Where was Reverend Sharpton before Ferguson Burned
This article from the N.Y. Times described how the rioting after the decision resulted in the destruction of what had been the core of the African American community.
FERGUSON, Mo. — It was never much, a faded commercial strip on a stretch that drew people from the apartments nearby for most of the essentials. You could pick up milk at the convenience store, get a manicure at Crystal Nails, wash your clothes at the Ferguson Laundry. On a busy Friday night, men would gather to talk and watch sports on television at the barber shop as they got straight razor shaves.
But West Florissant Avenue, in its modest way, was the heart of the neighborhood where Michael Brown died, and the scene of the protests that followed his shooting in August.
I was part of a circle lead by Sharpton protesting a killing in front of Manhattan police headquarters some twenty years ago. I felt the power of his personality when I told him something like, "I could start to have real respect for yours efforts" and he responded with a good-natured, "There's always hope, my friend." I had mixed feelings about him, having lost respect during the long trial -- that I had stopped into the nearby Poughkeepsie court house to see for myself -- when he and two others were being sued for slander against a city lawyer he accused of raping
Tawana Brawley.
During the many years after the decision finding them liable, and still to this day, in spite of a wide consensus of the accusation being a hoax, he contends he was right in making the accusations. The local D.A. he accused of rape, Steve Pagones, suffered such disruption, including the breakup of his marriage, that for years he gave up the practice of law.
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This riot was anticipated and Sharpton could have stopped it.
His mantra is always the one I chanted along with the crowd at the Police Plaza, "No Justice, No Peace." yet the decision whether to indict Wilson was not about justice, as the process, defined by procedure followed, was to determine responsibility for killing a person. We have an array of laws that define degrees of justification and culpability, with special categories for the action of sworn law enforcement officers.
What the public wanted was something different, based not on the due process of the justice of individual culpability but "collective guilt." Those who wanted to see Wilson punished were attempting to avenge the larger injustice, that reflected by those white police forces who systemic abuse young black men. While this is a reality, to take one individual police officer to represent all of the worst aspects of the excesses of police would have been a grave injustice, one that would have only escalated such interracial animosity.
For this I would call the Reverend Al Sharpton to account. He could have used his constant active support for black Americans to have saved this city, and in doing so provided leadership that could have vindicated his stalwart defense of even frauds such as the Brawley case. While Michael Browns family pleaded for all demonstrations to be peaceful, not to destroy property which would tar the meaning of their son's death, Sharpton was silent. Oh, he may have made a statement, but that's not his style. Sharpton reaches out to a crowd and grabs them by the scruff of the neck, and drills his point home. (As I was told by his ex teacher he did when he was nine years old)
This was a scheduled protest, as a reaction was certain based on the probability of Wilson not being indicted. The evidence is that at the very least, Michael Brown was complicit in his own death. He had shown a violent threatening action when stopped at the convenience store stealing an item, which is consistent with the story told of the interaction with Wilson in the car. There have been several scenarios on this website of this killing being an example of an abusive cop who precipitated the events that ending in him killing an innocent black man. While there are thousands of such cops in this country, and scores of such interactions some leading to murder by a police officer, I do not believe that the evidence indicates that this was such a case.
ThisL.A. Times article describes how fear of testifying kept people away, but that it was on both sides of the argument. We do have dozens of eye witness and some forensic evidence that has to be interpreted with no predisposition that Daren Wilson was an abusive racist individual, of which there is no evidence. For many in ambiguous circumstances of a police officer killing a Black man, one or the other is assumed to be responsible, and the evidence is either ignored or seen as manufactured. Those with this predisposition will not be swayed by these comments, or the reams of data from the grand jury hearing. They want 'collective justice" which is another word for war.
Al Sharpton has spent a career in being there when there are examples of "no justice." As I write this the grand jury is still out on the case of the police killing by choke hold in Staten Island, N.Y. I will predict here that the cop who caused the death will be punished, but to a lessor degree since using this hold, as opposed to shooting someone, is not seen as intentional homicide. He will be fired, and maybe prosecuted for manslaughter, and the city will pay many millions to the family of the deceased. Is this justice? I don't know; but it would be a message that appropriate force is required even in the pursuance of the duties of officers of the law.
The tragedy of Michael Brown's killing was never anticipated and took seconds to play out. The potential of burning of Furgeson was anticipated for months, and many responsible people such as the President and Attorney General tried to prevent it. They were not there passionately connecting to those who were angry - at the killing and the greater pervasive injustice towards African Americans - with the Michael Brown being almost the perfect example of the aggrieved demographic.
That direct connection is what Al Sharpton has been doing for nearly half a century. He personally could have directed the anger of his people beyond this killing, this indictment, to show the world that blacks can be irate not only against whites, but also those of their own race who choose to riot and destroy. His role as a public figure, a moral leader, could have been validated by other than insisting that every interviewer use the title of "reverend"
If he had taken this action, as I told him in person years ago, he would have earned the respect that I wanted to have for him. He would no longer have to demand that every interviewer refer to him as "Reverend Al Sharpton" because he had it in his capacity to have transcended being a fomentor of anger. He could have taken the path to becoming what his religion so admires, a Peacemaker.
And then, whether or not he was called "reverend" he would have been on a path to truly be revered.