so much of a problem but this is why we should get any person. as your last for an hour from the newsroom studio but the programs keep on rolling here in our to catch a show involvement so i'll be here again in 30 hope you'll join me then. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics sport i'm sure i'll see you then thank. you.

time after time and see and welcome to going underground the team and i will be back with a brand new season starting on my birthday january 13th but until then we will be showing some of your favorite shows from this season going up in this show trump's new yorker old pal civil rights leader the reverend al sharpton on vast eulogy to george floyd which galvanized black lives matter around the world and why he wants americans to vote for a candidate accused by some groups of supporting segregation mass incarceration and the catastrophic war on drugs that annihilated communities of color in the usa. all this and more coming up in today's going underground but 1st let's go straight to new york to speak to one of america's most renowned civil rights leaders reverend al sharpton his new book rise up confronting a country at the crossroads investigates the historical turning point the u.s. current be faces potentially undoing the gains activists like himself have fought

for since the days of martin luther king jr reverend thanks so much for coming on the show those who don't know your work over decades will surely know the moving eulogy to george floyd killed by a us police i think british broadcasting regulators may allow me to say what a profound privilege it is for you to be on going underground but of course i'm going to ask you why is it not you rather than biden who's running against trump why do you call yourself a tree shaker in this new book of yours. i think that the history of dealing with movements in this country and even globally is that you need those of us that shake the tree in the sense of shaking up where a society has dealt in an unequal and unfair way and in many

cases unjust way and you don't have those that pick up the fruit that falls 'd 'd from the tree and make jam out of it and i have in my role as an activist been more were trees shake the one that picks up the fruit and becomes one aleck to the office or head of a corporate entity in the private sector and i think there's a legitimate role for both i feel my calling is to be the one shaking trees rather than picking up fruits trying to make jam out of let's get to the jam eaters in a 2nd this book in this book you blame yourself and others becoming complacent under the obama presidency at tell me a bit about that and how you see that complacency is creating donald trump well i think that many of us were very supportive then are still supportive of many of the initiatives of president obama during his presidency from health care police reform

to other areas and did not do as much as we could to hold the opposition accountable and to hold even some aspects of his own administration that was resistant to change accountable and that we should have always had the vigor to be continue to fight no matter who was in office even if it was someone that i felt was doing the right thing but you still had your national action network the initials of behind you that running join the mama presidency i know time. and time again in the book you talk about it as a model of grassroots action at the very local level to help a civil rights and social justice no i have we definitely were very active during his 'd is 8 years trayvon martin we were out on the front lines of that from the beginning as well as the triggers and killing in ferguson missouri michael brown

and aragon all of that have been doing the obama era what i'm saying is that we could do even more and i think that that's what i challenge us that we should never even modify what we do and i think we were very active but i think we could have been more active while everyone knows you did you did a lot because we had we had one of the tall trumps pastas a guy called darrell scott he said that trump has been the most pro black president ever and of course he reminded us how black lies might have began under the a bamma presidency when those horrific police killings across the world on t.v. screens. i think the killing of aragon a in new york and michael brown by police there's the slogan the hashtag that laughing matter literally started at 3 very young women the night that we saw the.

acquittal of george zimmerman for killing trayvon martin in sanford florida so it started there but unlike the obama administration trump has not responded them the bombing ministration came in and had federal investigations federal involvement and advocated against it even the president himself barack obama address trayvon martin said there could have been me at one point he said he could have been my son trump has denied that any of the. these issues events episodes were racist that there was any systemic racism still present and with drew in the justice department from things like consent to creese which is when the federal government says that police departments would have a pattern of inequality unfairness harassment or killings could no longer operate

on their own that they must be under the supervision of the justice department from suspended a trance suspended lawsuits by the obama administration's justice department that said that we are suing because you are inhibiting people from voting so in many ways you are by the administration was moving forward as lyndon johnson's administration in some areas were in the days of dr king all of that came to an abrupt halt and reversal on the donald trump i mean i don't know where the trump said himself but he probably thinks he outdoes l.b.j. on civil rights i mean you don't take it seriously when i his people talk about 500000000000 dollars for people of color communities and 500000 new jobs these statistics when nothing to you as opposed to the questionable record of obama and joe biden well i date that you would be very very hard to prove that any of those

figures are correct 1st of all the unemployment of blacks started going down under obama and biden and down trump just reaped the benefit of a an economy that have been say what one would have to ask themselves is how then you explain that blacks are still more an intro into white there was initiatives by the obama administration to close the gap the trouble ministration had not only not had an initiative to close the gap even in a good economy where blacks i'm unemployed and whites he refuses to even acknowledge the any. quality in terms of the other programs that he announced we've yet to see the results these announcements but on the ground we're still more on employees still more incarcerated still a lot of victims of police brutality still the ones denied more rights to vote so they can make whatever proclamations they want the facts are that they are they

have not resulted in any movement toward change we could have different opinions we cannot have different facts where the facts i'll get to by the americas and a 2nd if i may tell me about the scene in the book whereas trump apparently gets upset that you call him a racist and his lawyer michael cohen gave you a phone call michael korda called me through a mutual friend and said that trump wanted to meet because he could not understand why i was attacking bertha risen as racist and bertha risen was when donald trump which was the issue he entered form of the into politics was saying that the president of united states barack obama was not a real american he was not born in america it was born in kenya when there is no evidence at all supporting that in fact the evidence is the contrary that he was born in the state of ohio and grew up there and i said this was trying to play into

the us against them he's not one of us it was a donald trump that to god had calling for the execution of 5 black and brown young men for raping a white woman in central problem in manhattan that ended up not having done that even then donald trump refused to say that they should not be given a settlement and should not have gone free so i think that when michael cohen call through a mutual friend and trumpet i met i said to him that this is a racist lie and it is race based and you're playing to a crowd the us against. them kind of rhetoric and he was denying it and he says when you and i have had bad days and we got along socially you know i'm not a racist i said 1st what i said which you saying is is racist and i'm not calling you by name a racist at that point but i concluded that he is a racist because he's comfortable using racism he's comfortable in of being around

racists. denies that and as you outlined the book he says on bill o'reilly's show on fox news you apologized. not at all 1st of all i went that same night on my show and said that he was going to distort the meeting and i did not apologize and certainly i've not apologize since i've been very clear all over the country saying that i believe emphatically and i'll repeat it donald trump is a racist and a big and that is my view so all for what reason would i have apologized if i was going right back on television the same day saying the same thing that i've said and i've repeated in sense even though you have talks he denies he's a racist people who catch our interview with a totally exonerated central park 5 number yusef salaam on this show on our you tube channel because i imagine fox news that was hit by the me too scandal this

book time and time again emphasizes the intersectional nature of the struggle l g b t q i rights movement people are going to be a bit shocked suddenly when they turn one of the pages in your book and you say you found yourself with harvey weinstein robert deniro and others joining the 26 team election night just tell me how you were sitting next to harvey weinstein and these celebrities well there was a private party of those that had support. the clinton campaign to watch the results i went by the clinton headquarters it was very crowded and even in the reserved area so i decided to go to this private party my girlfriend and i and robert dinero and others were sponsoring a friday weinstein was there we had been a supporter of the campaign and that's how i found myself sitting that night just

watching the returns this was way before any of the allegations against why stina gone public so i don't think any of us were aware of any of that what are we wise to was later accused of big donor to the clinton campaign you think of hillary clinton in one weinstein would be in jail right now i think that if hillary clinton won i don't know if he'd be in jail i don't think she would have done anything to interfere with an investigation or prosecution that has not been anything that that i knew as a senator as 1st lady i've never seen or try to stop the judge in the investigations and once in a cause denies all the accusations and is there fighting the case why did you always have an affinity for the democrats given that hillary clinton certainly in the global south is known for a foreign policy that is has been devastating to countries all around the world i mean libya to name to name one country which doesn't doesn't feature in this book

but it's africa's richest per capita country and now lies in ruins because of obama and clinton arguably well i disagreed with that and i said that i would have marched under clinton administration when they came with the omnibus crime bill that i think led to a lot of incarceration of blacks in in the ninety's i marched against clinton on welfare reform i think politics is about choices and i felt that they were a better choice than the opposition but i by no means felt that they were not for a flawed in certain areas and would publicly take them to task on the. as well as the reason i ran for president myself in 2004 was challenging the democratic party well i was born my parents were republican they became democrats in the sixty's when john kennedy and lyndon johnson supported the civil rights movement both johnson and kennedy had some baggage that we didn't like but they were better than nixon so i think that you deal with choice when you're trying to get where you can

even if it is then of course steps you know you're not looking for perfection you're looking for liberation reverend al sharpton i'll stop you have more from the leisure resort rights activist after this short break. it will be very difficult to forget the there's a petition in featuring 2020 change was the norm and all knowledge is elusive many is reflected on what has been. the focus should be on what meat we can. welcome back i'm still here with the author of rise up reverend al sharpton how difficult has it being i mean the there's a scene in this book when there you are trying to create

a better world. and i understand how gore says to you what do i tell jewish voters just because you're meeting up with them seemingly believing all the anti shopped in their propaganda is that is that what the d.n.c. was like is that what the d.n.c. is like today that was what part of the d.n.c. was like if you go back into the 1980 s. it was bill clinton and al gore and others that formed a right way to the democratic party called the democratic leadership conference democratic leadership council which i talk about under bush. and they were trying to bring the party away from what they felt was the left for the progressives and by league with jesse jackson's campaigns who was a mental mind i ran to try to bring it back from this triangulation is moving the party to the right and i think that it has been followed as i talk about in the book by elizabeth warren and bernie sanders and others and i think that is all been

an intra party struggle that has now moved the party more toward which should be but is still not all the way we ought to be but it is still in my judgment much better than the republicans that don't move at all in any area toward trying to have an equal and fair society you see we talk to young activists who want people to vote by them this time around they appear to say things haven't changed that much there's all sorts of propaganda against bernie sanders supporters people on the left what is the democratic party so associated with the right in some ways now. i think that that's a great question that we challenge and i talk about that in the book i call them latte liberals those that are saying things will not get in do the work and i think that we've got to work those of us that relate to the democratic party to our

defeat those right wing do it as we continue to do it a gradual list in the party and i think that's true in any political party but it as i say in the book if i'm in an abusive relationship it does not mean i leave the relationship and become someone that is going to go would have picked up i try to correct the relationship or build an alternative that answers my needs i think the republicans are not an alternative 'd they want to pick up on the deficiencies of the democratic party and awful blacks and others nothing ok maybe call the police and of the piece of relationship what do they make you feel when trump is on these rallies as he will be at time and time again he's the one doing a mom a caged refugees from central america dehumanizing the children denying them medical care he's the one who put those camps before donald trump did

the right in the book of course refugees feature as you call it has you say jesus was a palestinian refugee no doubt about it that jesus was a refugee and there were many of us that was opposed to some of what was done on the obama administration when he said he would not doubt at the level of down the trunk and if donald trump was of opposed to it he should have said that didn't he should not have duplicated he has not only do the created he's expanded it be and he has bragged about it and i think that it is in human you cannot have it saying that i'm doing some because somebody else allegedly did i think he says he reduced the number of. cage's in fairness to him less well i mean let's get on to the green new deal environmental ism again features in this book this existential crisis the world has what do we make of joe biden as he says to the world he opposes the green new deal he wants fracking. i think that we disagree with him on that and even some

of the authors of the green new deal congresswoman ok as you know cortez and others have supported biden but say very strongly that they are going to fight for the green new deal again i support the green new deal as support what they're about i disagree with biden of on some things but i think he's a better alternative than donald trump i mean maybe people from around the world after reading this book and reading other books may find it difficult to understand how biden can so easily rely on the black voters just to turn out interesting line in your book we say the average black voter is more centrist on issues not having to do with race they are driven by socialist ideas you think that's behind behind the fact that biden doesn't need to even particularly campaign to have people of color this november i think he has campaigned i think that biden is spent an

inordinate amount of time talking meaty and taken stands with us joe biden sent a video to the funeral of george floyd after flying in beating with the family and i the day before the funeral where donald trump and others have not done that at all i don't think that joe biden has neglected talking and being held accountable to the black community in this campaign he and i disagree in the ninety's vehemently around the crime but i think that he has made many appearances in the black community including with national action network and has come to turn to some of our critiques and criticisms yeah because you remember the crime bill but you never see much about it today do people of color in the united states have an easier about segregated schools the in fact i'm going to ask you about the supreme court we have the supreme court hearing going on at the moment wasn't it biden that facilitated the judge scalia and and john. clarence thomas on the supreme court

and we would tag bad and he has said that he was wrong he has said on the tin to kind of course we're talking 2530 years ago that i think he was wrong but i'm talking about somebody who entertains scalia proteges now so the question is are we going to hold biden to a standard of what he did decades ago and said he misstep and therefore say we go with somebody that a that supports that right now and i think given the choices it would be unwise to go with the right now big and not the one that says this was not my intentions it did leave the wrong place when you're a reverend you believe in redemption clearly well how about something more or more recent than kemal a harris you nicer in this book she fought to keep innocent people in jail she booked payments to wrongly convicted people as

a prosecutor in california argued for keeping nonviolent offenders in jail as a cheap labor source she opposed d.n.a. testing to exonerate prisoners on death row why are you so nice about kemal a harris which i think she did not is the impact of some of that i think some of that many of us a criticized her for and in support of many didn't support to be for those reasons donna primers but i think if you look at the overwhelming record in terms of police reform in terms of sentencing reform as attorney general california and d.a. she also did think that was very good but yes we differ with on some of her decisions and have been very public about that and i think that was a major issue during the campaign going to the primaries when she was running there's a lot of rewriting of history that you believe needs to be done many millions of people around the world need to be done donald trump doesn't think needs to be done tell me who surely chism is and why you see here is so. oh important

crediting. with such as and such an inspiration to shirley chisholm was the 1st black woman elected to congress the year dr king was killed i was aboard for each in new york i was 13 years old i got to know i became wonder do you directors in a campaign in 72 when she ran for president and i think 'd that shirley chisholm changed the tenor of the country by running a credible race as a black woman that i think helped to add to a just a climate that led to barbara jordan others getting national claim and ultimately led to a black woman on the national ticket of one of the 2 major parties in the country today i do not think that if we didn't have a shirley chisholm changing the climate in the country we would have ever had a come of the haves and do you think that some of the people in the d.n.c. hierarchy understand the sacrifices you made in your activism you talked about the

fact that on learning of your mother's death well to tell me what you were doing on the day that you know i was on my way to sanford florida to lead the 1st national rally around the killing the racial killing of trayvon martin and when i was en route to the airport i got the text from my sister in alabama i was born raised in brooklyn but my mother was 'd from both in alabama that my mother had passed and she had been sick for a while and i started to turn around i decided that my mother would want me to go and stand up for trayvon and i went ahead and did it and in fact trayvon surprise was surprised that i showed up and we had 10000 people there that night and i spoke lead that rally and that subsequent rallies i have i feel that sacrifice goes along with activism if you're not willing to sacrifice your to do something else with your life i mean and towards the end of the book and you say go to more funerals than baptisms and the most common or. brain you hear from the black community as

well black lives matter change anything is it going to be any change can you not see that the reason there must be that apathy and that pessimism is partly because of the kind of political machinations that the played out income while aras has korea in joe biden's korea absolutely but i think that despite saying that you have to look at the fact that in my lifetime in my lifetime i went from a mother who couldn't vote in our native alabama until she was in the thirty's to her son being able in one generation to run for president and help reduce a lot of those so sometimes you have to look at the long arc of history it does lean toward progress i talk about what i met nelson mandela and thought about how he said deal 27 years as some of his colleagues along the neck and they did change the democratic principles in south africa not their konami so i was got yes i think

you've got to deal with the fact that change does not happen overnight but if you can start making the change happen and continue to build on it change will come and is understandable people apathetic and pessimistic i think that one of the things that all people that are leading change movements on the vanguard of them have to do is keep giving people who have a hole because despair and conceding only helps those that are oppressing you they want you to get book and whatever you do you can't give up just finally. whatever the past 3 and a half years of trump have done would you accept and you mentioned clinton the clinton crime bill area do you think that crime bill costs along a shadow over the communities of color in the united states and i know you talk about the roots of racism in law enforcement native americans the african genocide and you know that clinton crime bill the cost

a far bigger shadow of the people of color than anything trump has done. not all day dad the crime bill was wrong i think it hurt us for a long time but i think when barack obama came in and commuted more sentences many of whom were people incarcerated under that crime bill it began to turned around why wouldn't the obama. commutations of hundreds of people some of which was done through national action network my group why would that cast a shadow that was reversed down trump saying we ought to have national stop and frisk policies and other policies where he defended the police no matter what when a young man just a couple of months ago was shot in the back 7 times on video going to his coffin could know she was constant and they shot him in the back and the communities all over the country we rose up calling for justice for blake donald trump went to that town and met with law enforcement and stood up for the law enforcement that you can

compare that to any shadow that may have happened in the ninety's we were out in the ninety's against what clinton did we also was there when obama did a reversal in those kind of commuting of those sentences reverend al sharpton thank you that's ever went to a favorite shows of the last season we will be back with a brand new season of going on the ground on january the 13th until then subscribe to the john on you tube to catch all the other interviews from this eason and for online exclusive content merry christmas and a better 2021. i don't buy any i'm with each. of the 5. in the future crocker.

headline stories the e.u. strong some mild still deal with china removing barriers to investment. also ahead the british government puts most the big current toughest. case numbers following the. new strain. being detected in the u.s. we challenging year for the country worst hit by the.