by Al Sharpton
I can’t help but note, as many others have before me, that this country didn’t have an “immigration problem” until the immigrants became overwhelmingly black and brown. In 1960, the top five countries sending immigrants to the United States were Italy, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Poland. I don’t recall presidential candidates back then being forced to come up with a stance on Italian, German, or Canadian immigrants.
But by 1970, Mexico had entered the top five. By 2000, when immigration had become an explosive third rail of American politics and there was talk of building electrified fences along the southern border, the top five looked very different: Mexico, India, China, the Philippines, and Cuba. It’s not difficult to see the difference between the two lists.
Dr. King was a giant of the civil rights movement, but let us not forget the courageous work of Cesar Chavez, who adopted some of the nonviolent tactics of Dr. King to fight on behalf of migrant farmworkers. With boycotts, strikes, and the creation of the United Farm Workers union, Chavez awoke the world to the exploitation of Latino farmworkers in the Southwest. King and Chavez were also friends and associates who understood the common purposes of their struggle for human rights for black and brown Americans. What happened to the spiritual bond formed by these two great leaders?
I have been disturbed by how quickly forces in the African-American community have succumbed to brainwashing, to wrongheaded propaganda about this issue. When I hear black people repeating this nonsense, saying, “They’re taking our jobs,” my first response is to ask, “What jobs?” Ever since there have been labor statistics recorded in this country, blacks have been doubly unemployed; our rate has always been double the national rate. The only time black people had full employment in the United States was during slavery—and we didn’t get paid. So who was taking our jobs before we had an influx of Mexicans over the past thirty-five or forty years? This country has never intended for blacks to be fully and gainfully employed, and that has nothing to do with Mexicans. So let’s stop the blame game and try to focus on the big picture here.
I was thinking about the need for me to move outside of my comfort zone when I made the decision to join my Puerto Rican brothers and sisters in their protests against the U.S. Navy’s bombing in Vieques, a small island next to Puerto Rico. I was trying to reach out, to grow, and in the process, I stumbled into one of the most difficult ordeals that I’ve had in my career. I wound up spending three months in jail because of the Vieques protests. Although it was a harrowing ordeal, that time also turned out to be incredibly important to me, giving me an opportunity to do some serious introspection and planning. I would be a totally different person and a different leader today had I not gone through the Vieques experience. It was surely one of the most impactful three months of my life, setting the stage for much that was to come later.
It all started on a Saturday morning in 2001, when I was riding down the FDR Drive in Manhattan on my way to one of the NAN’s regular Saturday-morning rallies. On the radio, they were talking about Robert Kennedy Jr. and Dennis Rivera, a labor leader, going to jail in Vieques. Rivera had gone to jail with me during our “Days of Outrage” protests against police brutality in New York. I was inspired in that instant to respond in kind in Vieques and to demonstrate the viability of a black-brown coalition. I called Roberto Ramirez, a Bronx political leader who was active in the anti-Vieques movement, and told him that I wanted to support them the way they supported me during our protests.
So I got on a plane and journeyed down to the island paradise of Puerto Rico with three influential Latino leaders: Ramirez; Adolfo Carrión Jr., a city councilman from the Bronx who eventually became Bronx borough president and then an official in the Obama administration; and Assemblyman José Rivera, who was also from the Bronx. The way you staged a protest at Vieques was to crawl through an opening in the fence at the Navy base. It was considered trespassing on federal property, an act of civil disobedience. As planned, we were arrested, attracting a great deal of media attention in Puerto Rico and back in New York.
I’ve been arrested dozens of times on the mainland, so I was expecting the usual court appearance and slap on the wrist. But the way we were treated right after the arrest should have been my first warning that this one was going to be different from the others.
First, we were handcuffed and hustled to a cavernous old jailhouse on Vieques that looked like a castle. We were stripped naked—in front of one another—and searched, as if the four of us had suddenly turned into despised enemies of the state. They put us in inmate clothing and marched us onto a barge with other prisoners to make the trip to mainland Puerto Rico.
On this barge, we were chained to the floor, alongside a row of tanks and trucks that were making the trip with us. Suddenly, on a day that had started out with a peaceful protest in a gorgeous island paradise, I found myself chained to the bowels of a barge, as if it was 1801 instead of 2001 and I was traveling the Middle Passage.
The fifty-eight-mile trip from mainland Puerto Rico to Vieques had taken less than a half hour by air; by barge, that little jaunt turned into a three-hour ordeal. Near us on the barge were several large military trucks that also were being transported back to the mainland. And during the whole of the three hours, as sea water sprayed up into my face and I was helpless to wipe it away, my mind was stuck like a broken record on just one thought as I stared up at a huge truck bouncing around nearby. Was the chain that was supposed to be holding that truck in place suddenly going to succumb to the bouncing waves and allow the truck to crush me to death? There was very little conversation among the four of us. I think they were thinking about that truck, too. This was not the way I had planned for this trip to go down. I sent up some earnest prayers on that barge. I could see the New York Post headline: “Sharpton Suffers Death by Truck.”
By the time we reached San Juan, we had lost quite a bit of our swagger. But we received a lift when we finally got to the federal penitentiary at about midnight. When we walked into that processing room, a big cheer went up for us from all the grateful Puerto Ricans, thankful that we cared enough about them to put our freedom and safety on the line. They had been fighting the Navy for years, claiming that the military exercises and bombing being conducted on the island were causing cancer and asthma in their kids. Two years earlier, a security guard had been killed by a bomb that went awry. This was a huge political issue in Puerto Rico. They were especially grateful that I had gone down there, since I wasn’t normally attached to Latino causes.
After we were released and traveled back up to New York, I moved on. I assumed that my Vieques ordeal was over. But several months later, in early May, I was attending a meeting in a hotel in Midtown when my cell phone rang. It was one of the guys I had met down in Puerto Rico.
“You know you go on trial tomorrow, right?” he said.
I shook my head. “No, that’s just a court appearance. Just tell the lawyer I waive my appearance.”
“No. The judge says trial.”
“But I can’t,” I said. “It’s three in the afternoon. How am I gonna get down there?”
“If you’re not here, they’re going to put out a federal warrant.”
I was not pleased, but I knew a federal warrant was not something to mess with. I called the three other defendants and informed them of our dilemma. The next four hours were a blur, but we finally walked onto a seven thirty flight to San Juan, relieved and more than a bit annoyed. The next morning, we met briefly with our lawyers before we faced the judge. There were at least 100 other defendants there, all of them Vieques protesters. One by one, they started going before the federal judge, whose name was José Antonio Fusté. And every single one of them was getting jail time.
I looked at Ramirez; he looked back at me.
“We’re going to jail today,” I said.
He shook his head. “Oh, no, no, no. This is an appearance.”
Again, I repeated, “We’re going to jail.”
When they c
alled our case, the four of us stood up and went before Judge Fusté. One of our defense lawyers explained to the judge that three of us were elected officials and had to return to work. Time magazine had just told the world that I was thinking of running for president. We were busy guys. The hope was that the judge would give us a trial date for some point in the distant future.
“Fine. I understand all that,” the judge responded. “Are you ready for trial?”
Before we knew what had hit us, the prosecutor was laying out his case against us. Of course, we were guilty—that’s the whole point of civil disobedience. You want to get arrested, maybe even go to jail, to bring attention to your cause, to use the weight of public opinion to move the other side. After the prosecutor was finished, it was our turn to make our case. We had hired local counsel from Puerto Rico because we thought we were just making a court appearance. We weren’t expecting an instant trial. Our lawyer stood up and stumbled through an ineffectual defense.
When he was done, Judge Fusté said, “OK, have a seat.”
He turned to the four of us. “Be ready for sentencing. You’re guilty.”
Before our sentencing, we each had a chance to speak to the court.
“I don’t come from Puerto Rico,” I told the judge. “But I am one for standing up for something that is right. If Martin Luther King were alive, he would have come to Vieques to raise these issues. We believe that is his legacy. We owe a moral debt in the King tradition to stand up for children who can’t stand up for themselves.
“This building will be closed next January in honor of Martin Luther King, who stood for civil rights,” I continued. “Before you sentence me, I would like to wish you a happy King Day.”
When it was time for sentencing, the judge called Ramirez’s name. Ramirez stood. “Forty days,” the judge said.
Next was Carrión. “Forty days.”
Rivera. “Forty days.”
Sharpton? “Oh, I see you’ve been arrested many times for civil rights,” Judge Fusté said, looking down at my file. “You’re a repeat offender. Ninety days.”
Just like that. Three months in jail.
When I had left home the previous afternoon, I told my wife and two daughters, “I’m going to Puerto Rico for a hearing. I’ll be right back.”
Next thing I knew, I was in jail for the rest of the summer.
When we emerged from the courthouse, they had shackled not just our hands but also our feet. That was the federal way. My partners were clearly in a state of shock. But it was an important lesson for any activist preparing to participate in civil disobedience. You always have to be ready to go to jail. I don’t care how important or indispensable you think you are. If there’s a probability of arrest, then there’s a possibility of jail. It’s simply part of the activist job description.
I knew this would be a huge media story. The reason we had gone to Vieques in the first place was to bring attention to the harm the U.S. Navy was causing to the people of Puerto Rico and Vieques. So if the federal government was going to try to hit our burgeoning movement by imposing a harsh sentence on us, a sentence that might make the country take notice, then our job was to cooperate with the media in telling the story.
“Walk slow,” I called out to the other guys, who were trying to hop quickly to the bus. “I want the whole world to see what they would do to us for saving some kids in Puerto Rico,” I said.
And that was the picture that went out around the world—the four of us hopping in those stupid shackles. The images worked; the public was outraged by the entire spectacle.
When we were deposited in the federal facility, the New York senators, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, called to check on us. After two days, Schumer and Clinton arranged for us to be transferred to the federal jail in Brooklyn. They couldn’t do anything to reduce our time, but they could have us moved to a more convenient location. If I was going to do three months in jail, I might as well do it in my hometown, smelling that sweet Brooklyn air!
When it was time for us to leave the facility in Puerto Rico, all the activists on that floor signed a bedsheet to thank me for doing so much for their cause. I still have that sheet, more than a decade later.
We had to keep those shackles on all the way to Kennedy Airport. When we landed, I looked out the window and saw twelve government cars on the tarmac. Twelve cars! Like they were bringing in John Gotti or something. They carted us to the Brooklyn House of Detention, where we would be doing our hard time.
In the meantime, a slew of lawyers, such as Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, were running around to the appellate courts, trying to get our sentences reduced or thrown out. But I was resolved that we should do the time.
“Let me tell you something,” I told my co-inmates. “They can go all the way to the Supreme Court. We are not getting out of here. We will do every day.”
The federal authorities put us on a tier all by ourselves. They didn’t want us in the general population. It quickly became clear that they couldn’t let anything happen to us. That would be a public-relations disaster. So there we were, four men in a ward that was large enough for ninety. We could sleep in whatever cell we wanted, could watch a bunch of different TVs.
One of the most dramatic things I came up with to break the tedium was a fast. Nothing steals away the boredom like the growl of an empty stomach. A fast would continue to apply pressure on the authorities while keeping the public’s eye on our cause. It was a classic political-prisoner tactic, used by everybody from Gandhi to Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. After we started the fast, we would get a visit from the doctor twice a day, taking our blood, checking and double-checking that we weren’t getting sick. They could not have us getting sick in their custody.
Whenever the doctor would come, I’d say, “Here comes Dracula to take my blood.” That was our little joke.
I was getting lots of visits from my family. My wife came nearly every day. They let my daughters come in to see me twice. After my mother visited me, she went outside and talked to the media, one of the only times she ever talked to the press. They asked her if she had talked me into eating.
“No, he said he’s not going to eat,” she said. “All I can do is pray for him. He said he doesn’t want to eat. I believe God is able.”
After the forty days came and went, my partners in crime left me in that big chilly ward all by myself. Before they went home, they made me promise that I would eat at least one meal a day. They didn’t want to leave; they were so wracked with guilt. They kept saying to me, “We’re Latino, but you gotta do fifty days alone.”
Once they were gone, there I was, just one man in this huge ward, alone for fifty days. Sometimes I’d have a visitor, but visiting hours ended at eight P.M. After that, it was just me and one lone corrections officer.
However, an amazing thing happened during those fifty days in that federal jail. In a sense, I had a fifty-day-long meeting with Al Sharpton. I had been on a treadmill all my life, always rushing from one tragedy or outrage to the next, always with a great sense of urgency, life-or-death stuff. But rarely had I taken the time to sit down and ask myself, Where are you going? What is your ultimate purpose here?
It dawned on me that I could take advantage of this rare opportunity for self-reflection. It was time for me to take a personal inventory and make some important decisions about my future.
As I look back on it, many of the amazing things that happened to me during the next decade of my life—syndicated radio show, national talk show, total reversal in how I was perceived by the public, sitting onstage at the Obama inauguration—were a direct result of those fifty days alone in jail. I guess I should take a minute to thank the venerable Judge Fusté down in Puerto Rico.
One of the things I decided was that I was going to devote myself to the National Action Network, make it bigger, more progressive, more national in scope.
I decided that I was going to focus on my health and my diet in a way I neve
r had before. I began exercising every day and vowed to eat healthy foods. They were the first steps toward a change in lifestyle that resulted in my ultimately losing nearly 150 pounds—basically, I shed an entire person. (I wasn’t able to keep off the weight I lost in Vieques, though. The real weight loss wouldn’t come until a decade later.)
I did a lot of reading, devouring books by serious thinkers such as Paul Tillich, Arnold Toynbee, Reinhold Niebuhr, Nelson Mandela. It became clear to me that serious movements inevitably always must broaden. From the African National Congress in South Africa to Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement in Poland to the civil rights movement in the American South, in order to grow, each of these movements had to expand beyond its sectarian beginnings. You either grow and expand, or you die a quick death. Many of the civil rights organizations, such as CORE and even the SCLC to some degree, died out or were drastically streamlined because they didn’t expand and build the next generation.
In every group, there are extremists who don’t want to hear anything about expansion or growth. They will challenge you, accuse you of betraying the group by reaching out to others. It’s such a common step in group dynamics that it’s almost a cliché. This makes the development of a movement tougher, because you’re going to take some shots from the people inside your own crowd. Malcolm X had to go through this, as did MLK and Mandela. You might be tempted to play to the cheap seats in your crowd, going after the easy targets, repeating the same campaigns, the same slogans, over and over. But you won’t grow. The real loyalists, the ones who are truly committed to achieving a goal—rather than making themselves feel good or seeking vengeance—will understand the need for growth.
After reading about other movements, I became even more committed to establishing a strong and lasting bond with the Latino community. I saw it as the only way forward for black people in America.