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SHARPTON TO LEAD 'PRAY-IN' PROTEST FOR SEAN BELL: Participants plan to be arrested for civil disobedience.
*Demonstrators plan to pray on their knees and be arrested for civil disobedience to protest the acquittals of three police officers in the death of an unarmed man shot on his wedding day in New York, the Rev. Al Sharpton said Saturday.
The civil rights activist, who has vowed to "close this city down" to protest last month's verdict, said protesters would stage a "pray-in" Wednesday at half a dozen places in the city, including the police headquarters.
Sharpton said participants would gather at 3 p.m. in at least six places around the city and then fan out to undisclosed locations.
"Where we go from there is anybody's guess," Rachel Noerdlinger, Sharpton's spokeswoman, said later, adding that wherever protesters end up, "they'll be arrested praying."
The "pray-in" is only the start of whatever actions are necessary to oppose the verdict. "It's going to be a long struggle, but the race isn't given to the swift or the strong, but to those who endure," Sharpton said.
Hundreds of protesters marched through Harlem a day after the officers were cleared in the November 2006 death of Sean Bell, 23. Two friends were wounded in the barrage of 50 shots fired by the undercover officers and two colleagues outside a night club where Bell had just left his bachelor party.
The death of Bell, an African American, rekindled long-standing tensions over alleged racism and excessive force by police, even though two of the officers charged are also black.
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