Rev. Al Sharpton Calls For United Front In Seeking Police Reform

‘We’re not the haters. We’re the healers’

The Rev. Al Sharpton Monday issued a challenge to the thousands of people who attended the funeral of 18-year-old Michael Brown who was gunned down by a Ferguson, MO policeman, to say it’s time to unite and fight for police reform and social justice in America.

Poster size pictures of Brown loomed on both sides of his coffin at the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis headed by Rev. Michael Jones, Sr. Among many speakers was Rev. Sharpton who issued a national call of action.

The lawyer for the Brown family, Benjamin Crump, referred to slavery when African Americans were declared three-fifths of a man. “We declare him today as we pay our final respects to Michael Brown, Jr. that he was not three-fifths of a citizen. He was an American citizen. We will not accept three-fifths justice. We will demand equal justice for Michael Brown, Jr.” Crump then introduced Rev. Sharpton.

Saying that children are supposed to bury their parents, Sharpton said the Brown family is being asked to do something that is “out-of-order” and that had Brown lived he would be in his second week of college.

“Religion ought to affirm what we are doing not be an escapism for what is done. Some are so heavenly bound that we are no earthly good,” Sharpton quipped. “Before you get to heaven, before you put on your long robe, before you walk down the streets, you got to deal with the streets in Ferguson and St. Louis. God is not going to judge you by your behavior in heaven. He’s going to judge you what you did on earth….”

Sharpton said dealing with Brown’s murder would require a united front. He spoke about the day Brown was killed and how his body laid out in the middle of the street for nearly five-hours and the resulting violence. “That night violence erupted,” he said which caused the parents of Brown to stop mourning to tell the protesters to stop.  For the day of their son’s funeral, the parents did ask people not to protest rather that it should be a day of peace in the memory of their son.

“Michael Brown does not want to be remembered for a riot,” Sharpton said. “He wants to be remembered as the one that made America deal with how we’re going to police in the U.S.

“This is not about you. This is about justice. This is about fairness and America is going to have to come to terms. There is something wrong that we have money to give military equipment to police forces but we don’t have money for training, money for education, money to train our children,” he said to a thunderous applause.

Sharpton chided the Ferguson police department for not releasing the name of the police officer who allegedly shot Michael Brown for six days resulting in riots, some deaths and looting, but “you can find a video (of Brown at a convenience store).

“How do you think we look when young people march…asking for the land of the free, the home of the brave to hear their cries and you put snipers on the roof and pointed guns at them. How do we look? How do we look when people support the officers, and they have a right to do that and an obligation if they feel that, but if they support him, they are supporters. If we come to support the family, we’re dividing the country.”

Sharpton referred to the policeman who repeatedly punched a black woman on the side of a Los Angeles expressway. “He hit her 15 times…a woman with no weapon. Right after that a man (Eric Garner from NY) they said he had loose cigarettes and they put an illegal chokehold on him…. The man said he couldn’t breathe. A man, a policeman wouldn’t him go. Later that week, we see Michael lying on the ground…. It’s time to deal with policing. “

Referring to the day Brown was shot allegedly by 28-year-old Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson who remains on paid administrative leave, Sharpton focused on the nearly five-hours Brown’s body laid on the ground after he was shot. “It’s time to deal with policing. We’re not the haters. We’re the healers,” he bellowed. “

“We can’t have a fit. We have to have a movement.  A fit, you get mad and run out for a couple of nights. A movement means we’ve got to be here for the long haul and turning our chance into change, our demonstration into legislation. We have got to stay on this so we can stop this,” Sharpton said.

Saying they will need congress to secure legislation “about guidelines in policing,” Sharpton said, “We need to have a fair, impartial investigation. Those that are compromised will not be believed….. We are not anti-police. We respect police, but those police who are wrong need to be dealt with just like those in our community who are wrong need to be dealt with.”

Comparing a bushel basket of apples to police corruption, Rev. Sharpton said, “We must be real today. If you have a bushel of apples…the only thing that messes up good apples is that you don’t take rotten apples out the bushes. We are not the ones making cops look bad. It’s the bad apples that you won’t take out the bushes.”

But, on the other side of that coin, Sharpton made it clear that blacks have to get their act together and that is a mandate from God. “We have to be straight up in our community, too. We have to outraged about a 9-year-old girl killed in Chicago.

“We have to be outraged by our disrespect to each other, our disregard to each our, our killing and shooting and running around gun toting each other” he said serves as a justification by police and an excuse to cover up the crime. Some blacks, Sharpton said, “act like the definition of blackness is how low you can go.

“Blackness has never been about being a gangster or a thug,” Sharpton said. “Blackness (was) no matter how low we were pushed down, we rose up anyhow,” he said to a round of applause. “Blackness was never surrender, our pursuit of excellence.”

As an example, Sharpton said years ago when it was illegal (by law) for blacks to go to some schools,  “we built black colleges and learned anyhow. When we couldn’t go down to church, we built our own AME church and our own Church of God in Christ. We never surrendered. We never gave up and now we’re getting to the 21^st Century, we’re getting to where we’ve gotten some positions of power and you decide it ain’t black no more to be successful…. Now, you want to call your woman a ho. You’ve lost where you come from….”

“We got to clean up our community so we can clean up the United States of America,” he said.

Saying he understands why some people say, “but you don’t know what they do to us,” Sharpton reminded them that “nobody is going to help us if we don’t help ourselves. Sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves won’t solve the problems. Fighting, sitting around having ghetto pity parties rather than organizing and strategizing and putting our differences aside.”

Sharpton said while there are things blacks don’t like about each other, “It is bigger than our egos. It’s bigger than who shot John. We need everybody.” Saying it doesn’t matter about the amount of money or education you have, “if we can’t protect a child walking down the street in Ferguson and protect him and bring justice, all you got doesn’t matter to nobody but you.”

“Michael Brown must be remembered “ as the one who started the social change. “This young man for whatever reason appealed to all of us that we’ve got to solve this….” He said Brown’s family will go through a great deal of stress “but their target is all of us. If we cannot focus and do what the Lord requires of us, we’ll be right back here again.”

“The policies of this country cannot go unchallenged. We cannot have aggressive policemen of low-level of crimes and can’t deal with the higher levels. Something’s strange that you can get all of these guns into the hood but you running round chasing folks selling loose cigarettes,” said Sharpton referring to the New York policeman who put him in an illegal chokehold resulting in his death and Brown who was stopped by the police for walking in the middle of the street. “There is something crazy about that kind of policing,” he said.

Saying while police are human, Sharpton said they have a different kind of commitment to the public.“Once you put on that state badge and that gun that is state backed up, you cannot act like another citizen. You are supposed to be trained above that and we should expect that in our community like they did it in any other community.

“No community in America would tolerate an 18-year-old boy laying in the street for 4-and-half-hours,and we are not going to tolerate it either. What ever happened, the value of this boy’s life must be answered by somebody.”

To the family, Sharpton said if you love and believe in God he will “give you strength that you didn’t know you had….” “God will make a way…guide your feet…. The challenge for you is that you must commit that forever reason God chose you and he chose you. Michael’s gone on to get his rest. We are required in his name to change the country.”

Rev. Sharpton told a story about an old preacher who told him a story and how he was reading a novel one night and that he couldn’t put it down. It was 12 midnight and he hadn’t finished the book so he cheated and turned to the end of the book. “I saw how the story ended and that is how I got my rest,” the preacher told Sharpton.

To Michael Brown, Sr. and Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, Sharpton said, “I sat up at the hotel and took out my bible and I turned to the end of the book. I don’t know how long this investigation…this journey will be, but I know how this story will end. The first will be last. The last will be first. The lion and the lamb will lie down together and God will make a way for the children. I’ve been to the end of the book. Justice is going to come,” Sharpton said to a deafening round of applause.

But, there were Chicagoans at the funeral as well like Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., Pastor Ira Acree and Rev. Dr. Marshall Hatch., civil rights activists Bernice King and her brother Martin Luther King III, the children of Dr. King, Hollywood stars like MC Hammer, Wesley Snipes, Spike Lee,  elected officials including Rep. Maxine Waters and Senator Claire McCaskill and radio giant Tom Joyner.

Pastor Acree said he came to the funeral because, “This is clearly a watershed moment for the nation. The world is watching how we handle race relation in America.

“Rev Sharpton was right when he made the statement ‘we must address how we do policing in America.’  I think it is vital that police departments all across America are racial diversity. When you don’t have it, it tends to make the police presence feel like an occupying force to minority community residents,” said Acree.

“There is no reason for Ferguson to have only three black officers on their 53 man police force. That’s a recipe for poor police and community relations in a town that is two thirds African American.

“Hopefully the Mayor of Chicago and Superintendent McCarthy are watching and learn from the Ferguson fiasco because we’ve made the case consistently prior to their arrival, and during their tenure that a city that’s primarily black and brown should have representation on the police force that mirrors those racial demographics,” said Acree.

“It was amazing that Friendly Temple Baptist Church, where the funeral was held, is only 10 miles away from the courthouse where the Dred Scott Decision of 1857 occurred. It stated that Scott could not sue for his freedom, because blacks were not actually citizens. and the reason we weren’t citizens is because the Constitution said that we were only  3/5 human.

“Well, fate has it so, that with the Michael Brown case, we have an opportunity to fight for our equality by organizing, registering to vote, and getting legislation passed. We all have a role to play. I hope this inspires us all to do our part as a change agent.”

Acree, who along with Hatch also went to Brown’s gravesite, said, “When the body of Michael Brown was lowered, his dad screamed and sent a chill through my body and through the cemetery. I felt so helpless not being able to do anything to calm the pain. I began to pray immediately and I urge us all to continue praying, because they have along tedious and emotional journey to recovery ahead of them.”

To see Michael Brown’sfuneral in its entirety, please click on this link:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/family-community-mourn-michael-brown-funeral/
Pastor Ira Acree and Rev. Dr. Marshall Hatch at the site where Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, MO.

Chinta Strausberg is a Journalist of more than 33-years, a former political reporter and a current PCC Network talk show host. You can e-mail Strausberg at: Chintabernie@aol.com.