In a series of recently leaked emails, combined with a little old-fashioned investigative reporting, Al Sharpton has been exposed for what he really is: a race-baiter who enjoys enormous personal profits at the expense of the misery and frustration of others.
Sharpton is commanding enormous profits, with oftentimes questionable and intimidating tactics, in order to protect the image of certain companies.
In other words, he gets paid not to cry “racism.”
The New York Post has the story:
For more than a decade, corporations have shelled out thousands of dollars in donations and consulting fees to Sharpton’s National Action Network. What they get in return is the reverend’s supposed sway in the black community or, more often, his silence. …“Al Sharpton has enriched himself and NAN for years by threatening companies with bad publicity if they didn’t come to terms with him. Put simply, Sharpton specializes in shakedowns,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal & Policy Center, a Virginia-based watchdog group that has produced a book on Sharpton.And Sharpton, who now boasts a close relationship with Obama and Mayor Bill de Blasio, is in a stronger negotiating position than ever.“Once Sharpton’s on board, he plays the race card all the way through,” said a source who has worked with the Harlem preacher. “He just keeps asking for more and more money.”
According to reports, there are several glaring examples of ways Sharpton has personally profited from this kind of work.
BIZPAC Review has more:
A Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund outfit called Plainfield Asset Management made a $500,000 donation in 2008 to Education Reform Now, a New York nonprofit vying for a racino license, according to the Post, which said the gift was later funneled to Sharpton’s National Action Network.A year later, the Post reported, Sharpton’s group pulled in another $100,000 from AEG, a consortium that took over the casino bid.Harold Levy, who was a managing director at Plainfield when the donation was made, has denied the contribution was used to get Sharpton’s help, but leaked emails tell a different story, according to the Post.“Sharpton lobbied [Gov. David Paterson] hard over the weekend on our behalf,” an AEG member said in a 2009 email, according to a state inspector general’s report quoted by the Post.Sharpton has denied the allegations that he lobbied on AEG’s behalf.The Post also reported that Sharpton nabbed a $25,000-a-year adviser job at Pepsi after threatening a boycott of the company in 1998, and that he threatened American Honda in 2003 for not hiring enough black workers.“We support those that support us,” Sharpton wrote to Honda, according to the Post. “We cannot be silent while African-Americans spend hard-earned dollars with a company that does not hire, promote or do business with us in a statistically significant manner.”
Within two months, the Post said, Honda began sponsoring National Action Network events and the protests stopped.