At GLAAD's media awards, they had Al Sharpton speak at the event. My unresponded-to-letter to the executive leadership there is below:
Mr. Barrios,
I’m a gay man who generally supports GLAAD’s agenda and admires much of your work. I am also a Jewish man, who is in disbelief that you’d have someone like Al Sharpton play a prominent role in perhaps your most visible event of the year (2011 GLAAD Media Awards).
Do you have any idea who this man is? What his past includes? What crimes he is responsible for? I would like to quote from a column by Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe who addressed his disgusting past since most of the media establishment seems unwilling to do so (in italics):
1987: Sharpton spreads the incendiary Tawana Brawley hoax, insisting heatedly that a 15-year-old black girl was abducted, raped, and smeared with feces by a group of white men. He singles out Steve Pagones, a young prosecutor. Pagones is wholly innocent -- the crime never occurred -- but Sharpton taunts him: "If we're lying, sue us, so we can . . . prove you did it." Pagones does sue, and eventually wins a $345,000 verdict for defamation. To this day, Sharpton refuses to recant his unspeakable slander or to apologize for his role in the odious affair.
1991: A Hasidic Jewish driver in Brooklyn's Crown Heights section accidentally kills Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, and antisemitic riots erupt. Sharpton races to pour gasoline on the fire. At Gavin's funeral he rails against the "diamond merchants" -- code for Jews -- with "the blood of innocent babies" on their hands. He mobilizes hundreds of demonstrators to march through the Jewish neighborhood, chanting, "No justice, no peace." A rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, is surrounded by a mob shouting "Kill the Jews!" and stabbed to death.
1995: When the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem, raises the rent on Freddy's Fashion Mart, Freddy's white Jewish owner is forced to raise the rent on his subtenant, a black-owned music store. A landlord-tenant dispute ensues; Sharpton uses it to incite racial hatred. "We will not stand by," he warns malignantly, "and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." Sharpton's National Action Network sets up picket lines; customers going into Freddy's are spat on and cursed as "traitors" and "Uncle Toms." Some protesters shout, "Burn down the Jew store!" and simulate striking a match. "We're going to see that this cracker suffers," says Sharpton's colleague Morris Powell. On Dec. 8, one of the protesters bursts into Freddy's, shoots four employees point-blank, then sets the store on fire. Seven employees die in the inferno.
If Sharpton were a white skinhead, he would be a political leper, spurned everywhere but the fringe. But far from being spurned, he is shown much deference. Democrats embrace him. Politicians court him. And journalists report on his comings and goings while politely sidestepping his career as a hatemongering racial hustler.
Is this the sort of man you want aligned with GLAAD’s reputation and objectives?
I am 33 years old – so some of my friends are old enough to remember these atrocities and are familiar with Al Sharpton’s integral role in them. My younger friends were shocked to find this out – partly because they were too young when these events unfurled and partly because well-respected organizations – like GLAAD – seemed all too happy to have him give a speech about freedom and activism at a major event. All this from the same mouth that uttered “diamond merchants” and “white interlopers” and whose past activism resulted in the corpses of innocent people.
Now he puts himself out as a freedom fighter, and we’re all supposed to pretend none of his past happened. But it did. And I am sure members of GLAAD are familiar with it. Which makes it all the more incomprehensible that he was given a pulpit at this event.
Please tell me GLAAD can do better. That we, as the LGBT community, can do better. Please tell me that our support and reputation is not pegged on anyone who says the right things about us once, and the wrong things about everything else for many years and with horrifically violent consequences for many innocent people.
Best,
Scott Berwitz
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