War & Peace Quote by Al Sharpton

Claiming to be "the first" isn’t just a bit of campaign bragging; it’s a preemptive strike against a whole genre of political reinvention. Sharpton’s line is built to weaponize memory. In the wake of an unpopular war, the easiest costume to put on is regret. He refuses to let rivals slip into it by anchoring his record not in a vote, not in a carefully hedged speech, but in embodied public risk: "came out against", "spoke", "every anti-war march". The verbs are physical, street-level, almost liturgical. He’s not arguing policy so much as staking ownership over a moral position.

The subtext is as pointed as the syntax: some of you found your conscience when the polling did. By emphasizing marches, Sharpton elevates a form of dissent many politicians keep at arm’s length because it carries optics of disorder, radicalism, and donor discomfort. He’s flipping that liability into authenticity capital, framing protest as a credential rather than a nuisance.

Context matters. Post-9/11 politics punished deviation; early anti-war voices were labeled naive at best, unpatriotic at worst. Sharpton’s civil-rights pedigree makes the comparison implicit: being right early often means being unpopular early. The line also courts a specific constituency, anti-war activists and skeptical Black voters, by promising he wasn’t merely against the war when it was safe; he was present when it was costly.