Mike Brown Funeral Live Stream: Watch Service For Ferguson, Missouri, Teen [VIDEO]
UPDATE 12:51 p.m. EDT: The Rev. Al Sharpton lashed out at authorities, accusing law enforcement agencies of overreacting to the protests in Ferguson. He said protesters demonstrated peacefully "and you put snipers on the roof and pointed guns at them." He also lambasted police for releasing a video they claimed showed Brown leaving a convenience store they said was robbed the same day Brown was shot.
"How do you think we look when the world sees you can't produce a police report but you can find a video?" he asked to applause.
He said police that are wrong "need to be dealt with just like people in our community who are wrong need to be dealt with."
Sharpton said Brown doesn't want to be remembered "for riots."
"He wanted to be the one who made America deal with how we are going to police the United States," Sharpton said.
Brown's funeral "is not about you," he said about the protesters. "This is about justice. This is about sadness and America is going to have to come to terms with there's something wrong that we have money to give military equipment to police forces but we don't have money for training and money for public education and money to train our children."
Sharpton also had harsh words for those in the black community who refer to themselves as the N-word and call women derogatory names.
"You've lost where you've come from," he said. "We have to clean up our community so we can clean up the United States of America."
UPDATE 12:36 p.m. EDT: "Michael Brown's blood is crying from the ground, crying for vengeance, crying for justice," said the Rev. Charles Ewing, Brown's great-uncle. Ewing said, "There is a cry being made from the ground," not just for his nephew but also for Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teen who was gunned down in 2012; for the elementary school students at Sandy Hook in December 2012; and for victims of black-on-black crime.
UPDATE 12:08 p.m. EDT: Cal Brown, Mike Brown's stepmother, remembered him as a "dynamic young man." She told the crowd that at Mike's recent high school graduation, he said that one day the world would know his name.
"He's not a lost soul," Cal Brown said. "His death was not in vain."
Another relative described Mike Brown as "a big guy, but he was a kind, gentle soul," and also spoke about how Brown said he would be remembered.
"He did not know that he was offering up a divine prophecy at that time," the relative said. "He did not know his name would be remembered, but today we were remembering the name of Mike Brown."
Original story:
Hundreds of mourners gathered inside the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis on Monday to pay their respects to Mike Brown, the unarmed black teen whose killing by Police Officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9 sparked outrage and protests on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. A number of high-profile black leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King Jr. III and film director Spike Lee, attended the funeral service for Brown, 18. Sharpton is expected to give a eulogy along with the Rev. Charles Ewing, Brown’s great-uncle.
View a live stream of the service below:
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