Gathering allies for the election

Daily Point

Is Red Scare a matter of black and white?

The Rev. Al Sharpton brought a slice of New York City flavor to the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary Wednesday morning. He also made a surprising plea to an almost completely black audience to look to their own history and reject attempts to direct a “Red Scare” at Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom Sharpton anointed “the front-runner.”

The event was the National Action Network South Carolina Ministers Breakfast and every candidate but former Mayor Mike Bloomberg spoke. Sharpton, who heads NAN, introduced all the candidates but Joe Biden, who was introduced by South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn after Clyburn was honored. After the former vice president, the first candidate to speak, was done, he and Clyburn quickly left, and moments later Clyburn endorsed Biden via Twitter.

Sanders spoke last, and in introducing him, Sharpton painted a picture of a candidate who has been present on racial issues for decades, which contrasts sharply with the knock that Sanders looks at inequity as a matter of class, not race or gender.

But what was more notable was the warning, and the history lesson, Sharpton delivered on the red-baiting he sees being aimed at Sanders.

During Tuesday night’s chaotic and contentious debate, Sanders faced numerous attacks, including over supportive comments he has made about education and health care in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Whether such comments hurt Sanders with anyone who would vote for an avowed democratic socialist is unclear. Still, support of any kind for authoritarian, Communist regimes that are enemies of the United States is rarely a good look.

“The civil rights movement always was targeted by people who would use a Red Scare to discredit black people,” Sharpton said, pointing to the persecution of activist Bayard Rustin. “They accused Dr. King (the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.) of being a communist.”

“Whatever you decide to do on Saturday, do not go with those who use the ‘socialist’ tag to separate us,” Sharpton added.

Sharpton has not endorsed in the race yet but is expected to do so soon and has said he favors Biden and Bloomberg.

To read more from the campaign trail in South Carolina, click here. 

—Lane Filler @lanefiller

Talking Point

Meme-ing the election

Mike Bloomberg’s assault on America’s social media feeds continues. This month alone, he paid meme-makers to make jokes for him on Instagram, blasted out a selectively edited video of Nevada debate footage, and tweeted fabricated quotes about despots supposedly from Cuba-curious Bernie Sanders, among other experiments. 

It’s expensive work: In the last seven days ending Monday, the campaign laid out close to $10 million on Facebook ads. 

But in an era of #fakenews, there has also been blowback about the social media blanketing. Bloomberg deleted the fake Sanders quotes and was forced to defend the edited video as just a joke. 

One of the Bloomberg meme-makers, Nesconset’s own George Resch, told The Point he has posted only the original two memes on his Tank.Sinatra Instagram page. 

On Wednesday, as debate coverage continued, he posted two political memes, but both were relatively pro-Sanders, and they were Resch’s personal work. 

One of them pictured Sanders as the cranky but lovable old man from Disney’s “Up,” with the caption “Get em Bernie.”

Resch posted a comment in that meme apparently directed at some meme-fans and Sanders supporters angry about his Bloomberg work: “If you guys are going to freak out every time I make a meme that even tangentially mentions politics, it’s gonna be a long 2020 for you.” 

Resch told The Point he couldn’t understand why people had gotten so worked up about the Bloomberg paid content. 

“I’ve been making fun of Bernie and [Donald] Trump for years, for free.”

—Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

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Final Point

Taking out the trash

With the Brookhaven Town landfill closure looming in 2024 and the worldwide recycling crisis in full bloom, a group of officials from local municipalities, the solid-waste industry and the state Department of Environmental Conservation started meeting in the summer of 2018 to chart a path forward.

They formed committees on specific topics (transportation, recycling, storm debris, e.g.), and made recommendations for disposing of the region’s garbage. Then the initiative stalled in Albany.

With the landfill’s closure creeping closer, now the group is trying a trash reboot. Some of its members will appear Thursday before the Long Island Regional Planning Council, which will take over the work and update the group’s report and suggestions.

“These recommendations will set up a road map for managing solid waste for the short-term, mid-term and long-term,” Winters Bros. vice president Will Flower told The Point. “That’s important, because it will provide some guidance to the DEC, to municipalities, and to industry.”

The numbers are daunting. Brookhaven’s landfill took in 720,000 tons of material last year and another 350,000 tons of ash, according to Flower and Michael White, a solid-waste consultant and vice chairman of the planning council. That’s more than 1 million tons that in four years must be disposed of elsewhere. 

Already, more than 6,000 railcars hauled more than 600,000 tons of construction and demolition debris off Long Island last year, and more than 200 trucks took some 5,000 tons per day of solid waste off the Island, Flower and White estimated.

“We’re getting the work done on what informs decision-makers going forward,” White said. “Nobody’s realizing this. Nobody’s talking about it. We have to.”

—Michael Dobie @mwdobie