Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg on Sunday faced a tense protest at the Brown Chapel in Selma, Alabama, with a handful of people standing and turning their backs on him as the Democratic presidential hopeful spoke in the pulpit.
Even before Bloomberg began speaking, it was clear that his presence at the church, which was the epicenter of the civil rights movement in Selma, was controversial.
Pastor Leodis Strong prefaced the mayor’s speech by saying that when he first invited Bloomberg, he rebuffed the invitation only to later change his mind.
Photo: AP
“It shows a willingness on his part to change,” Strong said, before adding that he wanted Bloomberg to come to Selma to listen to people.
However, several in the audience could be heard whispering in contempt — referencing the stop-and-frisk policing policy he pursued in New York and his wealth.
One of the people who turned his back to the mayor was Ryan Haygood, president and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.
Photo: AFP
As Bloomberg spoke, Haygood said he thought about the treatment civil rights organizers faced from police in the chapel 55 years ago as they protested for equal voting rights.
Bloomberg presided over the same kind of tactics as mayor of New York, Haygood said.
As he realized Bloomberg was not planning to address that issue, he decided to turn his back, Haygood said.
“I thought this would be the place where he could finally say once and for all: ‘Let me own what I did, let me atone for it,’” Haygood said. “He didn’t even touch it which is more disrespectful. And some of the foot soldiers were in the building, who were brutalized.”
Bloomberg, who apologized for stop-and-frisk in November last year, was one of several high-profile figures to attend a nearly four-hour service, including former US vice president Joe Biden, and US senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, who are also seeking the Democratic nomination.
Former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg also joined marchers re-enacting the walk across the steel-arched Edmund Pettus Bridge that ended in mayhem on Bloody Sunday in 1965 during a Selma to Montgomery march.
Biden and Warren were fresh off the South Carolina primary, which Biden won handily. He earned a warm welcome at the chapel, where he spoke about the legacy of the civil rights movement and the need for healing in the face of division.
“When I get up in the morning sometimes I wonder whether its 1920 or 2020,” he said. “I’m serious, think about it.”
Biden evoked former US president Barack Obama, US Representative John Lewis, a civil right activist, and the importance of the church.
Additional reporting by AP
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