To mark the 2oth
anniversary of the deadly riots that engulfed Los Angeles following the 1992
Rodney King verdict, civil rights activist Al Sharpton and Trayvon Martin's
parents are urging peace at events. Sharpton said; before he and Martin's
family addressed a church on Thursday night.
"Twenty years
ago I came out here after that protest after the verdict and tried to
discourage the violence, and 20 years later now I'm here with Trayvon's parents
and we're saying we don't want violence," he said. After four white police
officers were acquitted in the recorded beating of Rodney King on April 29, the
city exploded into one of the deadliest riots in American history, leaving 54
dead and causing $1 billion in property damage.
Sharpton, who now
hosts a show on MSNBC, says much has changed since then, and he doesn't expect
the racially charged debate over Martin's shooting to end in violence if George
Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, is acquitted.
"I think even
though people are angry and as concerned as I am, we don't feel like we have no
options," he says. "Unlike [with] Rodney King, there's defined
leadership in Trayvon Martin's case who have said from the beginning we cannot
have violence."
Rev. Al Sharpton speaks to the media with Trayvon Martin's mother Sybrina Fulton. |
Zimmerman, a
neighborhood watch captain in a middle-class gated community in Sanford,
Florida, shot the unarmed 17-year-old after calling the cops and following him
because he found him suspicious. Zimmerman says he shot him in self-defense
after Martin attacked him; Zimmerman's defenders say he suspected Martin
because of a string of robberies that had occurred in the neighborhood. (A
recent Reuters profile of Zimmerman quotes a black neighbor defending him for
finding Martin suspicious because suspects in previous robberies were young
black men. She declined to be named because she feared retaliation.)
Zimmerman's detractors say he singled out Martin because of his race.
Sharpton says he
has no idea whether Zimmerman was prejudiced against Martin because of his race,
but he thinks the police would have handled the situation differently if Martin
had been white. Zimmerman was briefly taken into custody but not charged with
any crime; police said they found his self-defense claim credible. After the
outcry, a special prosecutor charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder, more
than a month after the shooting.
"If Trayvon
Martin had not been black then they would have had taken his killing a lot more
seriously at the police station," he says. "If the police had
arrested Zimmerman that night there would not be a Trayvon Martin case or
movement...Does it mean he's guilty? No. But it does mean that he should have
to go in front of a court of law and not be acquitted in the back of a police
station."
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