An Open Letter Honoring Dr. Alton Brooks

To the family of Dr. Alton F. Brooks,

My deepest condolences to you in this sad time. As we come together to remember and honor the life of Dr. Alton F. Brooks, I know you know how much he meant to so many people – and I hope you feel the embrace of that love, from so many people, right now.

I hold firm that Dr. Brooks is and will remain forever at the highest order of honored citizen of the great City of New Britain. His contributions, leadership, moral guidance and endless work has been central to so much of what is and remains good about our great city.

I know what Dr. Brooks’ leadership has meant over the years to the Spottswood A.M.E. Zion Church and its congregants. As a man of great faith, he has been a wise and steadfast leader, whose wisdom provided a foundation for a living congregation. His wisdom has reached out into the larger faith community, and he has stood as a voice to bring people together for common goals for all people.

So much of the history of good works in the New Britain community, including but by far not limited to his work in the founding of the Human Resources Agency of New Britain, speak to his dedication to building the institutions necessary to make the most optimistic ambitions for a better, more just, more equitable future for everyone a reality. I was able to learn from him recounting his own personal experience in the works in the “Great Society” era, for example, in knowing what needed to be done in the future. With all of the problems caused since then from the undoing in the country of the optimistic work of that era, it was and is essential to have had Dr. Brooks’ wisdom to know that most of the best ideas to build a better future were already thought of and were being built. The history of his works, along with others from our past he worked with, are so much at the core of what is still needed.

It was Dr. Brooks who invited me to join the Executive Committee of the New Britain NAACP. I was humbled and honored and still am. In his own life, he had experienced terrible racism. He organized against it and, along with so many others, made great progress, especially locally. He was an inspirational leader in the need to continue the work, and organize, for Civil Rights, against reactionary backsliding, and toward a truly equal future.

His was an approach that was built on the conviction of what is good and focused on practical goals. Whether it was, for example, his work on worker’s rights or affordable housing, Dr. Brooks was a beacon of goodness amid the fog of the moment – someone who was always a firm voice for what is the good thing to do. Moreover, his words were far more than just words. He backed them up with organizing and action.

Of course, so much of my work with Dr. Brooks has been in politics. He understood very intimately that political outcomes and decisions affect so much of what matters. He was cordial to all elected officials, but he was never ambiguous about what outcomes, either in policies or election results, were the good path forward. He was a mentor and leader to me in politics and I always had the respect for the goodness of the path he believed in to take his mentoring as a call to action to work harder and better.

Dr. Brooks had an old-style of political action that younger generations would be wise to learn from. The handwritten lists he kept of people to contact about upcoming elections might seem quaint to some, but the people on those lists were all people he had taken the time to get to know – whose lives, opinions, values and concerns he knew. People respected his words when he called because they knew he cared about them. That very human approach to politics is what progressive politics must inherently be about, and what makes it better than any other political persuasion.

Dr. Brooks believed in organizing at the grassroots and in building coalitions. He believed in the Democratic Party and building it as a coalition that could make a difference by standing for good things, nominating good candidates and getting Democrats elected to get good things done. He took setbacks as moments to take stock of what needed to be done to build, organize and win what is good for the people, again. He never stopped working for that.

Like so many others, I miss the mentor and friend I was always honored to respectfully call, “Mr. Brooks.” But his works and wisdom are too great not to live on. I almost expect to receive another phone call from him calling for the next meeting to plan the next step toward winning a better future for everyday people.

I firmly believe that the best way to honor Dr. Brooks is to open up the chapters of his long life and read into his good works, not a cold history to consign to the past, but a call to action for the future. If there is something good that needs doing, Dr. Brooks was probably already doing it – and he would be the first to say what the next step in that continuing work should be. That work is needed now more than ever.

Thank you, Mr. Brooks. I honor you. I thank you. I miss you.

Sincerely,

Tim O’Brien
Former Mayor
City of New Britain