Reverend Al Sharpton hosting town hall in Mobile over Waffle House arrest
Reverend Al Sharpton, and prominent civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, will be in Mobile on Tuesday to host a town hall meeting on the controversial Saraland Waffle House arrest earlier this week. The meeting will take place on May 1 at Bethel AME Church at 7 p.m. Chikesia Clemons, the woman who was arrested at the Waffle House will also be at the meeting. The controversial arrest of Clemons took place last Sunday after she entered a Saraland Waffle House with a group of friends. According the the employees, Clemons was intoxicated and smelled of alcohol when she entered, and then proceeded to act extremely aggressive towards staff members. Clemons and Canita Adams were asked to leave the establishment after an altercation over plastic utensils; Waffle House corporate policy requires staff members charge $0.50 for customers that wish to use plastic utensils to dine-in. According to Waffle house employees, after giving the utensils to Clemons free of charge, tensions between the staff members and patrons rose until employees asked Clemons and her group to leave. They did, but Clemons and Adams returned, “Witnesses, who included six employees and one customer, told police that the two women were loud and used profanities toward employees. ‘Words were used toward the employees such f*ck, b*tch, calling women whores,’ Detective Mims told AL.com. ‘They were told to cool down and stop using the profanities.’ “‘I’ll come over this counter and beat your f**king ass, bitch I’m gonna have your job, you ain’t gonna be here tomorrow,” said Clemons according to witness statements read by Detective Mims. Waffle House employees called the Saraland Police who arrested Clemons while she insisted she did nothing wrong. Clemons mother, Chiquitta Clemons-Howard, told AL.com a different story. According to Clomons-Howard, the incident did begin when a Waffle House employee tried to charge Clemons $0.50 for plastic utensils but when she refused to pay for the utensils, the employee responded by canceling her order. Clemons then asked for the district manager’s contact information, and while she was waiting for the employee to bring the district manager’s business card, the police arrived and arrested her. In an edited video of the incident which has since gone viral, Clemons is shown being pulled out of her chair and after resisting arrest, is thrown onto the ground by Saraland Police Officers. An officer is then heard saying that if she continued to resist the arrest by pulling her arm away while he was trying to handcuff her, her arm would break. Some viewer have said this was a threat however the police department insists it was a warning. Read further details of Mobile Town Hall meeting below:
Al Sharpton will serve as keynote speaker for Birmingham high school’s unity breakfast
The Rev. Al Sharpton plans to spend Thursday morning in Birmingham talking to a group of high school students and the local community. The outspoken Civil Rights activist will serve as the keynote speaker at Wenonah High School‘s 14th annual Unity Breakfast, according to AL.com. There, he will speak on the breakfast’s theme: “Facing the Future and Cherishing the Milestones.” Hosted by the school’s award-winning culinary arts team the event is held annually during the school’s celebration of Black History Month. If you go … What: The Rev. Al Sharpton discusses “Facing the Future and Cherishing the Milestones” Where: Wenonah High School | 2800 Wilson Road, SW Birmingham When: 8:30 a.m. Friday, February 24, 2017 Call: (205) 231-1700 or (205) 231-170 for information on tickets According to Birmingham City Schools, Sharpton’s speech will also be livestreamed online.
Jumbled GOP field hopes for survival in South Carolina
Hoping for survival in the South, a muddled field of Republican presidential contenders descended Wednesday on South Carolina, no closer to clarity about who can stand between Donald Trump and their party’s nomination. Not me, Carly Fiorina announced, dropping out of the campaign. A Chris Christie spokeswoman said his race was over, too. But a sizeable field remained. To the dismay of party leaders, all signs point to a drawn-out battle for delegates following Trump’s resounding victory in New Hampshire. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, under immense pressure to prove himself after a devastating fifth-place finish, was looking for a fight that could last for months or even spill into the first contested GOP national convention since 1976. “We very easily could be looking at May — or the convention,” Rubio campaign manager Terry Sullivan told The Associated Press. If Trump had Republicans on edge, Democrats were feeling no less queasy. Rejected in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton sought redemption in Nevada, where a more diverse group of voters awaited her and Bernie Sanders. Sanders, a Vermont senator and self-proclaimed democratic socialist, raised $5 million-plus in less than a day after his New Hampshire triumph. The contributions came mostly in small-dollar amounts, his campaign said, illustrating the resources he’ll have to fight Clinton to a bitter end. Both Clinton and Sanders — the first Jew to win a presidential primary — worked to undercut each other among African-Americans and Hispanics with less than two weeks until the Democratic contests in Nevada and South Carolina. Sanders met for breakfast in Harlem with the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist. Clinton, meanwhile, announced plans to campaign with the mother of Sandra Bland, whose death while in police custody became a symbol of racial tensions. And Clinton’s campaign deployed South Carolina state Rep. Todd Rutherford to vouch for her support for minorities. “Secretary Clinton has been involved in South Carolina for the last 40 years,” Rutherford said. “Bernie Sanders has talked about these issues for the last 40 days.” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the conservative firebrand and victor in the leadoff Iowa caucuses, returned to the center of the fracas after largely sitting out New Hampshire. He drew contrasts with Trump as he told a crowd of 500 in Myrtle Beach that Texans and South Carolinians are more alike than not. “We love God, we’re gun owners, military veterans and we’re fed up with what’s happening in Washington,” Cruz said. Almost all the Republicans have spent months building complex campaigns and blanketing airwaves in South Carolina, which heralds the start of the GOP campaign’s foray into the South. After that primary on Feb. 20, seven Southern states including Georgia and Virginia will anchor the Super Tuesday primaries on March 1, with oodles of delegates at stake. The state, with its array of conservative GOP voters, will test Trump and the others in new ways. Having courted social conservatives in Iowa and moderates in New Hampshire, the candidates face an electorate infused with evangelical, pro-business and military-minded flavors. Rubio’s campaign has looked forward to the state. Yet his path grew far trickier after a fifth-place New Hampshire letdown, which terminated talk of Republican leaders quickly uniting behind him as the strongest alternative to “outsiders” Trump and Cruz. His campaign’s suggestion that the race could veer a contested convention seemed to signal to mainstream Republicans that the party would be ill-served by allowing the Trump phenomenon to last much longer. GOP officials have already had early discussions about such a July scenario, which could be triggered if no candidate secures a majority of delegates by convention time. For Gov. John Kasich, whose second-place showing was New Hampshire’s primary stunner, the task was to convert newfound interest into support in a state ideologically distant from his native Ohio. With a minimal South Carolina operation compared to his rivals, Kasich must work quickly. Seeking votes at a local business in Charleston, Kasich worked to burnish his reputation as a results-oriented leader. “If you don’t go to the gym, you get flabby,” Kasich said. “And if the country doesn’t solve its problems, it gets flabby.” Heading into the final two-week sprint, Trump was leading in South Carolina among all demographic groups, an NBC/Marist/Wall Street Journal poll showed, with Cruz and Rubio a distant second and third. Already, more than $32 million has been spent on TV ads here, according to CMAG/Kantar Media data — much of it by Right to Rise, the PAC backing former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Though he placed fourth on Tuesday, Bush was hoping that Rubio’s slump would forestall his own ouster from the race. After a rally in Bluffton, he said voters in New Hampshire “pushed the pause button” on anointing any candidate — and turned to his brother, George W. Bush, for help. His campaign debuted a new ad featuring the former president, who plans to campaign in the Palmetto State. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Donald Trump’s unorthodox campaign takes new twist on ‘SNL’
Donald Trump‘s unorthodox campaign for president will take another unusual step this weekend when he takes a break from typical campaigning to host “Saturday Night Live.” The appearance will put the billionaire businessman and reality TV star in rare company: Only eight politicians previously have hosted “Saturday Night Live” in its entire 40-year-old history. And only one of those politicians-slash-guest hosts was an active presidential candidate — the Rev. Al Sharpton, who was seeking the Democratic nomination when he hosted in December 2003. The appearance is the latest example of how Trump — who first guest hosted “SNL” in 2004 just weeks after the show he helped create, NBC’s “The Apprentice,” began airing — has been able to capitalize on his celebrity throughout his campaign, which has translated into record ratings for networks on each of the three Republican debates. Trump has repeatedly bragged about the attention his appearances have been generating, predicting the show will have its highest ratings ever with him at the helm. Throughout its history, “SNL” has poked fun at political figures — both via cast impersonations and with guest appearances by the politicians themselves. It and other late-night television shows also give candidates the chance to show off their less serious sides and connect with a new and generally younger audience than the usual early-state rallies and debate stages. Sharpton said his whole campaign team had opposed the idea when he was invited to host by “SNL” executive producer Lorne Michaels, but he decided an appearance could help humanize his persona. “I was known in America at the time as a civil rights leader and protest leader, and I wanted to show that I could laugh at myself, I had a sense of humor, and be self-effacing, and that I could be comfortable with a broader audience,” he said in an interview, adding that the appearance yielded tangible results, with people bringing it up constantly as he campaigned. The challenge for Trump, whose invitation has provoked an outcry from groups concerned about what they perceive as an anti-Latino bias by the candidate, would be making a similar connection, Sharpton said. “We know him as this brash, bombastic, self-important person. But can he laugh at himself? Can he relate to the average guy in a bowling alley?” posed Sharpton. “I think that he has the opportunity or the risk of establishing that tomorrow night.” In the 2004 host appearance, Trump opened his monologue by joking about his star power: “It’s great to be here at ‘Saturday Night Live,’ but I’ll be completely honest, it’s even better for ‘Saturday Night Live’ that I’m here. Nobody’s bigger than me. Nobody’s better than me. I’m a ratings machine.” Trump echoed those words earlier this week in an appearance on CNN when he said “nobody gets ratings like me.” He said he initially had been asked to be in a single skit this week, but then Michaels urged him to guest host instead. NBC has refused to comment on the objections to Trump’s appearance on the show. Earlier this week, “SNL” released several promotional spots featuring Trump, including one in which he refers to a Republican opponent, Ben Carson, as “a complete and total loser.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
