De Blasio seems to forgotten that he’s dealing with a media whore.
Via Reuters:
(Reuters) – New York Mayor Bill de Blasio implored protesters on Monday to wait until after the funerals of two policemen shot dead in an ambush before resuming rallies that have roiled the city and beyond over the deaths of black men at the hands of police.
But de Blasio’s plea was quickly dismissed by several activist groups that vowed to continue protests that have stirred the city daily after grand juries chose not to indict police officers who killed Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
…Police identified the killer as Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who wrote online that he planned to avenge the deaths of Garner and Brown, who were both unarmed black men killed by white officers. Brinsley killed himself with a shot to the head soon after.
“Let’s comfort these families, let’s see them through these funerals,” de Blasio said in his speech, hours after visiting the officers’ grieving families with Bill Bratton, the police commissioner. “Then debate can begin again.”
But the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist representing the families of Garner and Brown, said de Blasio’s call was too nebulous to heed.
“Is a vigil a protest? Is a rally?” Sharpton said in a telephone interview, calling de Blasio’s comments “an ill-defined request.”
Sharpton, who joined Garner’s relatives over the weekend to denounce the slaying of the officers, said he would not change planned prayer vigils at the scene of Garner’s death and elsewhere over the coming days to mark the family’s first Christmas without him.
Reuters describes the communist ANSWER Coalition as an “activist” group:
The Answer Coalition, an activist group, denounced the mayor’s plea as an “outrageous” attempt to “chill” free expression. It said it had no intention of cancelling a long-planned protest march on Tuesday evening.
At least one small candle-light vigil called for by a separate coalition of groups took place in Brooklyn on Monday evening, an organizer said.