Al Sharpton

Al Sharpton (1954- ) is a Minister, Director of the National Action Network and a Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2004. During the presidential primary, he vigorously attacked other Democratic candidates for alleged racism.

In February 2004, the Village Voice reported that "Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton. ... Sharpton has a little-noticed history of Republican machinations inconsistent with his fiery rhetoric. ... [A]ny Sharpton-connected outrage against the party could either lower black turnout in several key close states, or move votes to Bush." 

Sharpton's Anti-Semitic Comments
In August 1991, an African-American boy, Gavin Cato, was killed in Crown Heights in New York city "when a car in a Hasidic rabbi's motorcade accidentally veered off the road and hit him." Subsequently, Slate reports, a "gang of black youths stabbed a rabbinical student to death, and black-Jewish tensions ran high." At Cato's funeral Sharpton said:


 * "The world will tell us he was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident. ... It's an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights. ... Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid. ... All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffe klatsch, no skinnin' and grinnin'. Pay for your deeds."

"If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house," he said. 

Related SourceWatch Resources

 * MoveOn
 * public polling industry
 * U.S. presidential election, 2004
 * U.S. presidential election, 2004: Campaign Quotes