From
The Trenton Times, Sunday Feb 5thAmmunition protest misses mark
Sunday, February 05, 2006
By MIRTA DAMATO
Staff Writer
WEST WINDSOR -- A rally in front of Dick's Sporting Goods to protest the store's sale of ammunition faded shortly after police informed the group they were standing on private property yesterday.
But the event sponsored by the Poor Peoples Campaign and Mothers Against Violence had already been hindered by rain and by an ongoing controversy surrounding organizer Daryl Brooks.
Persistent rain forced the group of about 12 to cancel a planned 7.2-mile march from Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Trenton to Nassau Park Pavilion, where the retail store is located.
"We want people to become aware of what is going on," said Brooks, who heads the Poor Peoples Campaign. "We want to stop any way that these gang members could get ammo."
Brooks, who was fired from Dick's last year after the store discovered he has a criminal record, said he is not a disgruntled former employee with a vendetta against the store. He claims that at the time he worked at Dick's, he informed management about what he said were gang members in hooded sweaters purchasing ammunition.
"He (the manager) told me he couldn't do anything about it," Brooks said. "He said all they can do is notify the police."
Brooks, a longtime Trenton activist, was convicted in 1998 of exposing himself to two Trenton girls and served three years and eight months of a seven-year prison term.
While Brooks denies his dismissal resulted in the targeting of the sporting goods store, other groups that originally supported the protest have found it suspect and withdrawn from the alliance.
"It's a shame that the NAACP, Cease Fire and the Coalition for Peace did not come out to support the cause," Brooks said yesterday. "They supported protesting Dick's in the beginning. They were upset that I got too much of the interview."
The Rev. Robert Moore, Coalition For Peace Action executive director, said yesterday the decision not to support the march stemmed from Brooks' failure to collaborate with other group members and his failure to tell them about his ties to Dick's Sporting Goods.
"We also kept finding out more things about him," Moore said. "I believe in the possibility of redemption. We knew that he was a convicted sex offender. That's troublesome, of course, but it wasn't until one of the articles in The Trenton Times that we found out that he had been fired from Dick's. That obviously made the motivation for the march much more suspect. I don't believe in working with people that have important information and withhold that information."
Moore added that the march, originally scheduled for the Martin Luther King holiday, was canceled and Brooks did not collaborate with the other groups about yesterday's rescheduled event.
"He (Brooks) is entitled to take action on behalf of his own group, but the rest of us did not ever make a commitment for today," Moore said yesterday. "We all still support the cause together of trying to reduce gang violence and gun violence, but we find Darryl's leadership style to be problematic."
Bryan Miller, executive director of Cease Fire New Jersey, said he found Brooks not a reliable partner. "This business about him of being a former employee of Dick's is not a good situation for him to lead a protest about Dick's," Miller said. "We decided, at least Cease Fire New Jersey decided that it would be better if we remove ourselves from the association with Darryl Brooks. We are interested in working with people who are interested in reducing gang violence, not trying to gain publicity for themselves."
Zachary Chester, NAACP chapter president, did not want to respond to Brooks' comments, except to say that they are untrue. He said they supported sending a letter to Dick's to cease selling ammunition. "We have not heard from them yet," Chester said.
While the rally did not go as planned, the damp signs carried by protesters, mostly youngsters, reading "Stop The Violence," "Guns Kill" and "Buy One Get One Free" with a photo of a coffin and youngsters pointing a handgun, did attract attention from some shopping center patrons.
"I'm totally against weapons," said Maria Knapp of Lawrence. "If they (gang members) didn't have the ammunition, they couldn't use the weapons. I'm totally against guns and stores that sell ammunition. This is a sporting goods store and they should just sell sports. I don't think ammunition goes under the heading sports."
...Sigh. Ignorance at work again!