National civil rights leaders spoke in Orlando today to wrap up the NAACP’s annual convention. Reverend Al Sharpton told a large crowd at the Orange County Convention Center that Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law is "the worst violation of civil rights" in US state law.
“We cannot have our sons’ and daughters’ lives on the line for anybody that wants to pursue them, follow them, and kill them, and say it’s in self-defense”, declared Sharpton .
Sharpton called on opponents of the law to protest and work for its repeal. The law has been under increasing scrutiny since Saturday night, when a Seminole County jury found George Zimmerman not guilty of any crime in the fatal shooting of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman said he shot Martin in self-defense.
Reverend Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King the Third addressed similar issues, criticizing the Stand Your Ground law and the recent US Supreme Court ruling that struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
