The Rejected Stone: Al Sharpton and the Path to American Leadership (22 page)

“We have the problem of race here in Cuba,” he stated.

“Really?” I asked, surprised that he would go there.

“I can bring you down to Santiago, where I grew up,” he said through the interpreter. “It’s mostly black people, and the people my complexion look down on them, even now under my rule. We have a problem of race all over the world.”

I was shocked to hear this from the world’s most famous Communist leader, an acknowledgment that his country was still fighting the evils of racism and colorism. But it reminded me that tribalism, classism, racism, and colorism are international problems, affecting humans in virtually every corner of the globe. In America, we need to move beyond a parochial view of African-American discrimination and start thinking about forming a global coalition. As a human rights activist, just as I am committed to fighting discrimination against gays and immigrants, I know I need to expand my perspective to fight against all discrimination, whether it’s Hutus against Tutsis, sexism and misogyny across the globe, or classism in Latin America.

As the most powerful nation in the world, America needs to set an example, to be a beacon for all on how to fight against these -isms that plague the globe, rather than reinforcing their inevitability.

In 2001, I traveled to southern Sudan—which is now a separate nation—to witness with my own eyes something that radio host Joe Madison had told me about: Sudanese people being sold into slavery. We flew into Nairobi, Kenya, where we were met by a group of guys who flew us in a propeller plane into southern Sudan. We had to go up and down four times to refuel and stay as surreptitious as possible, because we weren’t supposed to be there. We went out into the bush, where we stayed in a tent for two nights and witnessed the slave trading. I interviewed people on video with a translator, and they told me they were forced to work for nothing and that if they didn’t pray the way they were ordered to pray, they would be raped or have a finger cut off. This was black against black, African against African. So unless we have a global standard against tribalism, racism, and classism, our work as human rights activists is not done. Given the technology of today, it’s possible to have a global movement. I’ve spent many hours talking about this with Martin Luther King III, about how the ethic of love and equal justice must be fought for around the world. So on one level, we must work to cement the civil and human rights gains we’ve made in the past, but on another level, we must move outside the United States to join with these freedom campaigns across the world that we’ve seen in recent years. Nobody planned the Arab Spring; people demanded it.

Traveling outside of the United States can be an important agent in broadening our perspective about American problems. When Castro confessed that Cuba was struggling with colorism,
it made me realize the issue isn’t unique to African-Americans, so perhaps we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves. But at the same time, we need to expand the conversation about how to solve these issues by including people of color around the world, in the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. And while we’re at it, we might include white people in the conversation, too, because ultimately, every person on the planet is affected when any of us is kept from reaching his or her potential, regardless of the reason.

T
he need to establish relationships outside the borders of the United States and to fight extremism around the world was brought home to every American with undeniable force on September 11, 2001, when my city was devastated by terrorists. I knew people who died in the World Trade Center. As a matter of fact, a young man who went to church with my kids lived with us after he lost his mother in the attack. I watched him every day slowly having to come to terms with the reality that his mother was not coming back. In the first few days, he jumped every time the phone rang, thinking it was his mother or the authorities telling him she had been found in the rubble and she was all right. After about three weeks, he finally started to accept the brutal fact that she was gone. It was heartbreaking. His mother had nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy. She didn’t make any decisions about what
was going on in Iraq or Afghanistan. But everybody died in those towers—black, white, Latino, Asian, Jew, Arab. If you were in there, you were gone. It was an equal-opportunity devastation. I felt that we needed to make a statement against this recklessness, where people felt they could take the lives of others based on their own extreme beliefs.

When people are faced with instability, whether through economic crashes, military takeovers, or citizen uprisings such as the Arab Spring, they tend to run to extremes. They want to hold on to something that will make them feel empowered, will carry them through the storm, such as military might or religious fundamentalism. I believe that’s why we’ve seen this explosion in fundamentalist escapism in recent years; people want some help in standing on their own two feet. The leaders of these movements play on people’s fears and anxieties, rather than teaching them to be fearless and to grow with the changing times. What I’ve learned in traveling across the United States and the world and meeting with people during their times of trouble is that if you can find a way to endure the storm, it is always going to get better. There’s a bright sun on the other side. Don’t succumb to hate and militarism as a way to ease the pain. If you give in to the extremes, you won’t even know the sun has come out, because you will be too blinded to see it.

After the events of September 11, 2001, I called Mort Zuckerman, the owner and publisher of
U.S. News and World Report
and the
New York Daily News
, who at the time was chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations. I told him I wanted to go to Israel. Because I had been a controversial figure in some Jewish circles, I thought it would be a powerful message if I went there to make a statement about how the world must stand together against terrorism, extremism, and the shedding of innocent blood. Zuckerman thought it was a great idea, and he arranged a formal invitation to me from the government of Israel. I would be hosted by Shimon Peres, the minister of foreign affairs at the time who became president of Israel in 2007. On the ten-hour flight to Israel, I saw that I was sitting in first class with Ehud Barak, who had just stepped down from his post as prime minister after losing to Ariel Sharon. I went over to speak with him.

Barak said to me with a laugh, “You know, I was thinking with me and you on the same flight, if the terrorists knew we were up here together—boom!”

The whole rest of the flight, I would jump every time the plane hit a bump, thinking to myself,
Why did he have to joke like that?

After I landed and we were on our way to the King David Hotel, a car blew up about half a mile in front of us. That was normal life for them; it didn’t even seem to be that big a deal, which really exemplified for me the purpose of my visit. I saw all the important sites while I was there—the Holy Land, Calvary where Jesus was crucified, the Wailing Wall, the Holocaust Museum. I met with some of the Ethiopian Jews living there. I also met with many families who had lost family members to terrorism. But while I toured the country, I
kept hearing the same message from various Israeli leaders: I needed to go over to the Palestinian side and also talk to them about fighting terrorism. But I was nervous about that, given the sensitivity of the American Jewish community and the knee-jerk tendency of the American media to stir up controversy. I remembered all the trouble Jesse Jackson got in back in ’79 when he hugged Yasser Arafat. In the middle of our meeting with Shimon Peres—I was traveling with a mixed delegation of blacks and Jews—Peres also implored me to meet with the Palestinians.

“You should denounce bin Laden and terrorism from the Arab side. You should go to Palestine,” he said.

“The right wing in America would distort it if I went over there,” I said. “They would say I’m united with the Palestinians.”

But Peres dismissed my concerns. “We will tell them we invited you.” I still wasn’t sure, but then he said, “It’s all arranged. You’re meeting at one o’clock with Yasser Arafat.”

“Huh? How am I doing that?”

“We’ve arranged it,” he repeated. “We’ve already informed your State Department and Secretary Colin Powell.”

I was taken aback quite a bit, but I knew it was best just to go along. Next thing I knew, my delegation was whisked in two vans to the Gaza border. We got out and waited in an office. About twenty-five minutes later, three fancy Mercedes-Benzes sent by Arafat pulled up. As we were getting into the cars, I teased the Israelis: “Arafat has better rides than y’all!”

Right away, we rode through some of the worst squalor I’ve ever seen, like something out of Dickens. But after about a half
hour of driving, we came upon a neighborhood of fabulous beach homes, like spreads you’d see in Beverly Hills or Brentwood, California. We pulled up to a complex of buildings, and I saw about 100 cameramen and reporters thronging outside, waiting for me. I was stunned, wondering how you got together such a mammoth press delegation in the middle of the desert. I waded through the phalanx of journalists up to the second floor, where I saw two wing chairs sitting next to each other, with a couch on the side of each one. They gestured for me to sit in one of the chairs, and my delegation sat on the couch to my right. The Palestinian leaders sat on the other couch, leaving the other wing chair open.

After about ten minutes, French doors swung open, and Yasser Arafat walked into the room, dressed in full regalia. For a moment, I froze, unsure of my next move. If I got up to embrace him, I didn’t know if there were cameras in the room that would take the image and blow this whole meeting up. But at the same time, how do you not get up to greet him properly, the head of state in Palestine? Arafat stood there without saying anything, without looking at me, just a statue in the middle of the room. Finally, he sat down in the other wing chair, but he still didn’t do anything, and he still hadn’t looked at me. Now I was thoroughly confused.
What am I supposed to be doing?
After about a minute—which felt like ten—the French doors swung back open, and suddenly, all the photographers and cameramen appeared. When they were all in position for the shot, Arafat finally reached out his hand toward me. I was stumped again.
Either I shake his hand and the pictures will follow me for a couple of years, or I
don’t shake it and I’ve insulted a head of state in his own country—and I don’t know that we’ll get out of here!
So I reached over and shook his hand. Did you really doubt that I would? Sure enough, the next day’s front page of the
New York Post
featured a picture of the two of us embracing. It didn’t matter that the Israelis set it up—the
Post
just wanted the salacious story, regardless of the facts.

Once Arafat dismissed the media, we quickly dived into an intense discussion about terrorism. He was vehemently opposed to the actions of Osama bin Laden.

“I denounced what happened in the World Trade Center,” he said. “You should tell people I donated blood to the victims. I consider it one of the most horrific acts in the history of mankind. I have rejected bin Laden misusing the Palestinian cause. What he did has nothing to do with Palestine. It had nothing to do with Islam.”

I was stunned by how against bin Laden he was. After about fifteen minutes of discussion, Arafat said, “Let’s have some lunch,” and the French doors swung open again. There was a huge table, where we all sat and dined on an eight-to-twelve-course meal—lentil soup, rice, lamb, chicken, lots of other delicious morsels. I sat facing Arafat; right next to him sat a member of my delegation, Sanford Rubenstein, the prominent Jewish lawyer who had represented, among others, Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant who had been brutally abused by police in 1997 and who had just won an $8.75-million lawsuit against the city in July. Rubenstein kept asking Arafat about different food items.

Arafat pointed to a garlic dish. “This helps with potency. How old are you?” he asked Sanford.

When Rubenstein told him, Arafat said the dish would help with his virility. I’ll never forget that moment—the head of the PLO and this Jewish guy from Brooklyn, talking about how to stay virile. I said to myself,
I guess there really is just one world.

After we took some more pictures, Arafat gave me a lovely hand-carved replica of the nativity scene in Bethlehem. I was happy to bring it home for my daughters. I asked him if we could go out and make a joint statement condemning terrorism and if he was comfortable saying something about bin Laden.

He said, “Sure!” So with all the press waiting outside, we went down the stairs together. Arafat was one savvy guy. Not only did he know to wait for the cameras to do the handshake earlier, but this time, just as we reached the bottom of the stairs, all of a sudden, he grabbed my arm for support as we were walking out in front of the cameras. So it looked as if we were arm-in-arm as we went outside—and, of course, that’s the photo and video that everybody used.

That whole experience with Peres and Arafat taught me a valuable lesson that has stayed with me and guided me over the past decade: Even when on the outside, these two entities look as if they are in vehement opposition, there is still communication between them, and one of the hardest tasks for both sides is to control the extremists in their midst. That is the challenge of our age, whether we’re talking about domestic fights in the U.S. Congress, religious conflicts in the United States and abroad, or civil and human rights
movements across the globe: how to deal with the extremists and the zealots. It has certainly been a hallmark of President Obama’s time in office.

The Israelis and the Palestinians on the outside appeared to be bitter enemies, not able to agree on even the most basic elements of coexistence. But they never stopped talking. They lived on top of each other; they had to communicate. And because they were both focused on their missions, they knew their disagreements weren’t personal. It’s a crucial concept that all of us must remember: When you’re dealing with adversary or friend, don’t involve personal emotion. If your purpose is peace, if your purpose is fighting for your people, you can still communicate with your enemy, because the cause is greater than the two of you. Effective leaders are driven by their goals, not by the personalities on either side. If you find yourself getting caught up in personal disputes, it means you don’t have an end goal, or you have forgotten it. In Israel, Peres’s purpose was the condition of the Israeli people, while Arafat’s was the well-being and autonomy of the Palestinians. They could talk to each other all day long, because their efforts to achieve their goals were too big, too grand, to be tripped up by something as petty as personal dislike or animus.