Al Sharpton Announces Plan To Steal Parkland Survivors' Limelight
“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” That famous piece of political “wisdom” seems to have become the motto of gun control advocates in the wake of Parkland … and now it appears to be the credo of one of the most famous pot-stirrers in all of politics.
Al Sharpton has finally figured out how to inject himself into the gun control debate. The aging civil rights figure has teamed up with a student from Marjory Stoneman Douglas to hold a rally at Trump Tower in New York in June, according to The Associated Press.
No, Sharpton hasn’t recruited David Hogg. That would be far too much smugness in one place.
“Aalayah Eastmond, a junior at Stoneman Douglas High School, was at Sharpton’s National Action Network in Harlem for the minister’s weekly meetings,” the AP explained. “Sixteen-year-old Eastmond was in class Feb. 14 when a gunman fired through a window, sparing her but eventually killing 17 people.”
While the more well-known Hogg has railed against adults and angrily declared that “old a– parents” don’t know how to use democracy, Eastmond seems to be taking a different approach. The 63-year-old and gray-haired Al Sharpton certainly isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when thinking about a youth revolution.
“The rally is set to take place on June 2, at the start of New York’s Gun Violence Awareness Month,” The Hill explained about Sharpton and Eastmond’s planned event.
“The rally will begin at Trump International Tower and proceed to Trump Tower, where President Trump has lived for years before becoming president and moving into the White House,” the news outlet continued.
Nothing says “relevant” quite like protesting where the president used to live, along with an elderly race organizer who used to be important.
The New York location is particularly meaningful to Aalayah Eastmond. “I actually lost my uncle to gun violence in Brooklyn,” she told the AP. “So for it to happen to me, in my face, that just shows that change has to happen now.”
It did not seem to occur to the young student that Brooklyn already has some of the most strict gun control laws in America, and that labeling both that city and her school “gun free zones” did nothing to stop two tragic crimes.
Of course, it isn’t the first time Sharpton has taken a national story and tried to ride it back into the spotlight. Not long ago, he used the well-known Mike Brown controversy to appear on television as much as possible.
Sharpton also tried to speak on behalf of murdered NYPD Officer Randolph Holder a few years ago, but was shut down by the slain cop’s family.
“He didn’t like (Sharpton). He wasn’t a fan. So I don’t know why (Sharpton) is speaking,’’ Mary Muhammad, Holder’s fiancée, said at the time.
People who risk their lives dealing with the failures of New York gun control even called out Sharpton for hurting rather than helping. “The city is divided because of people like Sharpton,” declared Ed Mullins, the head of the NYPD Sergeants Union.
People like David Hogg and Aalayah Eastmond may be on the wrong side of the gun issue, but at the very least their impassioned advocacy makes sense. They were at the scene of a tragedy and now want to take action — it just happens to be misguided.
Sharpton, on the other hand, has become a bit like an ambulance chaser, scrambling from one incident to the next in order to take advantage of the situation for his own publicity.
More often than not, his meddling divides rather than unites … and it may be time for him to step aside. Not everything is about him.
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