Now Corey my guy – Al
HE WASN’T HIS first choice, but the Rev. Al Sharpton is looking forward to working with newly selected City Council Speaker Corey Johnson.
Sharpton, speaking before a crowd at National Action Network headquarters in Harlem on Saturday, praised Johnson (D-Manhattan) and encouraged him to embrace a diverse coalition of progressives to promote change.
“We need an intersectional coalition on every section of this society that is impacted — blacks, Latinos, gays, Asians,” Sharpton said. “This can be the beginning of bringing the sections together. I don’t have to give up my blackness. They don’t have to give up their heritage as Latinos, their identity in the gay community . . . . Be who you are, but stand up for the whole so we can go home with dignity. That’s what this represents.”
Sharpton conceded he was initially disappointed that there would not be a black speaker, but noted that he had a history with Johnson.
“Corey Johnson used to run around gay bars in Greenwich Village shouting, ‘Sharpton for President!’ ” he joked.
Race played a role in the recent battle to replace Melissa Mark-Viverito as the secondmost-powerful politician in the city, as five of the eight candidates in the speaker race were black or Hispanic.
But Johnson, a white 35-yearold first-term councilman representing parts of Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, won the contest.
Johnson said that the discrimination he has faced for being openly gay and HIV-positive has fortified him for the fight ahead.
“I know that during this campaign for speaker and over the last many months, not just here at (the National Action Network), but in all of the other speaker forums and events and conversations that were had, the issue of wanting to have an AfricanAmerican speaker was a paramount issue for folks in this room and folks across the city,” he said. “And I’m not African-American.
“But I am really proud that my history and the issues that I’ve worked on have been ones that have stood in solidarity with communities of color, with the marginalized and the vulnerable. That is where I come from. That is what my life’s work has been about.”