Republicans and Democrats must unite to stop political violence

In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Rev. Al Sharpton, host of “PoliticsNation” and founder of the National Action Network, said the conservative activist’s killing should serve as a wake-up call for Americans across the political spectrum.

“We’ve been going through this whole diet of political violence like it’s all right, and whether it’s Democrat or Republican, it’s not all right,” Sharpton told the co-hosts of “The Weeknight” on Thursday.

“I mean, we’ve seen state legislators killed. We’ve seen kids shot. We’ve seen a guy break into Speaker Pelosi’s home and almost kill her husband,” Sharpton said, adding that no matter where the victims of these acts of violence may fall on the political spectrum, “we must see it all equally, as something that we’ve got to deal with in this country.”

The civil rights activist reflected on his own first-hand experience dealing with political violence. In 1991, Sharpton was stabbed while leading a protest march in Brooklyn, New York. “I know how it is to look at your kid, who has nothing to do with nothing, and say, ‘Your father could be killed.’”

Sharpton also recalled the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, which were marked by violent attacks on activists, including the assassinations of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. and the bombing of a Birmingham church by the Ku Klux Klan. “So it was all of this, one right after another,” he said, “and now we’re seeing it in real time again.”

The MSNBC host said it was incumbent on both parties to come together to stop political violence. “I think that this is a time, rather than people choosing sides, we need to take the side of saying this political violence has to stop. Whatever we need to do, we need to do that,” he suggested. “People on the left and the right have to unite.”

You can watch Sharpton’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com