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Former Gov. David Paterson today bashed the demonstrators who swamped the streets last year over police killings of black men as narcissistic, and declared he only attends protests held by Rev. Al Sharpton.

Speaking at a panel discussion at Touro College in his native Harlem, Mr. Paterson told a small audience that the young people who protested the non-indictments of the cops who killed Staten Islander Eric Garner and Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo., sought only to promote themselves. The states first black governor and current chairman of the New York State Democratic Party argued that anunhealthy fixation on social media has leftthe anti-police abuse movement morally and spiritually deficient to their forebears in the civil rights movement.

The technology is interfering with the culture and socialization and even the societies and government, so that it has shifted from a generation of people who care about each other to a generation who only care about themselves, he said. So even in the recent demonstrations, after the inaction of the grand juries in the Brown case and also in the Garner case, the demonstrations to me looked a whole lot different than the demonstrations that I used to go to.

Mr. Paterson argued that the tactics the movement employed were more about self-promotion than about promoting reforms in police policy.

The whole idea of protesting is to raise public awareness. Not to raise public awareness of the fact that you are there. So you have people doing things they would never have done years ago, when they were really trying to change things, he said.

Mr. Patersonwent on to paraphrasea joke by Nightly Show host Larry Wilmore about the die-ins at major transit hubs: How does lying down in Grand Central Station stopping a bunch of white people from getting back to Connecticut help the movement? And the point is, that I dont think it was even in the some of the minds of some of the protesters. It was more like grievances, settling scores or finding almost any way to get attention.

The pol acknowledgedthat other movements, including pro-police protesters, had engaged in cheap stunts like corrupting Eric Garners last wordsI cant breatheand putting it on their own t-shirts.

It was one of the most insulting things that Ive seen in my career, he said of pro-police demonstrators using Mr. Garners last words. So it isnt just us, but its those of us who are trying to change things lose them all.

He contrasted therecentdemonstrations that gridlocked city streetswith marches led by Mr. Sharpton, who he claimed honored the history and techniques of 1960s black leaders.

When I go to protests, the only time I go is when its led by a man named Reverend Al Sharpton. And when he leads a protest, he takes the time to make sure that everyone in the protest is safe, and his security people interact with law enforcement and the people, he said. And consequently, youve never seen a major incident at a protest led by Reverend Sharpton. Because he was trained by the people who went before.

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Paterson Calls Eric Garner and Michael Brown Protesters Narcissistic