Times Sq. MLK rally to rap Prez ‘racism’
NEW YORKERS will honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy with a rally in Times Square where protesters will speak out against President Trump’s anti-immigration policies and rigid criminal justice agenda.
“The nation is on the brink of going backward if we don’t push forward,” said civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton in a phone interview with the Daily News. “That’s why it is important really to proclaim we will not go back.”
Sharpton’s National Action Network will kick off the holiday with a breakfast gathering in Washington featuring Baxter Leach, one of the original striking sanitation workers from Memphis, where King was killed on April 4, 1968.
King was there to back the 1,300 sanitation workers who were engaged in a 64-day strike, which was prompted by a malfunctioning garbage compactor that fatally crushed two black men.
On Monday, prominent elected officials and civil rights leaders will celebrate King’s legacy at the National Action Network’s Harlem headquarters.
Speakers will include Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio, as well as a host of other elected officials.
“We are holding those in power accountable,” Sharpton said, “which is why it’s important we have the officials address the racism of Trump and what they are doing in their offices to address racial and class inequality.”
There will also be a rally in Times Square at 3 p.m. to protest Trump’s comments on immigrants, activists said.
Trump slammed protections for immigrants from “s--thole” countries in the Caribbean and Africa during an Oval Office meeting Thursday afternoon, according to multiple people in attendance.