EXCLUSIVE: Rev. Al Sharpton on Trump’s Agenda, DEI rollbacks, and the fight for democracy

Photo Credit: Facebook

Special to The Chicago Defender

By Alexander Efird & James S. Bridgeforth, Ph.D. 

It has been just one month since Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, and in that short time, his administration has waged an all-out war against diversity, equity and inclusion. With the stroke of a pen, executive orders have sought to erase Black history from classrooms, dismantle workplace DEI programs and purge highly qualified women and people of color from key leadership positions. 

The message from the White House is clear: progress is under attack, and the gains of the past half-century are on the chopping block.

But here’s what the numbers reveal—160 million Americans did not vote for Trump. Seventy-five million cast their ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris, while an alarming 90 million Americans stayed home, whether out of apathy or as a result of the relentless voter suppression sweeping through the South and disproportionately targeting Black communities. Now, Americans across the political spectrum—including many who supported Trump—are watching with a growing sense of disillusionment as his administration embarks on a campaign of retribution, rolling back civil rights, and replacing the ideals of equality with a blueprint for white male supremacy.

Make no mistake: our democracy is at a tipping point. For the first time in generations, the federal government is not just neglecting the advancement of women, Black and brown Americans, and the LGBTQ+ community—it is actively working to reverse decades of hard-fought progress. But history has shown us that in times of crisis, voices of courage emerge. These are the voices that refuse to be silenced, the voices that will define the next chapter of our democracy.

That is why The Chicago Defender is launching a powerful three-part series entitled The State of Our Democracy and Diversity in America. Over the next several weeks, we will sit down with the trailblazers on the front lines of this battle—activists, lawmakers, thought leaders—who are not only resisting the rollback of civil rights but are laying the foundation for a more just and equitable future.

To begin this series, we sat down with one of the most legendary voices of the modern civil rights movement—Rev. Al Sharpton. As the host of MSNBC’s PoliticsNation, the president of the National Action Network and a lifelong freedom fighter, Sharpton has spent decades exposing America’s racial injustices and mobilizing communities to demand change. In this candid conversation, he offers his unfiltered perspective on Trump’s agenda, the urgent need for political mobilization and the strategies we must embrace to preserve the soul of our democracy.

James Bridgeforth: I’m James Bridgeforth and I’m a contributing columnist with the Chicago Defender, and we’re doing a series on the state of diversity and democracy and really wanted to get your insight. And Alex is my intern here and we’re going to create a story out of our conversation today, if that’s okay. I’ll let Alex introduce himself, and then I’ll start.

Alexander Efird: Hey, Rev. Sharpton, I’m Alex Efird. I’m a senior at Virginia Tech, where Dr. Bridgeforth is also an Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs. I am a student fellow in his office, and I’m also the Vice President for Issues and Policy for our student government. And I’m excited to talk today.

Rev. Al Sharpton: Thank you.

Bridgeforth: So, before I start, I want to say thank you for your service, because I’m young enough to know and to have benefited from your service, and I’m so grateful, and hopefully I’ll get to learn how I can pick up the banner at some point in life. But thank you so much.

Rev. Sharpton: Thank you.

Al Sharpton at his National Action Network offices (Photo Credit: Facebook).

Bridgeforth: The first question I have is: You have lived through the civil rights era of the 50s to the 70s. After living in that period, how would you characterize this period in our nation’s history where it sounds like there’s really an assault on DEI or we’re moving in a different direction in DEI than we were going?

Rev. Sharpton: Well, when I got involved, I was around 12-years-old, had been a boy preaching at a Pentecostal church, and I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. My parents were from the south, mother from Alabama, father from Florida. I did not know Jim Crow like they did, but I knew Northern racism. 

And I knew that there were certain areas in New York you couldn’t go if you were Black. And so as I grew up, my mother was afraid I was going to leave the church. She was strict, Pentecostal, fundamentalist. So, she brought me to our bishop, Bishop Washington, who brought me to a guy named Rev. William Jones, who was Martin Luther King’s chapter leader in New York. 

And Jones introduced me to Jesse Jackson, and I became the youth guy in New York. I was 13 then. And we started dealing with Northern issues, boycotting stores that wouldn’t give Blacks jobs and things of that nature. 

I bring all that up to say that people think that racism and civil rights was in the South. I fought the battles in the North. Howard Beach, where a black kid was killed for being in the wrong neighborhood, Bensonhurst, all the way to Central Park 5, all the way to George Floyd and other things I’m known for now. 

If you study American history, and you doc are the professor here, every time there was a step forward, there’s always been the pushback. So, you had the abolitionists, you had John Brown. The pushback was we are going to secede from the Union and form the Confederacy. They had the Civil War. Lincoln won, the Union won the Civil War, push back: Lincoln was killed. Andrew Johnson took back everything from Reconstruction. Jim Crow came about in 1896, Plessy versus Ferguson, on and on. So, I think that it is naïve for us that have looked at this from a historical lens to think that were going to have a Black president, and elect him and re-elect him, and there wasn’t going to be a pushback. 

Now, did I think it would be in the form of Donald Trump? No, because I knew Donald Trump. 

We knew how he was. But Donald Trump spoke to Americans saying, “This is too far, we’re getting cut out.” And how did Donald Trump enter politics? Donald Trump, the real estate guy or celebrity type, had a TV show. He entered politics on birtherism, “Barack Obama is not one of us.”

It was race from the beginning! So, we are dealing now with the raw gangster power of Northern racism. Because whereas the Southerners that dealt with racism were used to the mobs and the KKK. Donald Trump grew up in a town where I did, where, whether he was on the Black side of town with the youth gangs or on the white side of town where you had the mob, this is gangster town. And he’s a bare-knuckle kind of guy. And that’s where we are. 

He’s been able to speak to a large segment of this country that feel that they’re losing everything and put the blame on us. The blame game is as long as American history. But he’s convinced them of that because they don’t feel their lives are where it ought to be. So, it’s the Blacks, that’s why DEI should go [end] and all of that. When DEI has benefited as many white women as it has Blacks. 

Bridgeforth: Thank you for that. I love how you took us back. I grew up in the south, so taking us back to the Northern racism, that is something that I didn’t realize. So right now, there are a lot of Americans that are upset and dismayed. What advice do you have for those people and what should they be doing now?

Rev. Sharpton: They should get involved in local organizations. They should get involved in gatherings to get ready for next year’s midterm election. Donald Trump cannot do anything if the Democrats retake the House and Hakeem Jeffries, who comes out of our organization, National Action Network, becomes Speaker. One of the things that Trump is good at, like I said before, he was in entertainment, he was a performer. He’s flooding the zone. Every day it’s something else. I’m going to cut a tariff, do tariffs on Canada and Mexico. I’m going to do this; I’m going to do that. Flood the zone so that you don’t hear nothing but him. You feel overwhelmed, and people need to not be overwhelmed, but set an agenda, go at next year.

One of the things we started at National Action Network and said we’re going to study for 90 days which companies are pulling out of DEI. Choose one of them that is vulnerable and boycott them. But in that 90 days, we’re going to shop with those that are doing DEI. So, the last two weekends I took hundreds out shopping at Costco. You can’t let him dominate what’s going on in the public’s mind.

Bridgeforth: You spoke about some of the DEI things. And so, I’m curious about, given all these executive orders that are going on, particularly around DEI, is there any action that anybody can take, any legal action? How do we as a community fight back with those?

Rev. Sharpton: I think the legal actions are being planned. We have what we call eight legacy groups: NAACP, Urban League, National Action Network, the Legal Defense Fund, Coalition of Black Women, Roundtable Conference of National Black Women and the Lawyers Committee. I think the Lawyers Committee and LDF, Legal Defense Fund, are planning to go into court. 

The National Action Network is planning to do a boycott and make an example of one of the companies. Because one thing you got to remember is Donald Trump and the Republican Senate in Congress cannot make us buy where we don’t want to buy. So, if we say this company has stopped DEI and we’re not going to buy from them, which Dr. King did in ‘55, Adam Clayton Powell did it here. Boycott’s work.

If we make an example of them, they will have to think twice because there’s nothing that Trump can do to help them. Now, I talked to one of the CEOs of the company and he said, “I’m glad you’re putting that out there in the media right now, Reverend Al, because when they call us saying, no DEI no more, we didn’t even have a counter to say, ‘But wait a minute, I’m getting threatened on the other side. You know, give me room to argue.’” We’ve not given the private sector the alternative to Trump. So, they at least could say to Trump, we don’t want to be in this middle position.

Bridgeforth: Wow, that is pretty powerful. Alex, I think you have the next question.

Efird: So, to kind of piggyback off those previous questions, how do we get white people like myself to be engaged in this fight to push back on these policies that we’ve seen come out over the last couple of weeks.

Attorney Ben Crump, left, the Rev Al Sharpton with George Floyd’s family members outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Photo Credit: Lorie Shaull/Flickr).

Rev. Sharpton: I think that first people need to know the history of fighting for civil rights and human rights always had whites and Blacks. There were whites that marched in the south with Dr. King. There were whites that worked in the north with us with voter registration. All the stuff I did with George Floyd. I went to some of the marches around George Floyd, there were more white kids than Black because they understood that if you let it happen to anybody, it could happen to everybody, and it’s a threat to anybody. DEI, which is the conversation of today, diversity, equity and inclusion means white women as well. It means that the same people that want to end DEI want to end women’s right to choose and want to end immigration rights.

So, I think that we’ve got to rebuild these coalitions in order to have impact.

Bridgeforth: Speaking of coalitions, so thinking about the community of African-American men, there’s a lot of talk during the election about so many African American men not supporting Kamala. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. But what do you think we should be doing? How can I connect as a Black male in my community to mobilize and how can we push back as a powerful group on our own?  

Rev. Sharpton: I think it’s a good question. I think that one, the predictions that Black men were going to vote for him [Trump] enmasse didn’t happen. But I think that our challenge to Black men is now, what is it that we want to do in our community? How do we deal with the criminal justice system that we’ve been unfairly targeted? How do we deal with business? If the first thing he did that was directed at the Black community was DEI, which takes Blacks out of construction jobs, Blacks out of getting contracts. He cut your knees out, his first act. 

Let’s remember we are at Tuesday [Feb. 4], right? He was just inaugurated two weeks ago yesterday. He’s done all this in two weeks. I do radio every day, three hours a day. I’ve gotten more calls from Black men saying, ‘Yeah, you were right.’

He’s not talking about no Black male unemployment, Black male conscience. He said end DEI, which cuts all of that. So now let’s organize, and let’s vote for the local guys that will stop this train from going. I think that it is an opportunity to organize. Donald Trump could be the worst thing that happened to us by reversing everything or the best thing to happen to us by forcing us to organize.

Efird: I love that. So, you said earlier that white women are affected by DEI, and they absolutely are. But 53% of white women voted for Trump in the last election. So why do you think that that is?

Rev. Sharpton: Because I think that a lot of them, really the messaging on the other side was not direct. They didn’t understand from the women’s right to choose all the way to the economic problem. They were misled into believing that Trump was a better option to save their jobs, bring down inflation, and it’s not happening. But the bad news is he won. 

The good news is he can’t run again. He will not be able to change the Constitution. There will not be another charismatic guy like Trump on that side. That’s why women need to go with their interests. I’m not saying that they ought to love the Democrats or love whoever.

Love yourself. What are your interests? If we talk to people about their own self-interest, that’s the key to organizing.

Bridgeforth: We want to shift and ask a couple questions about the college administration and college student environment. Last year, we saw a number of college presidents, for example, Penn and Harvard, called into Congress and really pressed to step down or lose their jobs because of their efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. What do you think college presidents should be doing now to get into this fight? 

Rev. Sharpton: I think college presidents ought to allow students the latitude to organize around issues like diversity, because you cannot educate students in the 21st century with technology the way it is, in a limited kind of narrow focus on the world. 

Diversity and inclusion prepare students to compete in the world. 

I was in Africa. Students in Africa knew me as much as in the United States because they got this (picks up phone), these phones, and they picked up what they want. So how are you going to have an exclusionary education and put people out in an inclusive world? They will not survive. They will not compete.

Efird: In the 1960s, we, of course, saw college students play a major role in standing up for civil rights, as you’re aware. How do you think that college students today should be engaging in the effort to support civil rights? And what would be your message to American college students like myself?

Rev. Sharpton: I think they should either join existing organizations because all of us have college and youth divisions, or form some. Every campus should have their own youth committee around these issues, whether they want to connect with a national organization or whether they want to keep it on its own. 

Don’t forget, in the ‘60s, when I was a kid, even before I was involved, you had Martin Luther King and the NAACP and Malcolm X in the north and SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, all at the same time. So there’s never no one way. There may be one that gets more of the publicity, but it’s never been one track. 

Students need to either get with a track that they are comfortable with or create a track, campus to campus, because they’ve got the most to lose. What are you going to school for if you’re going to school to graduate in a very limited, narrow, sectarian society that’s going to limit your options?

Bridgeforth: Thank you, we’re almost done, we just have a couple more questions. So, as a writer and a political columnist, what can I do or what advice would you give to me and my colleagues and how we can be helpful and really push. We have a platform of hundreds of thousands of readers. How can we be helpful? What can we do?

Rev. Sharpton: I think you ought to write about the real issues, get past the marquee ways that Trump is handling things and the reaction. 

The real issues are: our quality of life, has it been bettered or not, and what concrete things we can do. I remember when George Floyd was killed, and the family called and asked would I come and lead the marches, and I preached at his funerals. I went out and some of the young people in Minneapolis was burning down Target. 

I met with them. I said, ‘Yeah, I’m a preacher. Yeah, I’m for nonviolence.’ Grew up in the nonviolent movement. But let’s talk practical. Burn Target down. Go burn down Walmart. Is that going to get the cops indicted? I mean, what are we after? We just want to show how angry we are.

Half y’all go to jail, then y’all’s mama be calling me to get you out of jail. What are we after? 

I think that you can use your platform to keep people focused on goals, concrete goals. We want to deal with jobs, training. I’m an educator, and I want to be able to truthfully say to my students, if they get their degrees, if they use their skills, they can enter into the marketplace and compete. That’s being limited now. So, we’ve got to keep society open in order for us to educate students that can have options on where they want to go.

Efird: So, as we’re doing this series on the state of our democracy and our diversity, who would you think we should talk to next to kind of get that perspective that is so crucial?

Rev. Sharpton: I mean, there’s several people out there I would talk to. I would talk to everyone from Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. I would talk to Gov. Wes Moore in Maryland. I would talk to Jasmine Crockett, member of Congress in Texas. I would start there.

Bridgeforth: So, as we wrap up here, from a more personal perspective, I’m curious about what we can do here from the Chicago Defender from our writing or what we can do as humans to help, help communicate and share what National Action Network is doing to get that out as well. Like you’re going to do a boycott soon. How can we help you get that out?

Rev. Sharpton: I think, put it out there that we have our national convention, April 2 through the 5 in New York. We intend to announce there. We always have probably the biggest convention, about 8,000 people come. And just keep talking about it and let us keep filling you in on a weekly basis on where we are.

Bridgeforth: How does someone get involved with the National Action Network? 

Rev. Sharpton: Go right on the website, www.nationalactionnetwork.net. All our activities are there. How they could plug in where our chapters are.

Bridgeforth: Well, thank you. Listen, this has been fantastic. We know you’re very busy. We hope to come back in a couple of months and see you again, if that’s okay.

Rev. Sharpton: That’s fine, love to do it.

A Call to Action

Rev. Sharpton’s words are a sobering reminder that history moves in cycles—progress is met with resistance, and every step forward ignites a backlash from those who fear change. 

But if the past teaches us anything, it is that organized resistance is the antidote to oppression.

We are living in a moment that demands more than outrage—it requires action. This is not a time for passivity or despair. It is a time to vote, to organize, to pressure institutions that cave to regressive policies and to build coalitions that transcend race, gender and class. 

It is a time to remind corporations that our dollars hold power and to remind politicians that their seats are not guaranteed.

The battle for democracy and diversity is far from over. If anything, this moment marks the beginning of a new fight—one that will determine the future of America for generations to come. And in this fight, silence is complicity.

Next month, The Chicago Defender will continue this series with another critical voice at the forefront of this struggle. Stay tuned as we sit down with one of the nation’s most powerful political leaders to discuss the next steps in reclaiming our democracy. Because this fight belongs to all of us—and it has only just begun.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.