During the National Action Network Convention on Wednesday, ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office director Laura Murphy told a large audience that in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, she emailed her neighbors asking them not to call 911 on her son.
“There were so few black men in our neighborhood that I had to send out an email to my neighbors, saying, ‘Please do not call the police, because if you see a young black man walking around, that’s my child,'” Murphy said Wednesday in Washington. “So Trayvon Martin affects all of us.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton-led convention, where other members of the Obama administration are speaking later this week, is at the forefront of the racial justice movement, and more specifically with the Trayvon Martin case.
Murphy later said, “We still have to worry about walking and driving while black.”
Attorney General Eric Holder opened up the convention by attributing his and President Obama’s positions to Martin Luther King Jr. “If we find evidence of a potential federal civil rights crime,” Holder added, “we will take appropriate action and at every step, the facts and the law will guide us forward.”
Murphy later challenged Holder, saying, “Mr. Attorney General, why are you allowing guidance on the use of race in federal law enforcement that was written by [Republican] Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Bush administration?”
She also claimed racism was “a disease in America, where it’s open season on stopping and arresting African Americans and Latinos.”