On Monday, January 18, 2010 in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., editor of Today's News NJ Daryl Mikell Brooks will begin a 50 day hunger strike. Brooks will have no food, only liquids, during his hunger strike.
No food just liquids....
Who is Daryl Mikell Brooks?
As an activist Daryl have sought to confront those issues that plague our neighorhoods: drugs, guns, gang violence, inadequate educational system, prison system, police corruption and poverty.
He is the new age civil, human and political activist. A former host radio talk show on WTTM, ran for congress, US Senate twice and editor of Today's News NJ
A civil rights activist, former candidate for U.S. Senate and veteran of the justice system, Brooks is angry at the treatment of himself and persons released from the corrections system in the New Jersey.
“Racial and economic disparity in the treatment of people in the criminal justice system is the elephant in the room that no one is talking about,” Brooks said. “The hunger strike will draw attention to this critical issue – and hopefully stir action and lead to justice.”
As a result of his being mistreated at the hands of the Trenton Police Department, a former councilman, the city’s current Mayor, a corrupt drug dealer family and the Mercer County justice system, Daryl was convicted in 1998 of a crime to which he maintains his innocence.
Brooks’ supporters are requesting that the Mercer County Court reopen the case.
According to Black, Hispanic, and other minority groups, minority groups are disproportionately targeted and receive unfair treatment by police and other front-line law enforcement officials. They face charges and offenses that may be racially skewed, and many times endure plea bargaining decisions of prosecutors without full process of the law. Some claim discriminatory sentencing practices; and the failure of judges, elected officials and other criminal justice policy makers to redress the inequities that become more glaring every day.
Disdain of primarily inner city Blacks toward the justice system runs deep. Many uphold that it is because of the conviction rates of inner city Blacks of crimes they did not commit: A practice that ran rampant during the civil rights era and, some say, still exists today.
As Brooks explains, "As America builds prisons instead of universities, we are writing ahead our history, a script written well into the future. And it is a pretty ugly script with a grim outcome.”
Dr. King put it best when he said, "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law."
Brooks also believes in the immortal words of the great American patriot Patrick Henry, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
www.brooks50dayhungerstrike.blogspot.com
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