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Black Power part 11
Rev. Al Sharpton also worked along with Pinn and BK CORE on various cases of police brutality. In fact, Sharpton worked with several activists from Brooklyn CORE over the years into the 1980's, Sonny Carson in particular.
1980's and on
Working with Jitu Weusi and other militant Black leaders such as Rev. Herb Daughtry, Pinn was one of the founders of what became the National Black United Front, part of a growing effort among several Black activists to reactivate the movements of the 1960's and 1970's. Closely allied with Ind. BK CORE, for which Jitu Weusi was made an honorary chairman, the Front worked out of the Brooklyn CORE office during the Front's campaign to get Major Owens successfully elected to Congress in 1983.
Stanley Brezenoff became politically the highest ranking NYC CORE member in the city as the first deputy mayor in Mayor Koch's administration. Owens, however, became the most politically successfully of any of the NYC CORE members, serving for 24 consecutive years as a congressman.
During his re-election bid in 1986, Owens, who was challenged by CORE head Roy Innis, confirmed the many charges made by former CORE members against Innis' 'Black mafia' type activities. Owens produced the former chief of security for CORE, Marvin Peay, who repeated his claim that Innis ordered him to kill CORE member Waverly Yates. Yates had challenged Innis for his position as head of CORE in a bid by former CORE members to take back CORE from Innis.
Innis had also tried to legally stop Independent BK CORE over the use of the CORE name, but Pinn successfully defended the chapter in court.
Jitu Weusi, who served as an honorary chairman for the chapter at the time, had begun working in the NYC public school system again after the Uhuru Sasa school closed in the mid 1980's. Even though he worked as an assistant principal at JHS 258 in Bedford Stuyvesant for several years, he was never made a principal by the Board of Education despite his experience... or perhaps because of his experience.
By the late 1980's, Independent Brooklyn CORE presumably phased out. Many of its former members continued to be active and stayed at the center of Brooklyn's Black activist community.
Sonny Carson, who after his trial had stayed out of public eye for several years, re-emerged. He had been working for a Brooklyn based construction and hotel company, the East-West Corporation, when his mother in law was killed by crack addicts who broke into her home, held her captive and robbed her.
In response, Carson formed The Black Men's Movement Against Crack, 'a direct-action initiative to shut down crack houses during the peak years of the drug epidemic.' The language speaks to the influence of Brooklyn CORE on his organization. It included many past and present CORE people like Ali Lamont and Donald Elfe from Harlem CORE.
Ironically, BMMAC was characterized as a terrorist organization by the NY State Police. Leaders of the organization were under surveillance by the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force.
BMMAC later combined with members of another group of Black activists, the New York 8 to form the December 12th Movement. It still exists to seek reparations for African Americans in the form of funding for institutions. Carson served as chairman. According to Columbia University's social justice movements website, "Their goal is to take up what they see as Malcolm X's legacy: to bring the United States before a world court to be judged on the issue of slavery and continued violation of black people's human right... They succeeded in getting the trans-Atlantic slave trade labeled a "Crime Against Humanity" by the United Nations."
Carson also played a leading role in the 1989 Day of Outrage protest which in its use of tactics appears to be inspired by BK CORE's 1964 Stall-In. This demonstration against police brutality and a series of high profile racist killings was followed by a series of articles by Newsday in which Rev. Al Sharpton was outed as an informant for the FBI. He had specifically been informing on former leaders of CORE in New York City: then city councilman Rev. Wendell Foster (of pre-1960 New York CORE), congressman Major Owens and Sonny Carson.