Saturday, April 13, 2019

Al Sharpton from the Tawana Brawley hoax to honorary doctorate

Fury at Crown Heights school’s plan to bestow Rev. Al Sharpton with honorary doctorate



Rev. Al Sharpton, a master of agitation, could soon be a doctor of humane letters.
Taxpayer-funded Medgar Evers College, a CUNY school in the middle of Crown Heights, is planning to bestow the honorary doctorate on the man many say inflamed tensions during the bloody 1991 race riots in the Brooklyn neighborhood.
The college, in a resolution to go before a committee Monday, says it wants to recognize Sharpton’s “unwavering commitment to racial, educational and socioeconomic equity” at its June 5 commencement.
The degree would come nearly 28 years after Sharpton played a key role in the days of violence that rocked Crown Heights.
The turmoil began on Aug. 19, 1991, after 7-year-old Gavin Cato, who was black, was accidentally struck and killed by the motorcade of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the head of the Lubavitch Hasidic sect.
Within hours, Hasidic scholar Yankel Rosenbaum, 29, was set upon by an angry mob reportedly shouting “Kill the Jew,” and stabbed to death.

Sharpton arrived on the scene a day after Cato’s death, spoke at rallies and, despite pleas from then-Mayor David Dinkins to restore calm, organized a march of hundreds through the Hasidic section of Crown Heights on the Jewish sabbath. Some 400 protestors chanted “No justice, no peace” as they filed past the Lubavitch headquarters surrounded by cops.
At Cato’s funeral, Sharpton eulogized the boy, saying he was killed by “the social accident of apartheid.” He referred to Jews as diamond merchants and did not mark Rosenbaum’s death.
In four days of clashes, looting and fires, an estimated 152 police officers and 38 civilians were injured, 27 police cars damaged, and dozens of businesses trashed.
Medgar Evers College, in a resolution obtained by The Post attached to the proposed degree, does make note of 1991 as a key year in Sharpton’s history, but makes no mention of the riots.
Instead, it recalls Sharpton founding the National Acton Network that year to “increase voter education, provide services to those in poverty, uphold police accountability, and support small community businesses.”
The resolution also omits Sharpton’s tax troubles and his 2017 decision to sell the rights to his life story to NAN, his own nonprofit, bringing him $531,000.
The college cites his Madison Avenue Initiative to push major corporations to spend their ad dollars reaching more minority households. But there is silence on Sharpton’s tactics that have been likened by some to a shakedown as he demands donations to NAN from large companies like General Motors and AT&T in exchange for not protesting against them.
Enlarge ImageAl Sharpton (middle) in 1992 marching with Carmel Cato, who's son was killed the year before, sparking the Crown Heights riots.
Al Sharpton (middle) in 1992 marching with Carmel Cato, who’s son was killed the year before, sparking the Crown Heights riots.AP
While Sharpton has sanitized his image over the decades, some people have very personal recollections of his role in race relations.
Norman Rosenbaum, Yankel’s brother, was aghast that Medgar Evers would pay tribute to Sharpton, who has never acknowledged the mob that accosted his brother as murderers.
“This is not a person you honor,” Rosenbaum told The Post from Australia, where he lives. “Within the last 27 years he hasn’t changed. The same character is there.”
He said Sharpton, now 64, is being legitimized by politicians and through his role as an MSNBC host.
“I think he’s a fraud and a charlatan whose actions over the years speak for themselves and they’re not good actions,” Rosenbaum said. “He’s a man who does not promote peace. He’s not told the truth.”
The college also ignores the case that made Sharpton a household name — his defense of upstate teenager Tawana Brawley, who claimed in 1987 that she was abducted and raped by a group of white men. The story turned out to be a hoax, but Sharpton has never apologized.
“I can’t believe the guy’s being recognized for anything,” said Steven Pagones, an ex-prosecutor whom Sharpton falsely accused of aiding in the “attack,” who later won a defamation suit against the reverend.
He is “worried about his own political agenda and that’s it,” Pagones said.
If the Medgar Evers proposal passes CUNY’s Committee on Academic Policy, Programs and Research Monday, it will go before the full CUNY board next month.

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