While performing a song about love and peace in honor Trayvon Martin, soul musician Lester Chambers was attacked by an angry member in the audience on Saturday.
The attack occurred shortly after the 73-year-old Blues singer dedicated Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" to the slain teen during his performance at the Hayward Russell City Blues Festival in California. While he sung, a middle-aged white woman leapt onto the stage and pushed him down. Several band members and fans tackled the woman and made a citizen's arrest, reports CBS affiliate KPIX 5.
Chambers was taken to the hospital. He suffered bruises on his ribs and all over his body and is now forced to walk with a cane.
"It's beyond fathomable that happened to my father, a legend, someone so powerful for peace," Dylan Chambers told KPIX 5.
"I saw anger and for the short time I did see her she just came, 'You m--f--, you started this.' Boom! And I was down," said the co-founder of the 1960s band The Chambers Brothers.
"(Mayfield) sang 'People get ready, there's a train a coming.' And if he was here today singing it, he would prefer probably that we would say, 'People get ready there's a change a coming,'" Lester Chambers told KPIX 5.
Officers said the suspect, 43-year-old suspect Dinalynn Andrews-Potter, was arrested on suspicion of battery, before she was cited and released. However, the Chambers family is pushing authorities to file hate crime charges, reports Billboard.
Lester says that he would offer his attacker forgiveness and a few words of advice. "I would say to her, get a little God in your heart, and let a little love come out of your soul."
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