National Action Network
The National Action Network is an American not-for-profit, civil-rights organization founded by Al Sharpton in New York City in early 1991. In a 2016 profile, Vanity Fair called Sharpton "arguably the country's most influential civil rights leader".
Organization
The organization's Board of Directors is chaired by Rev. Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson, the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon. The Board of Directors has a tradition of including those most recognized in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as it was first chaired by Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, Pastor Emeritus of Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, and former Executive Director to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In addition to Dr. Walker, the late Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. King, supported the organization and her son, Martin Luther King III, participates annually in the Keepers of the Dream Awards Dinner and National Convention.National Action Network's Annual Convention draws more than 8,000 delegates and leaders from media, business, politics, entertainment and the civil rights from across the country. The 2007 convention featured six presidential candidates and was dubbed by the media the "Sharpton Primary". In Barack Obama's speech during the 2007 convention he said that Rev. Al Sharpton was "The voice of the voiceless and a champion for the downtrodden." In 2011 President Barack Obama delivered a keynote address at their convention, applauding NAN's activism by saying: "National Action Network is not the National 'Satisfaction' Network; it's the National 'Action' Network". At the National Action Network's convention in April 2014 close to 7,000 people attended, making it the biggest in the history of the organization and the largest civil rights convening of the year in the nation. During the 2014 convention President Barack Obama returned to address over 1,200 convention attendees where he addressed voting rights and said "We've got to create a national network committed to taking action. We can call it the National Action Network."
Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders spoke at the Silver Anniversary 2016 National Action Network Convention. "You stand up and always have against gun violence, advocate for criminal justice reform, help young people find jobs, hold corporations accountable, and in a million ways, lift up voices that often go unheard," Clinton said during her speech.
The National Action Network is headquartered in Harlem, New York and has regional offices in Washington, D.C.., Atlanta and Los Angeles. It currently has over 105 chapters in cities around the nation.
In July 2024, civil rights attorney Michael Hardy, who was one of the National Action Network's most prominent founding members, died. Hardy, who also served as Sharpton's defense lawyer in the defamation case which was brought against Sharption for accusations he made about a Tawana Brawley prosecutor, was credited as the main legal architect for the National Action Network's legal cases and played a prominent in the organization's evolution. Since 1991, Hardy served as the organization's Executive Vice President and later also became its General Counsel in 2008.
Issues of focus
The National Action Network is widely credited with drawing national attention to critical issues such as racial profiling, police brutality, and the US Naval bombing exercises on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. Notably, the organization was prominently involved with the police brutality cases of Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Patrick Dorismond Eric Garner, and Michael Brown.In 1999, the organization launched The Madison Avenue Initiative, a program designed to address the inequities in the advertising industry. MAI was created after a racially charged memorandum, infamously dubbed, "The Katz Memo", was circulated among certain radio stations, stating that advertisers wanted "prospects, not suspects". The recognition of this memorandum set off an investigation into the spending practices of corporations, specifically examining whether their advertising budgets with African-American and Latino publications and advertising agencies were commensurate with their consumer bases.
In 2000, the organization launched the Truth Hamer Voter Registration and Education Initiative. The Truth Hamer Initiative set out to register one million women to vote, targeting populations in traditionally overlooked areas, such as public housing developments, transitional housing communities and rural areas.
Sharpton's organization has been heavily courted for endorsement by presidential candidates, including both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Walgreens
In 2011, Walgreens announced they would be ending their relationship with Express Scripts, a prescription drug program serving mostly poor individuals that gave them discounted prescriptions. This would have resulted in low-income individuals paying up to 30 percent more for their prescriptions. A coalition of minority groups, led by Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network, sent letters urging Gregory Wasson, CEO of Walgreens, to reconsider. Groups sending letters were National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality, Hispanic Leadership Fund, and others.Comcast NBCUniversal MOU
In 2011 National Action Network, joined forces with the National Urban League and NAACP to negotiate an agreement between three of the leading civil rights organizations and Comcast NBCUniversal. As part of their filings with the Federal Communications Commission, Comcast NBC Universal agreed to a written African American Memorandum of Understanding to provide four television stations owned and operated by African Americans. The MOU was a comprehensive commitment covering all business units and focusing on the following five areas: corporate governance, employment/workforce recruitment and retention, procurement, programming and philanthropy and community investment.Trayvon Martin
On February 26, 2012 seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman, who said that he had acted in self-defense. A month later National Action Network and other civil rights organizations came to Sanford, FL for a series of protests and marches to call for Zimmerman's arrest. Six weeks after the shooting, Zimmerman was arrested. On July 13, 2013 George Zimmerman was found not guilty of second-degree murder. He was also acquitted of manslaughter, a lesser charge. On July 20, 2013 National Action Network organized rallies in 100 cities around the country to speak out against the Zimmerman verdict and stand-your-ground-laws.On March 10, 2014 the National Action Network led a march to Florida's state capitol to rally against stand-your-ground laws. Among those present were the family of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, and Oscar Grant. The family of Marissa Alexander, who was sentenced to 20 years for firing a gun at her estranged husband and the family of Michael Giles, a U.S. Airman sentenced to 25 years in a self-defense case also joined.
Stop and frisk
On June 17, 2012 National Action Network joined the NAACP and SEIU and 115 other organizations in a march down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, NY to call for an end to Stop-and-frisk. This New York Police Department policy, National Action Network had been opposed to and spoke out against for years due to its bias towards individuals of color and the databases created by people stopped by Stop-and-frisk. The NYPD released data that nearly 90 percent of those targeted by stop-and-frisks in the city in 2011 were either black or Hispanic. Blacks and Hispanics together make up less than 53 percent of the city's population. A total of 685,724 people — 8.6 percent of the city's population — were detained by cops for "reasonable suspicion." Out of the total of the stop-and-frisk stops 605,328 were totally innocent.In January 2014 the City of New York under the leadership of Mayor Bill de Blasio reached an agreement which resulted in the withdrawal of the City's appeal of the landmark stop-and-frisk case, Floyd v. City of New York.