State Sens. Kevin Parker, Bill Perkins and Eric Adams wear hoodies in Albany yesterday in tribute to Trayvon. (AP)
SUPPORT: The Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson flank Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, the parents of Trayvon Martin (inset), at a church in Eatonville, Fla. yesterday. (
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The furor over the shooting of Florida teen Trayvon Martin is being “exploited” by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to “racially divide the country,” a civil-rights leader charged yesterday.
Martin’s “family should be outraged at the fact that they’re using this child as the bait to inflame racial passions,” the Rev. C.L. Bryant, a former NAACP leader, said of the 17-year-old hoodie-wearing black youth who was shot dead by a mixed white-Latino neighborhood-watch volunteer.
The pastor accused Jackson and Sharpton — who yesterday organized a thousands-strong protest in Sanford, Fla., where the shooting occurred last month — of “acting as though they are buzzards circling the carcass of this young boy” in an interview with The Daily Caller, a news Web site.
Bryant, the past president of the NAACP chapter in Garland, Texas, called Jackson and Sharpton “race hustlers” for inserting themselves into the drama.
His scathing criticism came as:
* New York lawmakers in Albany, wearing hoodies in solidarity with Martin, said the demonization of minorities by police “was born here in New York City.”
* Mayor Bloomberg, a gun-control advocate, said the Feb. 26 shooting was proof that loose national gun laws defy common sense.
* Thousands in Sanford rallied to demand that Zimmerman, a 28-year-old cop wannabe, be arrested and prosecuted. Other protests occurred throughout the country
* Sanford named Capt. Darren Scott, who is black, as acting police chief. He will fill in for Police Chief Bill Lee, who is white and had temporarily stepped down amid controversy over how local cops had handled the shooting.
* Sanford Mayor Jeff Triplet called his city “a tinderbox” set to explode amid the racial tensions.
Former NAACP leader Bryant said the rallies organized by Sharpton and Jackson suggest there is an epidemic of “white men killing black young men” while ignoring much more prevalent black-on-black crime.
“The epidemic is truly black-on-black crime,” he said. “The greatest danger to the lives of young black men are young black men.”
Bryant said he wants to see protests about those problems.
“Why not be angry about the wholesale murder that goes on in the streets of Newark and Chicago?” he asked. “Why isn’t somebody angry about that 6-year-old girl who was killed on her steps last weekend in a cross fire when two gang members in Chicago start shooting at each other? Why is there no outrage about that?”
Bryant, an outspoken conservative, predicted that “people like Sharpton and those on the left” will make Martin’s death an issue in the presidential race.
He told the Web site that they will “turn this evolving tragedy of this young man into fodder to say . . . ‘If you don’t re-elect [President] Obama, then you will have unbridled events or circumstances like this happening in the streets to young men wearing hoodies.’ ”
He also blasted Obama for his “nebulous statement” last week in which he said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
“What does that mean?” Bryant asked. “What was the purpose in that?”
In Albany, some Democratic state lawmakers wore hoodies with their suits and ties to support protesters.
State Sen. Eric Adams, of Brooklyn, charged: “The stop-and-frisk policy [in New York] gave birth to not only police officers [across the country] believing that a person of color is automatically a criminal, now it has grown into the civilian patrol units.
“The methods of throwing out a wide net in communities where you believe crime is high and catching everyone that’s there, even the innocent people . . . has been duplicated and taught across America,’’ he said.
“So the mind-set of every black person young between a particular age group is a potential criminal was born here in New York City.”
New York Senator Michael Gianaris blasted the Senate’s GOP majority for introducing a Stand Your Ground bill in New York, claiming it’s part of “an extreme right-wing agenda.”
Bloomberg, for his part, said the shooting proves that the gun lobby “is writing our nation’s gun laws.”
“It’s a disgrace,” the mayor declared. “They write ’em in Washington. They write ’em in the state capitals. The result is our children are being killed, our police officers are being killed.”
Bloomberg is leading a national coalition of 650 mayors pushing for tougher gun laws.
He questioned why Zimmerman had been able to legally carry the pistol he used to shoot the teen despite his own run-ins with the law.
“How could he have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, a loaded gun, in the first place?” the mayor asked. “Because long before he shot Trayvon Martin, he was arrested for attacking a police officer and was the subject of a court order to prevent domestic violence. But unfortunately, in Florida, the gun laws are very lax.
“This is just the craziest thing,” Bloomberg added. “Only in America. We have more guns than people. The rest of the world is looking at us incredulously. We’re letting people kill our citizens.”
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the council would vote on a symbolic resolution this week “to condemn this killing, the weaknesses in its investigation and the lack of an arrest.”
Council members said they will wear hoodies for the vote.
Martin’s parents promised not to let their son’s death be forgotten.
“He has on a hoodie — he has on a heavenly hoodie,’’ said his mother, Sybrina Fulton.
Fulton submitted trademark applications for the phrases “I am Trayvon” and “Justice for Trayvon” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, The Smoking Gun reported.
Meanwhile, advocates for Zimmerman continued to plead their case.
“George Zimmerman is a genuine human being, and he was out there performing his duties as watch captain because he cares for his neighborhood,” said friend and neighbor Joe Oliver, who is black, on NBC’s “Today” show.
Additional reporting by Chuck Bennett and Post Wire Services