MARCH INTO STATEN ISLAND

The Reverend Al Sharpton Civil Rights leader of the National Action Network and NBC talk show host plans to march across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge on Saturday August 23^rd, in a bid to stop Police vio­lence on African-American men.

Sharpton’s lat­est plan to march across the Verrazano nar­rows Bridge is to protest the chok­ing death of 43-year-old Staten Island res­i­dent Eric Garner an asth­mat­ic by NYPD cops.

The planned march has ignit­ed a firestorm of protest from Staten Island Republicans who want Mayor Bill De Blasio to inter­vene and pre­vent the march from hap­pen­ing. Thus far the Mayor has refused to get involved in the row. Permits for march­es are usu­al­ly grant­ed by the Police, how­ev­er Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has tossed it over to the MTA which owns the bridge say­ing it’s their property.

City Council Minority Leader Vincent Ignizio (R‑51^st) and Councilman Steven Matteo (R‑50^th) have called on the MTA and the NYPD to block the march over the bridge, which has no walk­way. Marching over the bridge would require shut­ting down some lanes of traffic.

U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm (R‑N.Y.) who is under Federal Indictment and — who rep­re­sents the dis­trict where the bridge is locat­ed — wrote a let­ter to Mayor de Blasio express­ing oppo­si­tion to the march. In his Letter Grimm said.

Staten Island already bears the bur­den as the traf­fic and pot­hole cap­i­tal of the coun­try, not to men­tion hav­ing the most exor­bi­tant toll in the nation,” Grimm said. “To close our only direct pas­sage to the rest of the City on a sum­mer trav­el week­end is a recipe for total dis­as­ter. There’s a rea­son the bridge has rarely been closed in its 50-year his­to­ry; because the major dis­rup­tion and safe­ty risks are mas­sive: our small busi­ness­es — already cop­ing with the out­ra­geous tolls — would bear an even greater finan­cial bur­den, fam­i­lies would be severe­ly impact­ed, and the Staten Island Expressway would be a park­ing lot… FDNY and EMT facil­i­ties in south­ern Brooklyn that serve Staten Island’s north shore neigh­bor­hoods would be cut off in the event of an emer­gency, and that is unacceptable.”

“The fact remains: the peo­ple of New York elect­ed Bill de Blasio — not Al Sharpton — and it’s time for the Mayor to stand up, show some true lead­er­ship, and deny these per­mits to close the Verrazano bridge,” he added.

Staten Island Borough President James Oddo also expressed oppo­si­tion to the march via Twitter.“We should be build­ing bridges in our com­mu­ni­ty, not march­ing over them,” he tweeted.

Lets estab­lish a few facts, these Republican hyp­ocrites are not con­cerned about a bridge clos­ing . They are not con­cerned about traffic

or any of the things they griped about. What they are opposed to is Al Sharpton and African Americans march­ing into the Borough many of them believe to be their own. The Borough President James Oddo’s state­ment is par­tic­u­lar­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble. There is no greater threat to build­ing Bridges than hav­ing Cops chok­ing and killing inno­cent cit­i­zens. Where is the out­rage from these right-wing clos­et­ed racists when the Police act inappropriately?

The fact of the mat­ter is that many of those cops live right there on Staten Island , they can do no wrong for these politi­cians, many of whom see the cops as their per­son­al army, there to defend them against the blacks.

Congressman Grimm would be bet­ter served if he paid atten­tion to the Federal Indictment which charges him with 20 counts of fraud, per­jury and obstruc­tion tied to his for­mer own­er­ship of an Upper East Side fast-food eatery that, the feds charge, employed ille­gal aliens off the books. The charges against Grimm, 44, an ex-Marine and for­mer FBI agent, car­ry a max­i­mum sen­tence of 20 years behind bars and include hid­ing more than $1 mil­lion in cash that the Second Avenue restau­rant Healthalicious took in between 2007 and 2010.

Grimm also is accused of lying under oath while a mem­ber of Congress dur­ing a January 2013 depo­si­tion tied to a civ­il suit filed by his employ­ees. Additionally ‚In 2012, it was revealed that Grimm’s for­mer part­ner Bennett Orfaly had ties to the Gambino crime fam­i­ly and was so close to one mob capo that Orfaly con­sid­ered him like an “uncle.

As report­ed by the New York post.

I am not a big fan of march­es , not sure of the effec­tive­ness of them any­more. Neither Michael Grimm , Borough President Oddo, the Police, nor any of the oth­er hyp­ocrites own the Borough of Staten Island. Just because these clowns are opposed, I believe Sharpton should gath­er the Troops and march into Staten Island if he choos­es to do so.