Rewriting the Rev. Al Sharpton’s history
By
Post Editorial BoardAugust 20, 2014 | 11:59pm
How utterly perverse. The Rev. Al Sharpton was given center stage yet again Wednesday, this time at an interfaith meeting to address police-community relations — and he used it to rewrite history.
Mayor de Blasio blithely helped in the effort, introducing Sharpton as a man who sought peaceful solutions “since the days of Martin Luther King.”
Oh, really? From the Tawana Brawley case to the Crown Heights riots to Ferguson, Mo., Sharpton’s usual role is to pour gasoline on the fire.
Sharpton asserted that he doesn’t believe in a “rush to judgment” when cops are accused of police brutality. Yet his agitation, both here in the city and in Ferguson, even before the facts have become clear in either case, puts that to the lie.
Perhaps most disgusting was Sharpton’s claim that he scheduled his march against police brutality for Saturday because it’s the 25th anniversary of the death of Yusuf Hawkins — the 16-year-old black youth beaten and shot to death by a white mob in Bensonhurst.
With the Tawana Brawley fiasco still fresh, Sharpton led multiple marches back then through Bensonhurst, even though those responsible for the death were properly tried and convicted.
What the reverend took pains not to note is that this week marks another anniversary: 23 years since the Crown Heights riots.
There, too, Sharpton played a cynical role, fueling rage after the tragic vehicular death of 7-year-old Gavin Cato and helping to stir up three nights of rioting that left Jewish Australian Yankel Rosenbaum dead.
Sharpton had no place at that meeting on Wednesday. De Blasio had no grounds to give him one.