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Jamal Johnson is a disabled Marine Corps veteran, but it wasn’t until last week that the 63-year-old Germantown resident suffered a panic attack.
“It really took me off guard,” Johnson recalled as he was driving to his daily protest at City Hall, where he would stand for several hours, sleet and snow notwithstanding, and continue his hunger strike.
Johnson has not eaten since Jan. 18, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
He did not eat on Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month. And he will not eat, he said, until Mayor Jim Kenney publicly acknowledges City Council Resolution No. 200447, put forth by Councilmember Jamie Gauthier and passed by 14 of 17 councilmembers in September, to declare gun violence a citywide emergency.