As thousands crowd Downtown D.C. on Monday for Inauguration Day, where President-elect Donald Trump will be sworn in for his second term in office, another march and rally to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. will be held.
Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network, said at the annual MLK Day Birthday Breakfast on Wednesday that his group is planning a march at 10 a.m. Monday from McPherson Square to Metropolitan AME Church at 1518 M St. NW.
Sharpton spelled out the goals of the event to elected officials and civil rights leaders gathered at the Mayflower Hotel on Wednesday.
“Our rally, let me be clear, is not a rally to be like the insurrectionists of Jan. 6,” Sharpton said. “We are not rallying to protest an inauguration, we’re rallying to affirm the dream of Dr. King on Dr. King’s federal holiday — it’s a march of affirmation.”
While acknowledging that they “are meeting at a very precarious time,” a few days before the return of a Trump administration, Sharpton added that it’s “also at a time of great promise.”
“There will be no one way to handle this, and there’ll be no one strategy,” he said.
Instead, Sharpton said, “It’s going to be more important than ever that we all work in a unified way.”
He said the goal is to continue the work of the late Rev. King.
“We respect the process, even if we don’t like the results, but we’re not going to let them kill the dream, and we’re not going to let them bring us backward,” Sharpton said.
On Monday, Sharpton said he will outline an economic plan on “how we’re going to maintain DEI” — the diversity, equity and inclusion framework which has been widely criticized by Trump and fellow Congressional Republicans.
“They may have the votes in the House, they may have the votes in the Senate, but we control our dollars,” Sharpton said. “And we’re going to outline how those major corporations that want to end DEI, we want to end them having a diverse customer base.”
“If you don’t want us in the C-Suite, then you don’t want us in the supermarket,” Sharpton said. “I want those corporations to know there will be a cost for you crossing your consumers, and that nobody in Washington can make us buy where we’re not respected.”
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