He’s preparing to defend his Sean Bell acquittal protest

The Rev. Al Sharpton will take his public nuisance and disturbing the peace case to court Oct. 6, a Manhattan judge ruled Thursday. Sharpton, who was arrested in early May - along with scores of protestors who froze up major New York City thoroughfares as a statement against the acquittal of three police officers in the shooting death of Sean Bell - had an opportunity recently to admit guilt and avoid a trial and jail time. But the civil rights leader, who heads the Harlem-based National Action Network, wanted a public airing for a case that focuses attention back on what he and others say is the egregiously unfair freeing of the NYPD cops who shot down the 23-year-old Bell outside a Queens nightclub on the eve of his wedding day, Nov. 25, 2006. The officers shot the unarmed groom and his two friends in a haze of 50 bullets. Bell’s friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, survived but were seriously wounded. On Wednesday, Sharpton said there is nothing unlawful about a peaceful protest. “Every time they bring me back, it further exposes the disparity of justice in this city,” he said.

The civil rights leader had suffered from a stomach ailment

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has been released from a Chicago hospital, two days after being admitted for severe stomach pains. The 66-year-old civil rights leader checked into Northwestern Memorial Hospital last Wednesday and was treated for viral gastroenteritis, inflammation of the stomach and intestines, and dehydration, according to the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the organization Jackson founded. He fell ill after returning from voter registration events in Ohio and Georgia, a news release said. “I have high regard for these doctors,” Jackson told the Chicago Tribune from his hospital bed Thursday. Jackson is now back on his regular schedule, a Rainbow/PUSH spokeswoman said.

Black preacher sues Klan store on his church’s property. A Black South Carolina church has sued a Ku Klux Klan store, which is selling robes and pointy hoods, racist T-shirts and other anti-African American paraphernalia from the space it rents from the house of worship. The Rev. David Kennedy, pastor of New Beginnings Baptist Church in Laurens County, S.C., acknowledges that a clause in the deed entitles John Howard to run the store from the building until he dies. But Kennedy says that a Klansman, who was clashing with fellow members of the hate group, transferred property rights back to the church more than a decade ago. Kennedy is seeking to shut the store down. As it stands now, he says he can’t even inspect the store, even though it’s on his property. “We’ve been outright denied,” he told The Associated Press. “Right now what we’re focusing on is removing this cloud of doubt and this whole lie that we are not the real owners of the Redneck Shop building.” If Kennedy is successful, his church will be deemed the owner of the property. It would also preclude Howard and his cohorts from continually trying to transfer the property to various members of the Klan. “We think the actions they did were willful,” Kennedy’s attorney, Rauch Wise, told AP. Howard says he’s a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon for South Carolina and North Carolina. In addition to the Klan garb, his shop features pictures of burning crosses and of men, women and children in Klan clothing. “Martin Luther King said this: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,”‘ Kennedy said. “It’s going to be a good day to see them in court.”

It marks the first time in 50 years a U.S. leader goes to the North African nation.
Secretary Rice will visit ex-enemy Libya. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads to Libya this, it will mark the first time a U.S. secretary of state has visited the former enemy in more than a half-century. It’s a historic stop,” spokesman Sean McCormack said, noting that Rice will be the first secretary of state to visit Libya since John Foster Dulles in 1953 and the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit since then-Vice President Richard Nixon in 1957. “In that period of time, we’ve had a man land on the moon, the Internet, the Berlin Wall fall, and we’ve had 10 U.S. presidents.” The trip to the oil-rich North African nation is designed to open a new era of U.S.-Libyan relations at a time when the United States is desperate for new sources of petroleum. The State Department removed Libya, once dubbed by President Ronald Reagan the “Mad Dog of the Middle East,” from the international terrorist list after Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi began renouncing terrorism and owning up to the infamous bombings, such as that of Pan Am Flight 103, for which he compensated the families of victims $3 billion. While in Tripoli, Rice is expected to raise the case of Fathi al-Jahmi, 67, a seriously ill political prisoner, who has been jailed or held in a hospital for the past six years. His brother, Mohammed, lives in Boston and has been prodding Bush administration to get involved in securing his release.  Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights have sent Rice a deluge of recent letters urging her to raise Jahmi’s case and other human rights issues when she meets with Gadhafi, The Washington Post reports. “We have followed this case,” said Assistant Secretary of State C. David Welch. “We have been discussing it for some time with the Libyan government. We expect it to be discussed [by Rice] in forthcoming meetings in Tripoli.”

He’s walking in the steps of LBJ and MLK, both champions of the poor

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, taking a cue from such anti-poverty crusaders as President Lyndon B. Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., says it’s time to launch a full-frontal assault on poverty. “We need to re-invest in America,” the 66-year-old civil rights leader told a crowd of nearly 300 people in Chicago during a fund-raiser for Covenant United Methodist Church. The speech attracted Democrats and Republicans, and it did not address either political party. That’s because it’s not all about politics or presidential campaigns, said Jackson, who is pushing voter registration and education. “Change has to come from the bottom up, not just the top down,” Jackson said at a news conference prior to his speech.

He calls the public school system a throwback to Jim Crow days.

Because Chicago Public Schools have done far too little to distance themselves from the separate-and-unequal school system of the Jim Crow Era, parents should keep their children away from classrooms when school convenes on Sept. 2, says the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has joined the growing boycott. “Whether it be funding and whether it be graduation rates, we are still separated and unequal,” Sharpton said, speaking to the congregation at the New Landmark Missionary Baptist Church on Sunday morning. “Well maybe if it wasn’t unfair, they [ministers] wouldn’t be talking about a boycott.” Illinois Gov. Todd Blagojevich says he’s working with lawmakers to bring about educational equity, The Chicago Sun Times reports. “I have called the legislators back into special session on Tuesday to focus specifically on school funding,” he told Channel 2 News. “But I think it’s wrong to encourage kids to miss school.”

Rev. Al Sharpton’s daughter apparently doing fine after car accident

The Rev. Al Sharpton’s daughter, Dominique, reportedly is doing fine after she was hit by a car outside of her father’s office building in Harlem. The reverend apparently rushed to her side after learning of the accident, which EURWeb is reporting took place when she was struck while walking with two co-workers outside of National Action Network’s headquarters on West 145th St. “A car pulled into the gas station at full speed and she was pinned to the car,” explained Sharpton’s spokeswoman Rachel Noerdlinger. “Her father rushed home and she is on crutches with several stitches but she is fine and grateful for the outpouring of support from around the country.”

Kindler, gentler Klan? Not!

The Ku Klux Klan in the tiny central-east Texas town of Lufkin will hold a cross-burning this September “to honor Jesus Christ.” Officials of the White supremacist branch, the United White Knights, say that its members are not hatemongers but “God-fearing moral men and women” working “for survival of the White race.” Read more of what they said, and the reaction at BET.com/News.

For somebody with his civil rights track record, he’s allowed a mistake, he says.

Granted, the Rev. Jesse Jackson slipped up when he was recorded whispering some crass comments to a fellow guest on a TV news show, but it’s wrong to treat the civil rights leader as if he’s no longer deserving of respect, the Rev. Al Sharpton said this week. “We have all made mistakes,” Sharpton . We have all erred, and we ought not try to sugar coat when we err,” Sharpton told a gathering of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Kenner, La. “But we should not throw away everything when we err, and to say that Rev. Jackson made a mistake is correct, but to act like Rev. Jesse Jackson is not pivotal to our movement, our history … is wrong … Jesse Jackson is somebody.” Earlier this month, while Jackson was waiting to go on air with the “Fox & Friends” show in Chicago, he was taped leaning over to another African-American guest and saying, “Obama talks down to Black people… I want to cut his nuts off.” It was later disclosed that Jackson had also used the “N”-word; he was not referring to Obama. Jackson has apologized for his comments, even acknowledging they were “regretfully rude.” Sharpton, who runs the Harlem-based National Action Network, also blasted those who see Obama as an alternative to old-school civil rights leaders. “The bias in the media is they try to act like we can’t have multiple strategists,” Sharpton said. “We have never had a one-man movement.” Does Rev. Sharpton have a point about Rev. Jackson?

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