BY REUVEN BLAU
“The nation is on the brink of going backwards if we don't push forward,” said civil rights leader 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.”
The National Action Network will kick off the holiday with a breakfast gathering in Washington D.C. featuring Baxter Leach, one of the original striking sanitation workers from Memphis, Tenn., where Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968.
Dr. 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, Echol Cole and Robert Walker.
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 officers 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.
“We’ve heard so many things from him via Twitter and otherwise that have been extremely troubling to our humanity,” Bernice King, the slain civil rights leader’s daughter, said in a Facebook live video posted Friday.
She hopes Trump on Monday will try to “suspend any effort at tweeting something negative or insulting.”
Instead, the President should “use his Twitter account on the King holiday to really respect the spirit, the heart and legacy of Dr. King by tweeting positive and uplifting messages.”
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