I think what’s so great is that he changed the conversation. Three months ago the talk was about Republican deficit reduction. They weren’t talking about jobs, they weren’t talking about poverty. If they’ve done nothing else, they got us on the conversation that we need to be talking about.
When “Comedy Central’s” Jon Stewart pointed out that, as Occupy Wall Street has become a worldwide phenomenon, Republicans and conservatives no longer demean the march and characterize the protestors as “anti-American” and “anti-capitalists” as Herman Cain said recently.
“It’s interesting that they now understand that the top 1 percent cannot control 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. You got a guy out there talking about the :”9-9-9”, but he should drop one of the 9’s and talk about the 99 percent,” Sharpton said to enthusiastic applause.
The founder of the National Action Network, who hosted about 40,000 people for a Jobs and Justice March to the Martin Luther King Memorial over the weekend, says “it is an accomplishment” for people to even entertain the possibility of two black men squaring off for the rights to the White House.
“But I think it’s a good point. But also when people say that people like me only supported Obama because he was black. But Cain is black, is from the South, his parents were not interracial, and I wouldn’t support him if he was running against a white guy,” he said to laughter and rousing applause. –terry shropshire
