things that she’s complaining about. I’m not going to outline them to break her confidence, but she’s raised some issues that disturbed me. And her lawyers are pursuing that 910 to help Wendy. Wendy has been a cultural figure in our community. And I think that, you know, a lot of times when people call me with big names, it makes the press, but it’s little people that we do every day. But like she and I was talking, I preached Michael Jackson’s funeral. I preach James Brown’s funeral. I just did Roberta Flack. So I deal with the entertainers as well as as the celebrities. But it is the George Floyd that nobody knew about, and the and all the way back to Trayvon that we spend most of our time on.
It’s Cafe Mocha with Lonie Love. Yo-Yo, I’m Angelique. We’re on with Reverend Al Sharpton. One of the things that I’m concerned about is erasing history. When you look at the Smithsonian, when you look at some of the choices that the administration has been making on. Websites like pulling major figures off the websites as if they don’t exist. On any thoughts about that other than it’s crazy?
Yeah, I think that it is. It is crazy. It is anti democratic and we we certainly I think that the Legal Defense Fund and ACLU are the legal groups are going into court to try to enjoin that it is illegal. They’re also taking people’s personal information. Our dogs, which Elon Musk was heading up and why do you need my personal information? Where is this being a process? Where is this going to? So I think that we’ve got to have. That’s why I said that different Rd. Or different lanes rather that we all do some on the legal side of fighting. Some are in the marching and protest and and raising the media or a spotlight on issues. Some do social service. So as long as we all do what our lanes are, we can strengthen each other. Our support with the Legal Defense fund them are doing to fight these things in the Court. And there are some successes or even earliest deportation thing. This whole thing of being able to grab somebody and and and take them out of the country, put them in a jail in El Salvador and never give them due process. But they can do that to anybody. People talk about. No, no, no. I’m not from another country. If you walking down the street. So I’ll come from in Brooklyn. Oh. How does somebody know the difference between you and a Haitian or a guy in? And we all look the same. You can grab me and so figure it out later if there’s no due process.
M.
Absolutely. And before we let you go, Reverend Al Sharpton, let’s talk about politics. Nation on MSNBC, weekends at 5:00 PM. You know, you you hanging in there because they they let a lot of people go wherever now.
Where I I’ve been, you know, I’ve been fortunate. I’ve been there. You know, when I started that show in 2011? People said he ain’t gonna last three months because I don’t come from that background and I told them I said, well, I will do the best I can as long as I can be out shopping. They said. And and if you watch my show, I give my opinion. It’s an opinion show and I’ve been there now 13 years, this August would be 14. Yeah. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. I thank God I’m still there, but as long as I’m there, I’m gonna stand up for what I believe and continue to do in the fights that I believe is necessary in our country.
And you still keeping that weight off river? Al, I need help. I need prayer on that. I need prayer for my wife.
I I well I I changed my diet, I get on workout every morning, so I’m I’m struggling with it, but I’m still. I’m still ready for the fight. I’m still slimming trail.
You look great too, and I love the dancing all the time so.
No.
Ohh thank you thank. Yeah.
Thank you so much, Reverend Al, for joining us on Cafe Mocha. We always love when you stop by you all. Make sure you watch politics nation on MSNBC, weekends at 5:00 PM also the National Action Network. Make sure you check in join be a part of it. Like Reverend al. Sense don’t be scared. Be a part of it. Thank you, reverend. Now.
God bless all of y’all. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
