Activists honor victims of police violence, slain officers on MLK Day

NEW YORK — On the same Staten Island block where Eric Garner died after an New York City police officer placed him in the chokehold that killed him last summer, his wife Esaw Garner today held back tears as she lit a candle in his memory.

She was one of hundreds who braved the New York cold Monday to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy in a series of events that remembered both those killed through police violence as well as officers killed while serving the community.

"My husband had a lot of love for these people and these people have a lot of love for him," Garner said. "I take refuge in that."

Before their final stop on Staten Island, the caravan of activists and local residents was driven by the National Action Network, a nonprofit headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton, to the scene of another death — the housing project in southern Brooklyn where 28-year-old Akai Gurley was killed by a rookie police officer. New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has said the shooting appeared to be a tragic accident.

But the first stop on the Martin Luther King Day journey was to Bedford Stuyvesant. The New York neighborhood is the site where NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were gunned down last month. The man responsible for their deaths had earlier posted virulent anti-police messages on social media and cited the case of both Garner and of another unarmed black man Michael Brown, who was shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri sparking nationwide protests.

The message seemingly conveyed through the choice of venue was that violence against officers and the protesting the mistreatment of people of color at the hands of police must be part of the same movement.

"We're here to make our commitment to peace known," said Craig Williams, a pastor at the Greater St. Stephen Church. "But also to make a commitment to continue nonviolent direct action."

Dozens of police surrounded the event, as Sharpton, and others laid a wreath on the subway grate where the officers were shot.

"We are paying respect to the fallen," Hazel Dukes, the head of the New York chapter of the NAACP said. "Our community should respect the police who are here for our protection."

But, Dukes said, the tragedy should not be conflated with the peaceful protests against police brutality that have become a near weekly feature of life for many in New York City and elsewhere.

"The shooting caused a great rift," she said. "But it wasn't someone from our community. All of us can't be punished for that … Dr. King would want us to do this to bring healing to the city."

The violence of 2014 has pushed the focus of last year’s Martin Luther King Day rallies — voting rights and economic inequality — to the back burner. Police violence against black men took center stage this year.

In 2014 the police killings of young black males such as Garner, Brown and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was shot in Cleveland while holding a nonlethal pellet gun, sparked months of protests, police crackdowns and 24/7 media coverage. The deaths not only highlighted the often fraught relationship between police and people of color but also wide disparities in the perception of race relations in America.

"For us Michael Brown's killing represents a deeper crisis in the country around policing, prisons and criminal justice," said Libero Della Piana, the senior organizer at Alliance for a Just Society, a national network of racial and economic justice organizations.

There was additional evidence in 2014 that income inequality is a growing problem in the U.S. According to the Pew Research Center, new research shows that the median wealth of white families was 13 times higher than that of black families.

“I would argue, if you look at the relative economic position, we actually have not made substantial progress of any significance since 1964,” William Darity Jr., a professor of public policy at Duke University in North Carolina.

And 60 years after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, schools are increasingly divided along race and class lines, with over 50 percent of public school students living in poverty for the first time in 50 years. In 1980 the typical black student attended a school where 36 percent of students were white. Today the average black student attends a school where only 29 percent are.

On Monday at 7:30 p.m., Sharpton and others met on Staten Island to hold a candlelight vigil for Garner, who was choked to death by an NYPD officer in July. When a grand jury on Dec. 3 failed to indict that officer, it triggered another round of nationwide protests.

There were also several events in Washington, D.C., including an annual peace walk, and a breakfast lead by the National Action Network. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell attended that event

President Barack Obama commemorated the holiday by volunteering at a local Boys & Girls Club as part of the National Day of Service, in which the White House encourages Americans to spend the day helping others in order to honor King's legacy.

The president shied away from making any political statements during his events. In New York, those attending the vigils were decidedly more partisan.

"Dr. Martin Luther King was about civil rights and human rights," Roberta Corbett, a 64-year-old Bronx resident said at the Staten Island vigil for Garner. "The cops took away Garner's rights, his human rights. The same thing has happened all over. Nothing has really changed since King's time."

Despite the recent spate of police-involved violence across the country, some remained hopeful that King's legacy lives on.

Sekenya Anderson, a 16-year-old from Far Rockaway, volunteers at the nonprofit Far Rockaway Youth Task Force and attended all three vigils.

Anderson said he fears that he or one of his friends will end up another headline like Gurley and Garner.

"I witness police harassment every day," he said. "I see myself as them."

But, Anderson said, he feels inspired by King to change the relationship his community and the rest of New York has with police.

"[King] fought for us to be free," he said. "We just have to piggyback on what he was doing."