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April 2, 2025 34 mins

The Breakfast Club Sits Down With Al Sharpton To Discuss National Action Network, Trump, Eric Adams, Operation Breadbasket, Eulogies. Listen For More!

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wake that ass up in the morning.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Breakfast Club Morning. Everybody is DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne
the guy. We are the Breakfast Club Law and Rosa
filling in for Jesse. We got a special guest in
the building, indeed, Reverend al Sharp and welcome back, Raf.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Thank you glad to be here.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
How you feeling.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
I'm good, I'm real good.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
You got to work out in this morning. You know,
every morning sevens got to get up and do it.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Have you win the last time you missed one about
maybe seven years ago.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Really, I don't care where I am in the world,
like you and hours in South Africa together and I
got up every day and did my work.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
The last time I seen you rever now we were
coming back from DC. We want to play together. This
is right after Kamala Harris lost. Uh very sad, very upsetting.
What do you think about the new presidency and what
he's doing and all the things that that is affecting
our communities. What's your thoughts?

Speaker 3 (00:54):
I mean, I think that first of all, the only
surprise I have is that everybody's surprised.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
He said he was going to do everything he's doing.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Tarriffs that he was coming after a DEI diversity, equity
and inclusion. He said that he was going to go
after his enemies or those that he felt were.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Opposed to him. So I don't know what the shock is.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
And I don't understand where all of the people that
were saying that they didn't see the difference between Trump
and the Democrats, how they have gotten longitis now and
have not come back out and said because none of
what he's doing, what the Democrats doing now, nobody has
been more challenging than the Democrats than I have all
my life. But you can't act like that was the

(01:41):
same thing. He has done a direct affront on black
people and working people and no apologies. I mean, when
you take down black servicemen's pitches on the Department of
Defense's website, including Jack Robinson and Medgevers, you can't be

(02:03):
more intentionally offensive than that. So I think that the
bad side is what he's doing. The good size is
I think it's gonna I think it's gonna wake a
lot of us up. Sometimes we need something to happen
for us to understand what is really happening.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
Well, when you're dealing with point disenfranchised, point disenfranchised people.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
How do you tell.

Speaker 4 (02:24):
Them that, you know, if they're already living in hell,
how do you tell them things are going to.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Get hotter because they get hotter. I mean, but you're
already in hell. But you in hell.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
But it's the heat is up in hell, and the
fact is we in hell. Economically, Trump is now saying
I'm gonna make it worse. I'm going to use Social
Security money, Medicare money. You had that in hell, I'm
gonna use that to balance the budget and pay for
my billionaires to get a tax cut. So when we

(02:55):
tell ourselves it can't get worse, it can't get worse.
When Trump say I'm gonna bring back style up in first,
which we all nash actionally was part of helping get done,
that means you're gonna get thrown up against the wall again.
When Trump says that I'm gonna deal with getting rid
of all of these sentencing rules that can help you
get out of jail. So there's a big difference in

(03:16):
doing two years and doing twenty. So, yeah, you in hell,
and you are now the fires in hell is being
turned up. And to tell yourself to try to rationalize
your inactivity does not make you smart, because a lot
of brothers and sisters saying that to me, well, we're
doing bad anyway, that's trying to rationalize that you were
not trying to do better. To say that a man

(03:38):
with thirty four felony convictions found guilty of sexual harassment
is better than a woman who did everything right, lawyer,
attorney general, senator went to Howard, and to give that
example to your kids that no, I'll go to felon
because he got swagger is to make us appear like

(03:58):
we're not serious.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
I don't think that's comparison though. And the reason I
say that is because I don't think the vice president.
You know, of course she didn't run a perfect campaign.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Who does.

Speaker 4 (04:05):
But I think that she suffered from being a part
of the Democratic brand as opposed to her. It wasn't
the fact that they chose the Donald Trump over her,
they chose Donald Trump over Democrats. Because I feel like
it was the same thing in twenty twenty you had
to fight to convince people to vote for Joe Biden.
It was definitely the same thing in twenty sixteen you
had to fight people to convince for Hillary Clinton. The
only the last time Democrats have been cool in the
eyes of the people that have been oweight and O twelve.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
But then why did Biden when the reason I don't
accept that Biden won.

Speaker 4 (04:31):
A series of extraordinary circumstances.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
I mean George Covid.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
You don't think it was extraordinary? No, no, no, George
Floyd and COVID happened. Yeah, and so.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Did thirty four felaty.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
We saw that this is the only time we seen
American history man stand up in court having to defend
himself and attacking black prosecutors. He went after Alvin Bragg,
he went after Tis James. And the fact is that
that Donald Trump was the president when George Floyd happened.
I did George Floyd's funerals led the big margin. We
could not get a peep out of the White House.

(05:07):
So that don't wash with me when you're standing there
saying this man was president during COVID and told y'all
to drink bleach, was president when George Floyd and never
opened his mouth other than one time walked across the
street from the White House to the church and held
the Bible upside down and reprimanded the protesters.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
We all got amnesia in two years.

Speaker 5 (05:31):
That's what happened, though. Yeah, for a lot of people,
and you've been doing this work for a really long time.
I'm interested because it does feel like that's what happened.
But how do you get people as emotionally charged as
you were about it? Because people were emotionally charged when
George Floyd was killed and when those different things were happening,
which I think led to Biden, but they didn't care
about the thirty four charges.

Speaker 6 (05:48):
So how do you change that?

Speaker 3 (05:49):
I think the way you change it is you got
to be able to get people to understand. The only
way you're going to be able to make changes, you
have to sustain a movement. You know, I talk all
the time about out there are those of us that
have tried to build organizations to sustain and then you
get those that are like flash, and you need them
both because you need the flash to get the fire,

(06:11):
But then that doesn't sustain it. I can tell you
every you saving there a long time. I can just
go back last twelve years. We saw groups after Trey
Von then they die out, and we saw groups after
Michael Browns Ferguson die out. Then we see groups on
and on and all the way to George Floyd. That's
why you need groups that's gonna sustain itself, whether it
be on outside of civil rights or whether it be

(06:34):
the nation that's gonna be there that when it's smoke clear,
because the right wing has that.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Don't forget.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
They went from Tea Party to Birtherrism to Donald Trump.
So they have their flash guys, but their buildings two
and it led to Trump and it's not even generational.
That's the other copy. I was talking to a guy
the other night. We're getting ready to find Nash Action
that we're convention and he's coming, and he said, I
used to not understand y'all, but you know, come next generation,

(07:01):
and I want to do this, that and the other.
But I'm gonna work with you all. I said, let
me ask you them. How old are you? He said,
I'm forty three. I said, well, you ain't that young.
I said, you do realize Vice President jd Vance is
younger than you. He said, word, I said, Stephen Miller,
the architect of the Project twenty twenty five, it's thirty
seven years old. This ain't about a generation, It's about

(07:24):
an agenda. Those young guys on the right were smart
enough to take a seventy eight year old man and
eat Big Max in the middle of the night and
sit on the toilet tweeting and make him president to get.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Their agenda through.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
They divide us on whether you're Christian, Muslim, young. Oh,
we got to stop all that and look at what
made them victorious.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
There was no separation between them.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
They are Christian Church, they're radicals, they're young, they're Oh
that's what put Donald Trump back in the way.

Speaker 4 (07:55):
The Democrats project twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
That's a good question. Why they don't have a project
twenty twenty eight. I didn't have a project. They don't
have a project twenty twenty. We did. We did George Floyd,
they didn't.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
I keep reminding people the Democratic Party didn't lead the
Civil rights movement. The Civil rights movement challenged the Democratic Party.
Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy did with King and Farmer
and Paniew Hamer made them do. And when we are
dependent on others to do for us, well, we ought
to be leading the charge for ourselves.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Were always fooling ourselves.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
Yeah, you know, listen, there's a lot of reasons I
don't believe in the Democratic Party anymore. But you know,
twenty twenty, they won the election, they were in the
White House for four years, and that still didn't stop
what we're seeing now. So how can we have faith
in them to do anything? And I know you're saying,
you know, you know, we can't depend on them, but
you tell us to vote for them so they can
go in there and stop these things from happening.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
But they didn't. They didn't stop the fascists from writing.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
I think that we vote for them as the alternative
to those that are openly gonna do what the Trump
is doing.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Now. Nobody gonna say that they're the perfection.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
But if I'm drowning in the water, if a guy
gonna bring me up two inches rather than bring me
all the way out, the other guy's holding my leg
bringing me down, I'm gonna.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Go with the two inches. But we did that.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Nothing or in twenty twenty. We know we made some
advancements in those four years. We were able to stop stopping. First,
we was able to deal with saving some healthcare. We
were able to deal with infrastructure development where Black's got
some contracts.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
We got some things done, But then it reverts back.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
If you look at history, it is always one step
forward and one back. After slavery, we had twelve years
of reconstruction, then fifty years of Jim Crow. So if
we don't understand that they're gonna fight back, I think
the problem is a lot of us relax and say
we won now we there now. No, the fight is
just as much important when you in as when you're trying.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
To get in.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
So where do we go from now? You know, we
look at all the things that Trump is doing. Right,
he said he's gonna possibly run a third or fourth term.
You never have to vote again.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, well that's taught is well. First of all, to
get a third t he's had to change the constitution.
You've got to get two thirds of the Senate to
vote for two thirds of the House, and then two
thirds of the states to rectify that.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
That ain't gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
So but he what he's doing is his boys got
caught on that signal uh out on that signal lap
And he's trying to change the conversation. He's a master
that he knows how we'll all talk about it. He's
gonna run again. Rather than talk about how the Vice president's,
secretary of Defense, secretary of State, and all of them

(10:31):
were on an app talking about classified stuff of attacking
the building, and yeomen and Trump' sitt up to how
I changed the conversation.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
I'm gonna throw out there. He's only been in three months.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Why would he we even be talking about what he's
gonna do in four years? And Biden was too old,
We said, right, Trump will.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Be eighty two years old in four years. I mean,
as crazy as he is. And now can you imagine
what he's gonna be like at eighty.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Two years old, trying to convince two thirds of the
state to bring him back in.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
It's all of the his in his mind. It's a
decoy to try to get away from the issues right
now because they can't rationally.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
This is the first time you see and in red
states they have an election in Wisconsin toing in Florida
where they are fighting to win those elections because even
whites are now going to their town hall meeting saying,
wait a minute, you messing with my social security, Wait
a minute, you messing with my medicare. Republican congressman can't
hold town hall meetings, so he's got to try to

(11:29):
change the conversation, make it something else.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
And he's good at that.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
There's no doubt in my mind that Republicans are gonna
fumble the ball. You already see it happening now, right,
you know, based off what you just said about what's
happening in the town halls. You know, on a larger level,
you see what's going on at.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
The stock market, all of that type of stuff.

Speaker 4 (11:43):
But even when they fumble, I don't think Democrats have
the team to recover the ball.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
Now there, you and I agree. I think the problem
is that you got the wrong team players. You cannot
You cannot play a game if you're not going to
play the game. And if you they're afraid of Trump
is gonna tweet, Trump's gonna do this, don't get in
the ring if you're afraid to get hit.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
I agree.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
You got to throw a blow and expect the blow
to come back. And that's what I've dealt with all
my I assume they're gonna come and throw blows in
because I'm throwing blows that the people say to me
all the time, Redmud, how do you take it? Cause
I expected, I mean, do I think I'm gonna swing
at them and call them bigots and talk about what
they're doing to us, and they're not gonna swing back.
I think a lot of us act like the folks

(12:27):
that we're talking about a wicked ain't really wicked.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
They are really wicked, and they're gonna try to do
wicked stuff.

Speaker 4 (12:35):
I feel like you should primary everybody in a democratic
Democratic party who's not willing to fight and the leadership
like the Chucks Hume was, the keeen Jeffers. If y'all
not willing to fight, we should be calling for them
to step.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
Down to But the only way you can run in
the primary is you got to be in the party.
If you're not registered in the party, you can't primary.
So I think that I agree with primary, and I
agree that a lot of these people need to be challenged.
But you've got to build up a base to challenge them.
And that's why I talk about the temporary folks. You
need them for flash, but you need your people that
are gonna be there in and out so they can

(13:07):
build some permanent structure.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
The nigga's crazy that you know, you look at Trump
right like them love him, hate him whatever. The fact
that he gets in office and he actually shows the
power that we thought other president should have had, especially Democrats,
like I mean, the first day he gets on stage,
he gets a pending, he signing executive orders left and right.
I mean, his guys that's getting that has twenty years
and just imprisoned ten years in prison parties them immediately.

(13:29):
And then you look at some of our democratic presidents
and you'd be like, man, they could have helped so
many people for good. It just never did, just was
cowardly and didn't. So how does that give the people confidence?

Speaker 1 (13:39):
It doesn't.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
And that's why guys like me that would come to
the Democrats and ask them to pardon people and didn't
can be disappointed and say I went to Biden and
asks for certain partons that we couldn't get. Pardon the Sun,
but I couldn't get him the part in Jesse Jackson's
son and who should have been parton, and the others
we went there.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
So how does that make you feel?

Speaker 1 (14:01):
As much as you feel like I'm not.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
Getting everything I want, but I'm certainly not going to
go on the other side. So we need to then
put the right kind of leadership there.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
You don't.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
You don't if you're on a team. If the quarterback
or the or the tacklers can't work, you get better
team players. You don't join the other team. So that's
what I'm saying. There's a difference in the frustration some
of us are showing and some of you expressed, and
then those that went and joined the other team, they
went and supported Trump like that was an alternative. The

(14:33):
alternative to having a head cold is not suicide.

Speaker 6 (14:38):
I was going to say, you decided whether you back
it away from Eric Adams.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Adams, how do I do what? Look at mayor Eric Adams.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
Look Eric, and I go away. When I started the
National Action Network, he was one of the founders.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Where he is now.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
I think that he has made some positions that I
disagree with, and I've told him that whether he made
a deal with Trump or not, I don't know, but
I know that there's some things in policing and all
we disagree some things that we agree with. But I
think that he's in a very peculiar political position.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
I don't know how he can get re elected.

Speaker 5 (15:12):
I was gonna say so because before the conversation is
that you are having a conversation about whether you're going
to back him as mayor or not again, so you
have made a decision not to.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
I don't know that he's running yet, as he said
he's running.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
He hasn't said. He has to Thursday to say if
he's running again.

Speaker 6 (15:27):
But if he does, say right now, do you know
what you would do?

Speaker 5 (15:30):
Night, I'll really call you for that because I think
for me, I'm looking I'm looking at it because I
definitely will. I'm looking at it because you've been so
vocal about him and now you're vocally like.

Speaker 6 (15:42):
I don't know what I'm going to do. What do
you want him to do?

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Like? What do you expect?

Speaker 3 (15:45):
You want to hear him to continue to fight for
the things that I supported them are, like the right
kind of policing in our community, like being fair to
people that are getting cut out of jobs in the
city of New York life, standing up to Trump on
a lot of this stuff that he is agreeing with
Trump on. I do not agree that we should put

(16:07):
the Haitians and people of color in a category that
they can be picked up by ice just because of
what they look like.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
That is racial profiling. I wanted to do those.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
Things as a civil rights leader. Do you feel like
you should work with this administration on anything with the
president trumpets. I don't think that I have that option.
Trump has made it clear he's not gonna work with
civil Rightley. He tweets at least once a month against
me by name, because I.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Fought him when he was here Central Point five. We
fought him with everybody thought they were guilty. Them boys
went to jail, and two of them might My rallies
every week now because we support her. So I don't
think that the are areas that he and I could
ever work together. But even though he tried to play democrat,
he used to come to national Action there were convention twice.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
He can't. But there are some that can work with him.

Speaker 3 (16:58):
I guess to do that, but they need to show
us the result of the work. You remember, both of you.
You remember when I had access to Obama, I could
come out and say, well, I got Obama to do
this on that. I've not seen any black come out
and say I got Trump to do anything.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
In fact, the last black I saw come out of
there was Alma.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
Rosa, who said he's a racist. We don't even have
an Ama Rosa in the White House.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Now, do you feel like there's enough resistance on the street. No,
I do not.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
I think that the resistance on the street when you
see one of the things we're talking about is doing
a boycott against a single company and not talking about
we're gonna do it ten days, thirty.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
You boycott. I grew up in Operation Breadback.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
You boycott till you break them, or you make them
do what you want to do. You don't put a
timeline because they're just wait on you and oh we
got forty days, Oh we got You need to break.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Things down economically.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
None of these companies that we're studying coming out with
now can survive a long boy because you find out
who has a margin of profit four or five percent
and their consumer dollars thirty percent come from the black community,
which means all you gotta do is stop seven eight
out of those thirty to not buy the product longer

(18:15):
than they can operate in the red.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
That's how you do a boycott. That's what we're getting
ready to do.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
So you don't want DEI Diversity, Equity and inclusion, fine,
then you shouldn't have a diversified consumer base. You can't
have diversity in your selling, in your sales. But you
don't want diversity in the c suite, then why are
we buying from you. I can buy my stuff from
somebody else. And that's what we're coming out this week
on the company that we're going after, and we're gonna

(18:41):
stay on them until we get them to turn around
on this d I thing.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
You know company, I've announced it at the end of
the convention.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
That's one thing that and we gonn announce where we
you know, we march every year, Big March a couple
hundred thousand and Washington. We're gonna do it somewhere else
this year. I'm announced that on Saturday Day. That to
the boycott, it's gonna be connected to economics. It's just
economic battle. We do not have the Senate, we do
not have the House, but Trump and the Senate and

(19:10):
the House can't tell us where to spend our dollars.
We are to focus on corporate businesses and force them
to tell their man, Donald Trump, what they got to
back up on.

Speaker 4 (19:20):
That's a mistake that was made after George Floyd, when
all those corporations you know, proposed all that money that
we never saw. I remember Reverend Jesse Jackson pressuring corporations
back in the day to keep their promising.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
I was his youth director. That's why I know I've
been there. I'm not experiment. I was there. I became
youth director of Operation Bread Baskets with when I was thirteen,
So I grew up in this. And you don't have
a timeline on boycott and you don't stop the pressure until,
first of all, you have these are the six things
we want, contracts, money in black banks. That's what we

(19:54):
were doing, advertising on black media. You don't even have
black media no more. We would categorize it now. We
don't do that anymore. And that's why we got to
bring that back because that worked.

Speaker 6 (20:04):
We don't mean by we don't have black media anymore.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
We don't have enough black owned media. We had more
black owned media in twenty years ago than we have now.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
What did you how did you feel? You know, I've
seen the press go at you and go to a
lot of the people at Kamala Harris's campaign gave money
to during the campaign. So was what was your thoughts
on that?

Speaker 1 (20:23):
I expected that I thought they was late.

Speaker 3 (20:25):
Kamala Harris gave some civil rights groups money to help
get the vote out. Non partisant signed a contract with
us that we could not uh in any way endorsed candidates,
so that they were protected.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
We were protecting.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
Nobody ever asked, did you'll have a contract. I think
she gave several groups a couple million dollars. She gave
National Action. There were five hundred thousand, and the tour
we took, I took Central Park five two of them
all over the country cost us more than that. We
had to raise more money. So I expected them to
do that. And my thing, it's fine, we can bring

(21:01):
the contract. Let's go to court, because then I'm gonna
ask you about all the money's Republicans was giving some
of these Christian Conservative churches and these groups.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
They're gonna take a shot. They are not going to
mess with you unless you messing with them.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
Isn't it interesting You got some of the people that
you referred to that got some of that money doing
the George Floyd. They ain't talking about them, they ain't
prosecuting them. They're going after other people. I'm talking about
people that.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
Did crazy stuff with that money.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
None of them have you heard, got a problem, but
they're still beating up on us.

Speaker 6 (21:36):
I had a question for you true.

Speaker 4 (21:40):
People that got hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody
say I did a half million dollars or a seven month.

Speaker 5 (21:49):
But you know what that's about those because you're you're
like a figure of face that people want to move
in target.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
And accept that. That's why I don't give me. I
don't be crying. I expect, in fact, I get a
little upset if they don't hit me at least once
every couple of weeks, must mean I ain't got my fastball.
Then Jarlamaine to God be saying I done got old.
So I gotta say.

Speaker 5 (22:09):
I had a question you mentioned like having black people
sending next to Trump.

Speaker 6 (22:13):
We don't have anybody right now doing that.

Speaker 5 (22:15):
When you talk about Amrosa, people compare Candace Owens to Amorosa,
and we're saying that she was trying to position herself
that way. I know she's not the biggest fan of you,
but like you do you think something like that would
have been a help or hurt for us if she
was able to position herself the way she was trying to.

Speaker 6 (22:28):
Who candas owns and.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
You put the canvas owns and and that category not
been in the White House.

Speaker 6 (22:36):
No she hasn't.

Speaker 5 (22:37):
She was the way people felt like she was trying
to position herself that way.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
To get there.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
If if she walks in right now, I wouldn't know,
so I don't notice.

Speaker 6 (22:46):
I know that's right.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
I love what y'all do with Operation brad Basket. I
have done with Operation bread Basket. That's something that I
think that this generation needs to study.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
When you look at I remember what bread basket.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
We would go at Donalds or Burger King or whatever
and say you got to have black franchises. That's how
black friends and I can name those that had them,
and those were spelled out results so you could gauge it.
And that's what we got to go back to. We
want our own businesses. Yes, okay, give us some franchise.

(23:18):
Put money in black banks where we can loan money.
When you look at the fact right here at New
York City, let's use New York for example, you have
two thirds of the City of New York black and brown.
Ask who is managing the funds for the taxpayers. I
met with had all the Meryl candidates come to our convention,

(23:40):
and that's one of the things I raised with Eric,
going put to your thing, how do you have all
of this money and none of the blacks and financial services,
whether they an asset manager, whatever, are handling a large
summer of the money is our taxpayers. So let me
tell you what happens. I mean with a union. A
union says that seventy cent of my union members are

(24:02):
black and Latino. I said, who invests their pension funds? Oh,
the pension board takes care of that. Let me meet
with the pension board. Pension boars all white. They lend
money to developers. Those developers take that money and gentrify
our community. So grandma's pension funds is the ones that
are financing her own removal. We need to start thinking

(24:24):
economic again. And I want to ask you too.

Speaker 4 (24:27):
I know that you know y'all driven a lot more
traffic the Costco because Costco is somebody who stood by
their DEI initiatives. What is Costco doing for the move?

Speaker 1 (24:35):
We want? God?

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Well, they I don't want to do nothing for me personally,
They've never donated to nothing, but I want them to
open up some Costco stores where we can own some
of those stores. We can franchise some of those stores.
We wanted to see. We went to say we're gonna
do a buy cut. We go in there and buy
because they stood up for us, but now do business
with us. I don't want again for us to always

(24:58):
be the receivers of what is considered charity.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Give us parody. M hm.

Speaker 4 (25:04):
And you got the National Action Network with It's coming
up this week right Wednesday honored Miss Patty LaBelle honored.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
We're going to have everybody from the governor of Maryland
West Moore, who's only black governor, to the chair of
the Democratic Party. We're gonna ask some hard questions. We're
gonna have Ben Crump is coming with a lot of
the cases that we affought. Uh, everybody's gonna be the
doctor Michael Ary Dyson and it's four days week. Alconvins
will always have thousands be cause it's free. And uh,

(25:34):
we even had Charlamagne the God dere one.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Absolutely I'm gonna be there with him. I'm gonna be
with you know you're gonna be there because of her.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
He's no, you don't know about that, real clear.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
He's not coming out of respect to me.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
That is not coming with Paddy and the bell made
it clear. Charlamagne of God is sitting with me, I'm
not sitting with you, reverend, I said.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Okay, but they told me what it was.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
I'm like, oh, absolutely there, yeah, No, he's been there
for our youth and all that.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
He's done that.

Speaker 5 (26:03):
How did you when asap Rocky was going through all
of the stuff that he was going through in court
and you tweeted out about the black jurors, that the
lack thereof how do you decide when things like that
come across your desk what you put, like put your
name on.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
Well, first, the first law I use is that I
don't ever get involved in some unless somebody involve action.
When he was in jail, his mother came to me,
and that's why I stood up for him.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Then Trump helped get him back. I give Trump credit
for that.

Speaker 6 (26:33):
Oh, when he was over and when he gets over.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
There, so that I knew him.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
So when he's on trial this time and somebody in
his legal team called me and said that you know,
this is an all white pool that they're choosing from,
I said that's wrong. He said, would you come out
of here? I said, I don't have to come out.
I can tweet, and I tweeted. I wouldn't have done
that without the legal team, because I wouldn't have known
what their legal strategy was. Anytime you see me out there,

(26:58):
it's because some of the family members of the legal
team have called us. I don't chase ambulance you know,
people say, ah, the ambulance chasers. No, we ain't ambulance chasers.
We responded to calls, Oh, so.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
You don't dive in the cases to make sure that
people are doing right by those individuals like you didn't.
You wasn't diving in the asab. You wasn't diving into
the diddy unless somebody actually calls you.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
Somebody actually called and then we research it. For example,
when George Floyd happened, we were in the middle of
a pandemic.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
Ben Crump, who's gonna be.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
A leading out speaking criminal Justice forum at the convention,
he called me very mald Did you hear about this
guy in Minneapolis? I said, I saw something on the news.
Because everyone's locked in watching this, he said, the family like.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
To speak to you. I said, okay, they connected me.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
Would you go to Minneapolis, would you leave some margines,
would you do the funerals?

Speaker 1 (27:49):
I said, have we seen the whole tape? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (27:53):
And it's exactly what we saw. Yeah, I said, right,
I'm down, no problem. I called Eric Gardner's mother because
George Floyd reminded me of Eric Garner, you know, the
whole choke hol of course, and I asked her, I said,
would you go with me to Minneapolis. I'm gonna do
the funeral, We're gonna do a march, and we're gonna
build up to go to Washington.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
She said, I'm down, and I said, we are one
promise a pandemic.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
We could not get a flight because a lot of
the flights was down. I called Robert Smith to be
in there and said, can I use your plane? He said,
let me see if my pilots are working the pandemic.
That's how we got the Minneapolis wow.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
And then.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
When we got ready for the last funeral in Houston,
we had to fly. A lot of the family inside
was too shy to call Robert again. I called Tyler Perry.
Tyler Perry sent his plane to bring their family in.
But all that was based on a phone call. And
right now from Trayvon Martin all the way to now,
from Howard Beach thirty some years ago, all those families

(28:51):
are at our convention. We just had use of Hawkins
mother at our Saturday rally. Because I stayed with the families.
I call them on holidays. They kids grew with my kids.
If they get in to jam, I try to help
them out because I know it to be in the newspaper.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
We become family.

Speaker 5 (29:06):
Does it ever get like heavy on you or like
what do you do to kind of like decompressed, Because
it's a lot of like death and trauma.

Speaker 6 (29:15):
You're speaking at the eulogies.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
It bothers me a lot that I try not to
think about.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
I have spoke at every victim's funeral you can think,
and a lot of them we had to help pay
for it, because you got to remember, nobody's family plans
on the tragic, and we never even asked for the
money back, some of them setting for millions in our
saying you don't mean nothing.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
That's what we do.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
So I mean from back in the day Sean Bell,
all the way to now. I've done the funeral and artists.
I was thinking, I just did ROBERTA. Flax eulogy two
weeks ago. I did James Brown, I did Michael Jackson's.
I spoke of Aretha Franklins, I did edit, James. I mean,
you could do a book on a celebrity that would

(29:59):
make me crazy if I just sat around at night
thinking about it. So what I do is I get
up in the morning work out, and I listened to
the Breakfast Club and I feel better. You just did
Miss Hazel Dukes to Miss Hazel Duke's I spoke at
that fuel, but I did the eulogy for bert I
knew Roberta.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Since I was thirteen years old. She was in operation.

Speaker 4 (30:17):
Bradbek wow Oon Bredbasket was started by doctor Marluke King Right.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
Kings founded it as his economic arm of Southern christ
Leeds and Jesse became the Chicago director and then the
nationals director. And when he became national director, I was
thirteen years old. I became the youth director in New York.
So he and Rev. William Jones meant to me.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
I like to study movements that were successful, and you know,
those movements were successful on so many different levels. What
should this generation be learning from that civil rights movement
in the sixties and what wasn't done in that movement
that should be done now?

Speaker 3 (30:52):
What they should learn is if the objective you should
judge people by the objective. You cannot in any way
gauge people by your objective.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
Gauged them by theirs.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
And the objective was they wanted to break down apartheide
segregation and change the laws on voting. They did that,
sixty four Voting Rights Act, sixty five Voting Rights Act,
sixty four Civil Rights Act.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
They did that.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
So what King and them were after they did that,
then they wanted to build economic basis Jesse and they
did that. They were able to break in the first
blacks to get on boards and the first blacks that
would own a lot of franchises, and Reggie Lewis and
all of them.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
They did that.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
What we did not do is institutionalize those things. So
from generation to generation that continued and then we build
our own businesses.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
We could say what we want.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
I've been a different school of thought than the nation Islam,
but Elijah Mohammad built business. Any community you win, and
that's not there no more. So what we've got to
now perfect is how do you pass it.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
On in your lane?

Speaker 3 (31:57):
And you know, people come to me, I'd like to
be the next guy action, but you got to be
about what we're about. If something happened to the pope.
You don't get a Baptist to be the new Pope,
you get a Catholic. So if you not in what
we believe in, you cannot be in that. But if
you in that, we need to continue that. And that's
what we're not done. We've seen too many just go
all political and get out of the economic. You can't

(32:19):
afford to be political if you don't have money.

Speaker 4 (32:22):
So even with what this administration is doing, you know,
rolling back a lot of things that have helped black
people move forward, we can still build those institutions because
you're doing it.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Then he can't make us spend money they want. He
cannot do that. And if you put the right pressure
on in corporations, they can make him turn around. Why
is he talking about tariffs and all that and now
it's all economic. He is a business man. Donald Trump
has never held office in life. He went in there
from business. And that's why I say we've got to

(32:53):
have an economic strategy.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
That's right and join them. This Wednesday Nationalactionnetwork dot net
sign up register. So many people are speaking I'm looking
at right now, Attorney Benjamin Crump, Stacey Adams, Michael, Eric Diyce,
and of course, Patti LaBelle is gonna be on and
Charlamagne is gonna be at her table. Congressman Al Green
will be joining us, doctor Jamaal Bryant.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
Uh, you have a conversation without d A. Alvin Bragg. Yeah,
we'll have d A. Alvin Bragg there.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
Uh, we're gonna talk about a lot of the criminal
justice stuff from the inside, and then Ben Crump is
gonna talk about it externally.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
It's all free.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
They have to go go to National Action Network dot
net and uh, they can register online. We already have
several thousand, but we we can handle it. But it's
all free. Uh if they go in and register now.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
And that's the sheriffan New York Times Square. So definitely
go register, and you gotta come up here more often.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
All you gotta do is invite me, all right, say
no more.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
I had to count Charlamagne, God stop, Patty let Bella
coming thinking he felt bad.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
He knew he's gonna see me Wednesday night. Oh that's
what he said. I better.

Speaker 5 (34:05):
Can you can you call inlet to cut you off?
I'm sorry, but Friday morning, once you make you see
Thursday night, can you call it okay? Because we need
to talk about that.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
I'll call it.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
Okay, i'll call it. But I noticed you covered. I
was getting ready to tell the whole mister, you can.

Speaker 5 (34:18):
Tell that because I don't like him like that. Oh
you don't know you yeah, yeah, Reverend saying right.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
There, it's Reverend Al Sharpton. It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club

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