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Sessions, Sharpton discuss civil rights, Eric Garner chokehold case New York's PIX11 / WPIX-TV NEW YORK Reverend Al Sharpton and new Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke about civil rights and the ongoing Justice Department investigation into Eric Garner's death in a phone call. "He called me yesterday evening," Reverend Al Sharpton told ...

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Sessions, Sharpton discuss civil rights, Eric Garner chokehold case - New York's PIX11 / WPIX-TV

Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds, the top seller of the menthol cigarettes favored by most black smokers, is seizing on the hot button issue of police harassment of blacks to counter efforts by public health advocates to restrict menthol sales.

In recent months, the company has quietly enlisted black groups and leaders, including civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton and ex-Florida Congressman Kendrick B. Meek, to hold meetings at prominent black churches on the theme of Decriminalizing the Black Community.

Sharpton and Meek, along with speakers from groups involved in criminal justice reform, have warned of the unintended consequences of banning cigarettes with the minty, throat-numbing additivenamely, the risk of creating a black market and giving police new reasons to lock up black males. The meetings have been held at churches in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Oakland, and in other forums.

Reynolds makes Newport cigarettes, the most popular menthol and the No. 2 U.S. cigarette brand overall, with a market share of nearly 14 percent. The company has paid travel costs for the panelists and contributed to their organizations, according to the panelists and Reynolds spokesman David Howard. However, promotional flyers suggest that Sharpton and his National Action Network are the main sponsors of the meetings, rather than the tobacco company.

Anti-smoking advocates have blasted the campaign as deceptive and a scare tactic. How can the tobacco industry care about criminalization when they dont even care about killing you? said LaTrisha Vetaw, who attended a Jan. 25 meeting at the Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Minneapolis, where a few dozen people turned out to hear Sharpton and be treated to a lunch of chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and cake.

Sharpton led protests against police abuses following the death in New York City of Eric Garner, an incident frequently invoked at the meetings. Garner died in July, 2014, after police put him in a chokehold while arresting him for allegedly selling untaxed single cigarettes, or loosies. But in his remarks in Minneapolis, Sharpton said repeatedly that he had not made up his mind about a menthol ban, according to a tape of the meeting. I am not on either side of the argument, he said. I want to hear and listen.

In an interview with FairWarning, Sharpton said Meek, a Reynolds consultant who serves as moderator at the meetings, asked us to consider the unintended consequences of a menthol ban, and also asked him to appear at several of the churches. Sharpton said the National Action Network will take a position on a menthol ban at its convention in April.

Meek, who could not be reached, is a former Florida highway patrolman later elected to Congress, serving four terms in the House of Representatives before losing to Marco Rubio in the 2010 race for U.S. Senate. Over the years, the tobacco industry contributed $202,510 to his congressional campaigns and leadership political action committee, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Meek received $104,342 of that in the 2009-10 campaign cycle, more than any other member of Congress except North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr.

Meek and the others have stressed that they arent in favor of smoking. We have to deter smoking, okay, Meek said at the Minneapolis meeting. But we also have to make sure thatwere not giving tools to law enforcement to ensnare more young blacks in the criminal justice system.

There is almost no chance of a menthol ban at the federal level. But as reported by FairWarning, some local officials and anti-smoking groups have taken up the cause of regulating menthol sales. In Chicago, sales of flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes, are banned within 500 feet of high schools. Advocates in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where menthol cigarettes are exempted from an ordinance restricting sales of flavored tobacco products to adult-only tobacco shops, are trying to repeal the exemption.

Menthols account for about 30 percent of U.S. cigarette sales, but are the choice of more than 80 percent of black smokers and more than half of smokers under age 18, according to research cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 47,000 African Americans die annually from smoking related causes, according to agency estimates.

There is no evidence that menthols are more toxic than other cigarettes. But health authorities describe menthol cigarettes as a starter product, saying menthol anesthetizes the throat, helping beginners to tolerate the harshness of tobacco smoke and making them more likely to become addicted. For these reasons, said a 2013 report by the Food and Drug Administration, it is likely that menthol cigarettes pose a public health risk above that seen with non-menthol cigarettesa conclusion cigarette makers hotly reject.

The landmark 2009 law that authorized the FDA to regulate tobacco products included a ban on candy, fruit and spice cigarette flavorings because of their appeal to young smokers. But Congress punted on menthol, directing FDA to do research on whether it, too, should be restricted or banned. In 2013, the FDA put out a call for comments on a possible menthol ban, but has done nothing since, and there appears to be almost no chance the Trump administration will act.

Along with Sharpton and Meek, speakers at the Reynolds-sponsored meetings have included John I. Dixon III, former president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, which lists Reynolds American Inc. , parent of R.J. Reynolds, as one of its corporate partners. Other panelists have been Neill Franklin, a former Maryland State Police narcotics officer and executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership; and Art Way, Colorado state director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Franklin said his group, whose focus is ending the war on drugs, received $75,000 from Reynolds in 2016 but is not controlled by any of its donors. My place in this is to give education to people about what potentially could happen if there is a ban, he told FairWarning. To me, its being ahead of the issue.

Way said opposing a menthol ban is a natural fit with his groups general concerns over [the] black market and the kind of unintended consequences of banning popular substances We say what we want to say, and reach larger audiences, basically on Reynolds dime.

The forums havent been limited to black churches. Last June, at the annual convention of the National Newspaper Publishers Association the trade group for more than 200 African-American community newspapersMeek, Dixon, Franklin and Way were listed on the program for a Panel Discussion, Criminal Justice ReformHosted by RAI Services Company, a reference to Reynolds. In 2015, Reynolds contributed $250,000 to the publishers association, according to a document posted on the companys website.

Yes, RAI has provided some funding to those organizations, the Reynolds spokesman, Howard, said in an email to FairWarning. We work with these organizations in an effort to engage in conversations to work to resolve controversial issues related to tobacco use in a responsible manner, while ensuring that any new rules or laws do not result in troubling unintended consequences.

But Vetaw said the company is blowing smoke. The tobacco industry is great at marketing so they send celebrity Al Sharpton, said Vetaw, who is policy and advocacy manager for the North Point Health and Wellness Center in Minneapolis. A couple of people in the room said, Well, Al Sharptons here so this must be important.

Valerie Yerger, who attended an October meeting at the Beebe Memorial Cathedral in Oakland, had her microphone cut off when she tried to raise the issue of Reynolds involvement in the event, according to interviews and a report by Oakland North, a newspaper published by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Yerger, an associate professor of nursing at UC San Francisco who has researched the history of tobacco industry support for African-American groups, said the campaign shows that cigarette makers are continuing to use influential black leaders and their organizations as a front group to promote industry interests.

This article was reported by FairWarning (www.fairwarning.org), a nonprofit news organization based in Los Angeles that focuses on public health, safety and environmental issues. The organization shared the article with the News & Record.

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Al Sharpton helping RJ Reynolds maintain menthol market - Greensboro News & Record

Al Sharpton / AP

BY: David Rutz February 8, 2017 4:31 pm

Al Sharpton posted a strange photo of himself to Twitter on Wednesday in which the MSNBC host is shown reading an upside-down book to protest the confirmation of new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

"If it looks like the book I'm reading is upside down,IT IS. That's why we need an Education Sec that has public education RIGHT SIDE UP! [sic]" the tweet read.

The book was Hellhound on His Trail, a Hampton Sides account of Martin Luther King's assassination and the subsequent manhunt for his killer.

Sharpton, whose struggles with reading the teleprompter on his show "PoliticsNation" are well-documented, apparently tweeted this attempted slam to voice his displeasure at DeVos' advocacy for school choice.

DeVos' nomination was also met with fierce opposition from Democrats, teachers' unions,and concerned celebrities.

Her confirmation was voted down by every Democrat in the Senate, in addition to two Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) and Susan Collins (R., Maine). Vice President Mike Pence brokethe Senate's 50-50 tie on Tuesday to confirm her to the post.

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Sharpton Posts Picture of Himself Reading Upside-Down Book, Brags About It - Washington Free Beacon

Some people think Chicago's violence problem is an easy fix. Donald Trump thinks he could solve it in a week if Chicagoans stopped forcing law enforcement to be so politically correct. The Rev. Darrell Scott thinks he can come in from Cleveland and solve it by sitting down and talking with "top gang thugs."

The implication is either that our entire police force is incompetent or that residents simply don't care that 784 people were killed here last year. Either way, what they're basically saying is that Chicagoans are stupid.

The U.S. Justice Department recently told us that Chicago police have long been quick to turn to excessive force or deadly force against African-American and Latino residents, often without facing consequences.

Obviously, political correctness has never been at the top of some police officers' agenda. Sorry, Mr. President, that tactic has already failed.

Scott clearly knows very little, if anything, about Chicago's gangs. First of all, there are no "top gang thugs" to speak of. Chicago's former gang hierarchy folks like Larry Hoover, former leader of the Gangster Disciples, and Jeff Fort, former head of the Blackstone Rangers and El Rukn have been locked up for decades in federal prisons.

One of the reasons the violence is so hard to control in Chicago is because the gangs are so disorganized. Many of the neighborhood killings involve a small faction of teenagers on one block feuding with a small faction of teenagers on another block.

It isn't always about controlling the drug market either. Sometimes, someone is killed over something as silly as a Facebook post.

Sorry, Rev. Scott, your idea is ridiculous. If there were gang leaders with that kind of control, don't you think someone in Chicago would have figured out how to call a meeting with them already? (Scott later told the Tribune that it was a former gang member who reached out to him.)

Outsiders who think they can come to Chicago and work a miracle should have a talk with the Rev. Al Sharpton. His visits in 2013 opened his eyes to the reality of Chicago's violence.

It was shortly after 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton became the unintended victim of a gang-related shooting that Sharpton decided to use his national platform to put Chicago's violence in the spotlight.

He rented a two-bedroom apartment in West Garfield Park on Chicago's West Side for three months and planned to spend one night a week there, immersing himself in the lives of the residents. Over the course of his visits, he would go to schools, hold a town hall meeting and bring in celebrities such as rap mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs, director Spike Lee and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker to help him out.

But after one day exploring the landscape of Chicago's killing fields, Sharpton began to realize that he was in over his head. He found out that the city's homicide problem was much more complex, that it is tied to poverty, poor education, segregation and hopelessness. That was too much to deal with.

He did hold a town hall meeting attended by hundreds of mostly older residents fed up with the violence, but as far as bringing in celebrities, Sharpton said, "Who was Puffy going to talk to?"

Looking back, Sharpton told me Friday, the Chicago that exists today is not the same one that he used to visit in the late 1960s as a youth director of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Operation Breadbasket.

"You need a major overhaul to stop this violence," Sharpton said. "You can't address the problem without addressing underlying factors like jobs, after-school programs and the proliferation of guns."

Sharpton, like the longtime community leaders in Chicago, is apprehensive about Scott's claim during a Black History Month breakfast hosted by Trump that "top gang thugs" from Chicago had called him up and asked for a meeting.

According to Scott, these gang leaders are interested in "lowering the body count" in Chicago, but they'll do it only for Trump.

Sorry, Barack Obama; a black man who spent his early career working in disadvantaged communities on the South Side just couldn't cut it with these guys. These gang thugs will only listen to an old white guy who learned the little he knows about the South Side from a TV set inside his Manhattan penthouse.

"They believe in this administration," Scott told Trump, who hosted a group of so-called African-American leaders most black people have never heard of. "They didn't believe in the prior administration. They told me this out of their mouth. But they see hope with you."

Seriously? It's a shame that some black folks are using Chicago's violence to get a seat at Trump's table.

Sharpton found out quickly that Chicago has no organized gang structure. There is no one to sit down and talk to.

"The more I stayed and walked around at night, the more I realized that these guys didn't even know each other. They were spontaneous and organic," Sharpton said. "If (Scott and Trump) are looking to go into the community and talk to gang leaders, they are being deceived by people who are selling them a bill of goods."

Back in the day, Fort and Hoover possibly could have made such a call. They had authority over their rank and file and could call a truce whenever they wanted to. They ran their organizations like corporations.

They weren't always bad guys either. Some Chicago gangs started out in the 1950s with a political and social focus but gradually turned to crime. And they were well-connected. The Blackstone Rangers was awarded a $1 million federal grant in 1967 to fund a teaching program. In 1969, President Richard Nixon invited Fort to his inaugural ball. Fort declined but sent one of his generals instead.

Black street gangs in Chicago are an institution. And institutions are hard to knock down. You have to understand what you're dealing with here in Chicago.

"Once I came in here with all my intentions, I had to change what I wanted to do because it didn't fit the environment of what I found," Sharpton said. "If you are sincere, you can't be married to a preconceived notion when you find out the reality does not match your projection."

So does Sharpton think he made a difference in Chicago?

"I helped bring attention to some people on the ground who are doing good work," he said. "If pouring a glass of water in the ocean is a contribution, we did that. But the levee is broken, and the ocean is still flowing over."

No one is saying that these killings can't be stopped, or at least curbed, but it's going to take more than Trump sending out tweets belittling Chicago in order to make himself appear tough on crime.

His repeated threats to come in and take over if Chicago doesn't fix its homicide problem is beginning to sound like an abusive parent threatening to beat a child if he doesn't make all A's on his report card.

The most effective way to handle that child would be to find out what's keeping him from getting those A's and then give him all the support he needs to make it happen.

Instead of sending in black surrogates looking for a seat at Trump's table, the president should visit Chicago himself and talk to people in the neighborhoods who really know what's going on.

The Rev. Michael Pfleger, in a recent Facebook post, invited Trump to St. Sabina Catholic Church in Chicago's Auburn Gresham neighborhood "to sit down with the community and listen to our concerns about the violence and what's needed."

Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Illinois, said on her website that she had invited Trump to come to her South Side district and "see the reality up close and personal and work together on solutions." Trump didn't respond.

Apparently, he's more interested in talking about Chicago's problems than helping us solve them.

That's going to require more than a pandering preacher from Cleveland, which has a higher murder rate per 100,000 residents than Chicago, sitting at Trump's feet and feeding his ego.

No doubt, Scott will make his way to Chicago and spend a few hours talking with gang members. But even if he does, he likely won't hear anything that folks in Chicago don't already know. Gang members, like everyone else, need jobs.

If Trump can find a way to put these guys to work, I'll take a seat at his feet myself.

dglanton@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @dahleeng

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Think Chicago's violence is an easy fix? Ask the Rev. Al Sharpton - Chicago Tribune

BY: David Rutz February 3, 2017 10:41 am

Liberal MSNBC host Al Sharpton said Wednesday that Senate Democrats should give "the big payback"to Republicans over President Trump's Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch.

Sharpton argued that Republicans refusing to give a hearing to Merrick Garland, President Obama's Supreme Court nominee last year, merited similar treatment by Democrats for the "very conservative" Gorsuch, Breitbart reported.

"He's being nominated to sit in Garland's seat," Sharpton said. "President Barack Obama nominated Judge Garland, who has got as much or more qualifications as this nominee, to have been the Supreme Court judge They stalled, they filibustered, they would not even give a hearing to Judge Garland. It is time for the Democrats now to say since you changed the rules, you're going to have to live by the rules that you applied to President Obama's nominee, and we are not going to allow you to change it, and we will use those rules to block this nominee, Judge Gorsuch."

"The Bible says that you sow thatthat same thing shall you also reap. But Bill Bellamy had a better ideathey should come in the Senate and replay The Big Payback,' James Brown song," Sharpton continued. "Bill was right, just take one of them old blasters, Chuck Schumer, and blast out The Big Payback.' You took my judge. That ain't right. Wouldn't give a hearing. You know that I'm tightthe big payback."

However, Democrats were in the minority last year and failed to recapture the Senatein the 2016 election. As such, it is expected that Gorsuch will ascend to the Supreme Court.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) can invoke the "nuclear option," which would eliminate the Democrats' ability to filibuster Gorsuch's nomination should they choose to do so. With the GOP holding 52 seats, Gorsuch could then be confirmed with a simple majority.

The death of Justice Antonin Scalia a year ago touched off a debate in 2016 over whether Supreme Court nominees should be acted on in an election year. Republicans cited then-Sen. Joe Biden's declaration in 1992 that no Supreme Court nomination should be made by President George H.W. Bush until after that November's election. Democrats angrily called on the Republicans to "do their job" and give Garland a hearing, but they did not budge.

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Sharpton: Schumer Needs to Give Republicans 'The Big Payback' Over Gorsuch Nomination - Washington Free Beacon