The Rev. Al Sharpton donned a somber face and a black suit as he stood at the helm of the crowd. His graying hair lay slickly against his head, and his eyes gazed forward. Sharpton’s companions on the front line included Abner Louima, Nicole Paultre Bell and Trent Benefield, three people whose lives are now connected by police violence: Louima, the man police sodomized with a wooden stick nine years ago; Paultre, the fiancée of Sean Bell, the 23-year-old would-be groom killed by police in Queens; and wheelchair-bound Benefield, one of Bell’s companions on the night police opened fire.

The sunny skies and 50-degree weather on Saturday were mild for December, but the mood along Fifth Avenue was not. Thousands of marchers stood behind Sharpton as he walked along Manhattan’s popular strip during the “Shopping for Justice” demonstration. The march, which led protestors along Fifth Avenue from 59th Street to 34th Street, was organized in reaction to Bell’s death on Nov. 25. As Bell and his two friends were leaving Bell’s bachelor party at a club in Queens, their car struck on unmarked police van, and officers fired 50 shots, killing Bell and injuring his two friends. All three of the men were unarmed.

Bell’s death prompted a peaceful protest, but it has also led to verbal outrage from some of New York City’s minority leaders. The shooting has been a catalyst for the emersion of strong language that harkens back to other eras of social unrest, fueled by the frustration that came with alleged racial profiling and excessive force by the police.

New York City Council Member John Liu said the fury coming out of communities is not something new. “The anger in the community is not just about this incident,” Liu said in a statement. “It is an accumulation of frustration after collective experience with police and city government.”

City Council Member Charles Barron shares the community’s frustration and expressed his anger about the Bell shooting in a phone call last week from Atlanta. “New York City is a racial powder keg ready to explode at any moment,” Barron said.

Barron, a community activist for over 25 years, a member of the City Council since 2001 and a self-proclaimed social forecaster, likened the Bell shooting to that of Amadou Diallo’s killing by police in February 1999. That night, police were searching for a black man wanted for rape, and when they saw Diallo, a West African immigrant, acting “suspiciously” at the door of his apartment in the Bronx, they approached him. Diallo then reached for something in his jacket that officers claimed they thought was a gun. The officers fired 41 shots at Diallo, who was in fact reaching for his wallet, not a weapon. “You’d think they’d stop after Amadou Diallo with 41 bullets,” Barron said, “but no, they came back with 50.”

Barron said he believes that race was a factor in Bell’s death regardless of the races of the cops who opened fire. Whether or not the cops were black, white, Latino or Asian, Barron said, “When they joined the force, they all turned blue.” Recent comments in the media have shown Barron’s contempt for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, and Barron did not back down from that impression. “Kelly must go,” he said. Barron said he acknowledged that Mayor Michael Bloomberg responded to the Bell shooting with more sensitivity than most but that Bloomberg is merely a “kinder, gentler Giuliani” and that, like Giuliani, “no heads roll” when things go wrong. “I think we need a regime change,” Barron said.

The Bell shooting has prompted Barron to look for ways other than protesting, public demonstrating and marching to bring attention to the issues of racism. He said that his participation in efforts like those in the past has obviously not been taken seriously or warranted the kinds of results for which he had hoped. “I really think we have to raise the temperature,” Barron said.

When asked if the black community had a right to respond to violence with violence, Barron replied, “I think we should protect ourselves by any means necessary.”

Barron was not the first black community leader to use words like these. Malcolm X, the infamous Civil Rights leader, used similar language in his speeches, including one on Dec. 20, 1964: “Our objective is complete freedom, complete justice, complete equality, by any means necessary.”

But language is not the only thing emerging from the past in light of the Bell shooting. A group calling itself the New Black Panther Party held a demonstration for Bell in Queens on Dec. 9. The group has a “Freedom or Death” motto and supports “power to the people” and “self defense,” according to its website. Yet contrary to what its name might indicate, the New Black Panther Party is not a new branch of the original Black Panther Party.

The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation consists of former leading members of the Black Panther Party who consider themselves the “guardians of the true history of the Black Panther Party,” according to the Foundation’s website. In a letter posted on its website in response to questions about the New Black Panther Party, the Foundation condemned the new party’s name because its members were never involved with the original party and, therefore, have no legitimate claim on the Black Panther Party’s name. The Foundation also disagrees with the New Black Panther Party’s tactics that “incite hatred, rather than resolve it.” Unlike the New Black Panther Party, the Foundation claims that the original Black Panther Party “operated on love for black people, not hatred of white people.”

The Foundation’s letter asks whether the New Black Panther Party, considering the history of late-leader, Khalid Muhammad, and his anti-Semitic commentary, is any different from the Ku Klux Klan that it allegedly opposes. The letter concludes by saying that the “Foundation denounces the usurpation of the Black Panther Party name by this questionable band of self-appointed leaders.” The New Black Panther Party could not be reached for comment.

But Barron, a former member of the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party, said he could not object to the group entirely. “I don’t denounce anyone who’s speaking out against this or anyone who’s saying, ‘We’ve had enough.’” Standing as united leaders of the black community, Barron said, was the most important stance to take because, despite the many organizations reacting to Bell’s shooting, “We all have to be against 50 shots and killer cops.”