Organization Trends

Sharpton Annual Conference Again Heavily Corporate-Funded


Carl Horowitz of the National Legal and Policy Center has an interesting article about all the  myopic major corporations that sponsored the recent convention of National Action Network.  The group is headed by the truly awful charlatan and race huckster Al Sharpton. It begins this way:

Whatever else might be said of Reverend Al Sharpton, when he throws a party, he does it in style. The 14th annual conference of his New York-based nonprofit National Action Network (NAN) last month in Washington, D.C. during April 11-14 was no exception. Once more, corporations and to a lesser extent unions paid most of the tab for a well-choreographed event that featured dozens of speakers and panelists eager to affirm the aggressive black identity politics of their host. The plenary address by Attorney General Eric Holder, followed by a panel on legal issues, amounted to a group manifesto for the arrest of George Zimmerman for the highly-publicized killing – evidence points toward self-defense – of a black Florida teen, Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman, to the delight of virtually all attendees, was arrested that day on a state second-degree murder charge.

Horowitz argues that it is ultimately self-defeating for these successful businesses to give money to a group based on extortion.

The people who run these organizations genuinely believe that by donating funds to National Action Network, they are serving their own interests and those of business generally. We at National Legal and Policy Center believe they are wrong. Contributing money to a Sharpton-controlled nonprofit group merely buys a company time to avoid a bad reputation and a potentially costly “discrimination” lawsuit. What’s more, it sends a signal to racial provocateurs like Sharpton that corporations everywhere are easy marks for shakedowns. Worst of all, it provides NAN with the money needed to carry on its never-ending war against “injustice” with a high degree of visibility and legitimacy.

These corporations forget that Al Sharpton does not shy away from the “socialist” label.  In fact he revels in it.  If he were president of the United States (God forbid) his economic policies would make Venezuela’s communist leader Hugo Chavez’s policies look moderate by comparison.  Sharpton is a vicious demagogue who is not afraid of cracking skulls to bring about a radical transformation of society.  It’s amazing Sharpton isn’t in prison.

Read the whole Horowitz article here.

Matthew Vadum

The author of Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers (WND Books, 2011), Vadum, former senior vice president at CRC, writes and speaks widely…
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