Chicago’s activist Catholic Priest, Father Michael Pfleger, took the occasion of the George Zimmerman trial to race to the streets to stir his flock, preparing them for “civil disobedience,” and leading a rally to decry the not guilty verdict reached in the Florida case. Pfleger also claimed that teen Trayvon Martin is somehow just like civil rights icon Emmett Till.
Pfleger, a long-time left-wing activist in the city, took to the streets of Chicago holding a sign that read “I Am Trayvon Martin,” and announced to the media that on Sunday he was going to urge his flock of mostly African Americans at St. Sabina Church to “civil disobedience.”
Before the verdict was announced on July 13, Pfleger took to his Facebook page and in an all caps post asked God for a conviction of Zimmerman.
OKAY……I’M PUTTING OUT A CALL…..I BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF PRAYER. NO MATTER YOUR FAITH PRAY TONIGHT FOR THE CONVICTION OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN. TRAYVON AND THE TRAYVONS THROUGHOUT THIS COUNTRY NEED JUSTICE!!!!!!!!!! SPREAD THE WORD………..
Pfleger followed up his Facebook post with an interview with Chicago’s WBBM-TV/CBS 2, saying, “I believe George Zimmerman was guilty and I believe he should have been convicted. I’m just very sad, disappointed, and angry about it.”
In the same interview with CBS 2’s Suzanne Le Mignot, Pfleger fanned the flames of racial strife recounting how one woman from his church told him that her sons’ lives are now “worthless.”
“She called up crying,” Pfleger told the media, “she said ‘America’s sent a message to my two teenage sons, that their life is worthless.’ I just talked to the Emmett Till family a while ago and this is Emmett Till all over again. This is a horrible, horrible day for America.”
14-year-old African American Emmett Till was murdered and mutilated in Mississippi in 1955 after he was said to have whistled at a white woman, but Trayvon Martin was physically attacking Hispanic George Zimmerman when he was shot.
Inflammatory rhetoric is familiar to Michael Pfleger. In 2007 he called for the life of a gun shop owner to be “snuffed out,” then stirred criticism in 2008 by preaching in Jeremiah Wright’s church that Hillary Clinton was a white racist for daring to face Barack Obama in the Democrat primaries (even cursing during his performance). Pfleger was so troublesome for the Archdiocese of Chicago that in 2011 he was suspended from his church until he apologized for making threats against Church leaders.
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