http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=522E03C5-135A-496E-A9FB-B427310FBE2F Michael Brown family to N.Y. rally Saturday
By: Jonathan Topaz
August 20, 2014 02:29 PM EDT
The family of Michael Brown will attend a march Saturday led by the Rev. Al Sharpton on Staten Island on behalf of Eric Garner, who died last month in the borough’s Tompkinsville neighborhood.
Last Saturday, Sharpton had suggested that Brown’s family would attend, but shortly thereafter, a spokeswoman for the National Action Network said the family wasn’t yet sure because it hadn’t yet planned a funeral for Brown.
Benjamin Crump, the attorney for the family, has since announced that Brown’s funeral and memorial service would be held on Monday.
NY1 reported that the Brown family confirmed attendance for the rally on Wednesday.
Sharpton has visited Ferguson at the invitation of Brown’s parents, whose 18-year-old son Michael was shot and killed while unarmed by white police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9. Sharpton and other civil rights leaders have linked Brown’s death to that of Garner, the 43-year-old black man who was killed after a New York Police Department officer put him in a chokehold on July 17. A medical examiner has since ruled his death a homicide.
Demonstrators on Saturday plan to gather in the area where Garner died last month and will march to the Staten Island District Attorney’s office.
Civil rights leaders and critics of police brutality have pointed to these incidents as evidence of systemic police hostility toward African-American men. The Rev. Jesse Jackson in an interview last week also likened Brown’s death to those of several other unarmed young black men, such as Oscar Grant in California in 2009.
