From CNN:
Reverend Al Sharpton and his lawyers say they are preparing to file a defamation lawsuit against conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for an op-ed published Saturday, which Sharpton alleges “erroneously” characterizes his (Sharpton’s) role in a string of violent incidents in New York in the early 90′s.
In the op-ed published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal Limbaugh writes Sharpton “played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews ‘diamond merchants’) and 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riot.”
Let’s call this as it is (I would say call a spade a spade, but someone would undoubtedly accuse me of being a racist). Al Sharpton is just pissed off because someone pointed out what everyone but his most dedicated sycophants already knows: where Al goes, trouble follows.
Let’s start with the Freddie’s Fashion Mart incident. Wikipedia has a perfect summary of it.
In 1995, a black Pentecostal Church, the United House of Prayer, which owned a retail property on 125th Street, asked Fred Harari, a Jewish tenant who operated Freddie’s Fashion Mart, to evict his longtime subtenant, a black-owned record store called The Record Shack. Sharpton led a protest in Harlem against the planned eviction of The Record Shack. Sharpton told the protesters, “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.”
On December 8, 1995, Roland J. Smith Jr., one of the protesters, entered Harari’s store with a gun and flammable liquid, shot several customers and set the store on fire. The gunman fatally shot himself, and seven store employees died of smoke inhalation. Fire Department officials discovered that the store’s sprinkler had been shut down, in violation of the local fire code. Sharpton claimed that the perpetrator was an open critic of himself and his nonviolent tactics. Sharpton later expressed regret for making the racial remark, “white interloper,” and denied responsibility for inflaming or provoking the violence.
To summarize: Al Sharpton protested for days and inflamed the community and use racist terms like “white interloper” because, as we all know, if you’re white and open a business in a black neighborhood, you’re an interloper looking to extort the neighborhood, but if you’re black and open up in a white neighborhood, then you’re a pioneer and deserve a 24 hour police watch just to make sure them white folks don’t mess up your shit.
Sharpton has a real pair of balls absolving himself of anything in this case. He started the insane and out of control racist protest that ended with Roland Smith’s actions. Sorry, Al, but that one is a medal you can wear clearly on your chest because you earned it.
Then, of course, is the Crown Heights riots, which of course ole Reverend Al had nothing to do with. How he keeps ending up at the center of all these stories he has nothing to do with is beyond logical comprehension, but let’s just humor the bloated racist for a minute.
Whatever the sequence of events was notwithstanding, somehow a car ran through an intersection and ended up in the front yard of the Cato family, pinning young Gavin Cato under the car. Hatzoloh, the Jewish volunteer ambulance service was first on the scene and was directed by police to take the driver, who was beaten until the police arrived, to the hospital while Cato was freed from underneath the car. As Cato was removed from under the car, the waiting NYC ambulance took him to Kings County hospital where he was pronounced dead. The key there is that the second ambulance was already there when Cato was taken out from under the car.
So far, no Al, right?
A few days later, at the funeral, Al Sharpton launched into a racist tirade calling Jews “diamond merchants” and while there are very few photos from the riots (understandably so, it was effing chaos) it’s not hard to imagine the kind of anti-semitism on display. In fact, before Cato’s funeral, a gang of black kids grabbed Yankel Rosenbaum and beat him to death. Did he do anything wrong? Nope. He was just one of those pesky “diamond merchants”.
While Sharpton didn’t come into the picture until Gavin Cato’s funeral, his racist and anti-semitic tirade almost certainly crystallized the feelings of a neighborhood mourning a tragic loss and set them into action robbing, looting, and setting fire to their own neighborhood in anger. It’s important to note, also, that Jews were not rioting in Crown Heights. Caribbean natives and other black people from around the city were doing all the rioting, looting, and destroying, undoubtedly influenced by Sharpton’s spark in a gasoline filled neighborhood.
Once the riots were over, Sharpton tried unsuccessfully to kick up tensions again by marching 400 protesters in front of the Lubavitch of Crown Heights shouting “No Justice, No Peace,” in a sure attempt at fostering community understanding and interracial harmony.
Sharpton has touted for years that a committee empaneled by then “Mayor” David Dinkins, who pretty much let Crown Heights burn for 4 days before really attempting to stop the rioting, found that he did not cause the rioting. Judging by his actions, and his attempt to reignite that spark after things had settled down, however, anyone who was around knows that’s complete and utter crap.
New Yorkers have seen the kind of person Reverend Al is more than any other folks in this country. We’ve seen his anti-white anti-Jew rhetoric for so long that we’ve just come to expect it. We’ve come to expect that where there’s race trouble, you’ll find Al at the center of it either stoking the flames or trying to get famous from it. I hope he does get froggy and decide to sue Rush. I’d love to have a court record of his racist history in this city and him defending his often-abominable behavior.
Don’t back down, Rush. We don’t always see eye-to-eye, but in this instance, I’m 100% behind you.