Ever since he was stabbed in the chest 32 years ago while leading a protest march in Brooklyn against racial injustice, the Rev. Al Sharpton is leery of strangers approaching him on the street seeking an autograph or a selfie.
Sharpton knows firsthand the effects of stirred up hate, which is why he is concerned about the safety of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney.
With a possible criminal indictment looming against Donald Trump over an alleged hush money scheme, Bragg — Manhattan’s first Black DA — has found himself in the crosshairs of the former president and his rabid racist followers.
In the days since Trump used his social media platform to call Bragg an “animal,” Bragg’s office received an envelope with white powder and at least one death threat against the DA.
“As one who was stabbed myself leading a march, I don’t take a threat like this as anything less than serious,” Sharpton said in an interview.
“In light of Jan. 6, we cannot assume that this is a fluke, and that it would not inspire someone to do something to him and his family.”
Sharpton, of course, was talking about Jan. 6, 2021, and the deadly, criminal insurrection Trump instigated in his traitorous effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Trump was up to his old tricks last week urging supporters to lead mass demonstrations in the event of his arrest over alleged illegal bush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Trump has denied the payments and the affair, and has accused Bragg of having political motives.
“He is [an] animal who just doesn’t care about right or wrong no matter how many people are hurt,” Trump wrote of Bragg in an overnight post on his social media site. “Potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country.”
Then, Trump posted a scowling photo of himself swinging a baseball bat beside an image of Bragg’s head.
If that’s not a threat or a call to arms, then I don’t know what is.
Prosecution of a seven-year-old hush money payment to a porn star is hardly a worthy pursuit of justice.
Still, it pales in comparison to inciting another riot, which is what Trump is doing with his baseball bat antics and his racist insults.
But Trump likes repeat performances. The Capitol Hill riot was not enough. Neither could Trump rest with just one impeachment.
Sharpton led a prayer vigil for Bragg on Saturday at his National Action Network headquarters. Bragg lives near the group’s House of Justice in Harlem, and he teaches Sunday school at nearby Abyssinian Baptist Church.
Sharpton agreed that the hush money investigation was “low” on the priority scale, but was certain that Bragg was not playing politics.
“Are we talking about everyone is accountable to the law?” Sharpton said.
Sharpton said he is no rush to see Trump actually go to jail, but he can’t get out of his mind the irony of seeing Trump in the same courthouse where five Black and Hispanic boys were railroaded on charges that they raped a white woman while jogging in Central Park.
It was Trump who led the lynch mob in 1989, taking out full-page ads in newspapers — including the Daily News — calling for the state to reinstall death penalty in the wake of the attack.
The Central Park Five were exonerated years later, but many of their supporters, like Sharpton, blamed Trump’s ad for helping to create a climate that denied them a fair trial.
“I was cartooned and lampooned for standing with those boys,” Sharpton said.
“We may be standing in that same building again. That which you sow, you may also reap.”
According to reports, Trump wants to be handcuffed and perp-walked if he is arrested to make a complete spectacle of the spectacle. Sharpton said he’s not buying it. He thinks Trump is scared.
“Maybe that’s why he is up in the middle of the night,” Sharpton said. “Maybe he’s more afraid than we think he is.”
