Issue 136: The mayor's race + everything about Jersey City birds
Fans of longer articles, this issue is for you! Plus, reminder to go to JAB!
Good morning! Well, I’ve had a few people say that they miss reading my longer articles and, if this is you, you are in luck — I have a much-too-long article about the mayor’s campaign and then a Q & A with a local bird expert that is just exactly the right length, or I think. I hope you’ll enjoy. As always, thank you for reading! — Amy
JAB fair
Reminder that the Jersey Art Book Fair continues til 6pm on Sunday, and that it’s FREE today! For more information, including their shuttle, workshops and events, and exhibitor list, check out their website here.
Report from the never-ending mayoral race: I went to Bill O’Dea’s fundraiser and then had coffee with Jim McGreevey the next morning, so I’m afraid I wrote 3,000+ words about it.
Part one: I went to Bill O’Dea’s fundraiser on Thursday evening.
There’s certain bars that are just perfect for political fundraisers — big enough to hold a crowd but not so big that the pictures of the event won’t look good if a few people don’t make it. O’Leary’s Publik House is a classic example; long and narrow, with room on one end for speeches and plenty of space at the bar to try and avoid your enemies. The owner pointed me out to the bartenders — “she drinks free, she’s from the neighborhood,” he said, somewhat joking and somewhat not — but he didn’t have to worry. A bunch of the older church ladies had already slipped me their drink tickets, and I was doing just fine.
The place was packed. I didn’t know anyone really well but I sort of knew everybody there — it was a familiar crowd of people I vaguely recognized from other fundraisers. It was a funny mix of people I remembered from anti-Fulop and/or anti-HCDO candidate parties and also some I recall seeing go into Fulop/HCDO fundraisers, with everyone being friends now that we’re under the same roof. I found it strangely comfortable; a younger version of myself might not have, but these are all people I know now. If I didn’t know them personally, I know their kid or their co-worker, or we talked one time at another event ten years ago. They were familiar.
Hey, this is Jersey City, I thought as I made my way through the crowd. My uncle recently died — I apologize to everyone who reads this newsletter for bringing up his death so often, but it has meant a lot to me — and he was one of these people for a different city. He was resident of NYC for most of his life (until it got too expensive) and an engineer for the city of NYC for his entire professional life. At his funeral, someone told me, “The reason Manhattan doesn’t flood? That’s your uncle.” He was in charge of making sure the sewers worked from an engineering perspective. It’s not glamorous work but boy is it important.
Those were the people in the O’Dea crowd. They drive the buses and teach school kids and make sure the garbage gets picked up. They know the city isn’t working for them — that they’re getting priced out and their kids’ school is falling apart — and they want to fix it, because they don’t want to leave. Maybe they don’t want The Revolution. Maybe Bernie Sanders is a bridge too far, but they want something, and they’ve picked O’Dea as their man. At least at this moment.
“You know, the thing I like about O’Dea is that I’m not sure he’s ever been out of Jersey City, ever.” A friend of mine said this to me weeks ago, and while it was definitely a joke (we finally agreed that the Commissioner had probably been to NYC, Atlantic City, and a handful of other nearby locations at least a few times over the course of his life), the statement resonates to me as something that is at least emotionally true. There is a sense that O’Dea is firmly planted in Jersey City, and in the weeds with both minutiae of city policy and local history. He can rattle off the stops on a local bus line from the top of his head and I’d bet he could draw a detailed street map of JC from memory. The guy was born here, spent his whole life here, and isn’t going anywhere else anytime soon.
Post-Fulop, this is an incredibly appealing attribute for a candidate to have. Fulop has been, in many ways, the total opposite. Residents have had the sense that Jersey City is but a stepping stone for him since he was just a councilman, and they’re not wrong. The governor’s mansion was always on the horizon for him, and then after that, who knows. When I was younger, I used to not have a problem with this sort of thing at all. Ambition was a good thing, I thought. Ambitious people work extra hard to build up the kind of resume that will help them to advance, right? And that means doing extra good work that will help everyone around them also succeed, so that they can then go on to their next opportunity, right?
Well, I’ve learned a lot over the last ten years, and while I want to keep this article focused on O’Dea and McGreevey and not on Steve Fulop, let’s just say that I am no longer of this opinion. I get a little nervous when I see a local politician with the ambition to get out of here ASAP (to be clear: I do not see this with either O’Dea or McGreevey). But the crowd at the O’Dea fundraiser was the absolute opposite than that. These were people who were rooted here, come rain or shine, and they aren’t leaving unless they really, really have to. Are they going to rock the system? No, probably not — they want to live here, after all, not burn the whole place down. They want to tweak things. I recognized their plight as someone who is also in the middle — middle aged, middle income. There’s a lot of us here.
“Are you Amy Wilson? Because if you are, I worked for the city for thirty years and I have some storiessss.” It wasn’t the first time an obviously inebriated former city worker approached me in a bar and shoved a business card into my abdomen, and it definitely won’t be the last. She wasn’t even the only one to say some variation of this to me at this event. There is a lot of pain in this crowd: the pain of being left out; the pain of watching your home transform into something very, very different than you ever expected.
There were a smattering of activists in the crowd. Sam Pesin was making the rounds, talking about the latest assault on Liberty State Park. Evelyn Ibarra (aka Foundry Girl from IG), one of the activists behind the ceasefire resolution, was also there. Lacking were the group of progressive Democrats who have been organizing as of late, but there was a competing event at the same time/day in Hoboken with mayor/congressional candidate Ravi Bhalla. I’ll be curious to see who they turn out for in the future.
Bill had a great speech. A little by the books — ok, very by the books — but solid. His face lights up when he talks about football or his grandson, and the rest of it seemed go the way of muscle memory, but he said all the right things: the schools need to be fixed, affordability is a must, etc. He introduced his “team” (which is different than his slate, I guess? but all the same) — Kristen Hart, Pam Johnson, Tom Zuppa, Elvin Dominici — all former candidates for city council. Notably, with the exception of Zuppa, they’re all very pointedly Fulop critics. Bringing them up on stage with him was probably the boldest, most unexpected move that night, and while it only lasted a minute, it made me really curious as to whether this campaign is going to be quite as by-the-books Hudson County as I had assumed it would be.
***
Part two: The next morning, I met McGreevey for coffee.
Jim McGreevey is a fascinating guy with a quick mind and buckets of charm. He arrived to our meeting perfectly punctually and was exceedingly generous with his time, meeting with me for nearly two hours. He must have scrutinized both my CV and my portfolio, because he walked in making Yale MFA jokes and quickly had a bunch of detailed questions about my artwork — it was an impressive, slightly over-the-top amount of research he’d done to prepare. If you have an opportunity to meet with him, do it: our conversation was lively and interesting, and I highly recommend the experience.
I should mention that despite a lot of people in my life urging me to surreptitiously record our conversation (NJ has “one party consent” rules about recording, so it’s technically legal to do so), I didn’t do that. I didn’t want to go into this conversation looking for a gotcha moment, and instead really wanted to keep an open mind and heart and just see where the conversation led us. I’m ultimately glad that I did this, but it means also that what you’re reading here about our conversation is my impression and my POV; I wasn’t even taking notes during it. Is it possible I got some things wrong? It’s definitely possible. But I’m also approaching this as honestly as I can, and just recording my reflection on the conversation.
One thing I quickly learned: McGreevey is not a linear speaker at all. His mind ping pongs off different surfaces and ideas; you might start out at Point A only to quickly pivot to Point Z and then back to Point M, touching on Point A again briefly before departing for Point J. It’s not unpleasant as a listener — I was slightly hungover from the O’Dea event the night before but also highly caffeinated, so I found it sort of amusing to try to keep up with the guy.
However, it’s a trait I can see potentially getting him in trouble. When I asked him about his statement to the Jersey Journal regarding the migrants rerouted here en route to NYC, he didn’t dispute the statement he gave but said it was missing the larger context of a much longer conversation he had with them (in effect, that yes he stands by the contention that JC cannot accept sole, full responsibility for the migrants and there should be some federal assistance coming as this is a larger immigration issue, but that also we should extend to them the services we have to the migrants and do what we can to welcome them).
On one hand, this makes total sense — when you’re someone who speaks in long, compound sentences, I can see a nuanced point you’re trying to make getting buried as a reporter looks for a soundbite. On the other, wouldn’t a longtime mayor/former governor, who presumably works with the press all the time and has to deal with this issue many times before, know that? I mean, on the few occasions that the Jersey Journal has called me for comment on a story, I’ve thought about breaking my comments down into concise sentences to fit into the kind of stories they write. And I mean, I’m not someone who has done hundreds of media interviews over the course of my life. And also, given that he has social media at his disposal, and that not only I but also Politico NJ called him out on his statement, why wouldn’t he use his socials to put out a statement clarifying what he meant?
I mean, “candidate misspeaks in an interview with a local paper” is not the worst thing someone can do, and this episode will likely be forgotten (even by me!) in no time. But I’m dwelling on it a bit because I think it speaks to some of the odd quirks that came up in our conversation. Nothing bad; no alarm bells were going off. But there were just a few times when I caught myself thinking, Really??
Another would be the time when I asked him about his campaign contributions from Charles Kushner. (An aside: given McGreevey’s tremendous success in fundraising and the fact that Kushner didn’t even donate that much money in the grand scheme of things, I found it really odd that the campaign even took the developer’s money. I mean, Charles Kushner is, with the exception of a certain Reebok CEO, probably the biggest boogeyman in Jersey City. He is despised across the board, and news of the candidate accepting the donation set local social media ablaze. And… I just don’t get it. Personally, I would have just refused the check if for no other reason than it’s just fewer headaches down the road and the campaign will probably spend more money dispelling the notion that their candidate is aligned with Kushner than Kushner actually donated to their cause. But, so it goes.) McGreevey didn’t shy from it at all, and pointed out that we all know about the donation because he was transparent about it (meaning, he and his campaign reported the donation, as they are required to do by law). The much bigger issue, he assured me, were donations and allegiances that aren’t transparent. The secret, handshake deals — those are the ones you have to look out for.
This was one of those ping pong moments for me. I get what he’s saying, but there’s a number of different things that would have to be true in order for this to genuinely make sense. You’d need there to be constant backroom deals between different candidates and developers (ok, fair); then you’d have to agree that the public would have some kind of course of action were an elected official to give a sweetheart deal to a declared donor. How, exactly, does that second one work? What are we talking about here — waiting several years to vote them out of office, maybe? Fighting against the news cycle to make sure this is still a relevant issue come Election Day? I mean, the last several years of both Hudson County as well as national politics have left me so cynical, I’m not sure there’s any recourse anymore even if you were to capture an elected official murdering someone on camera. I like the world he’s living in for this point, but I don’t think I’m anywhere nearby.
At one point the conversation shifted to JC’s ongoing litter situation — McGreevey seems very passionate about cleaning that up, which is great. But I think our exchange over that sort of encapsulates a lot of the hesitations I have about him as a candidate. He said at one point (I’m paraphrasing here), There is litter everywhere! It’s so awful! Why have people come to accept this? to which I had to take a bit of a breath. Because we haven’t accepted it — we’ve complained and complained and complained and hosted neighborhood cleanups and petitions and written letters and voted for people who assured us they’d fix the problem and we’ve done everything we can possibly do, over and over, for many years. At a certain point, you do tend to give up, and I guess in a way this is a form of acceptance? But there’s something that struck me as so odd about a candidate in 2024 sitting in front of me pledging to clean up our litter problem like it’s the simplest thing in the world that I couldn’t help but be like, oh come on.
The kind of optimism embodied in a I will clean up the litter! campaign pledge is something that has been forced out of me by living here, definitely during the Fulop years, but also way before then. That comes not only from just being burned out, but from coming to the conclusion that something much bigger than all of us must be happening for the litter situation to be so unsolvable. For all that I dislike Fulop, I don’t believe he wants his city to be covered in trash. There has to be some sort of bigger problem afoot here — right? — that is somehow solvable in other cities but impossible in Jersey City. Don’t ask me what it is, but I do really think if there was more to it than getting elected and going into office and yelling at a few people, this would be solved already.
I like Jim McGreevey — and dare I say, most people who will spend time with him will as well, as he is a likable guy. I get his charm and I see it as a skill, a craft that has been honed after many years in the field; I’d love to hang out with him again, and I can see him as a tremendous salesman for our city. And the same way I walk into a classroom and know what to say to a bunch of disaffected undergrads to get them to care about taking art history, I see him doing that with all sorts of people to get them to tune in and vote and pay attention to this city we all claim to care about. It’s a skill, and it’s not easy.
Comparing the two, I came away with the sense that O’Dea’s plan is to essentially redirect the city — to make some adjustments in priorities, that sort of thing. McGreevey feels more like he’s proposing something more aggressive (although one that’s still lacking specifics for me) — clear the decks, we’re making big changes! and so on. This could shift as the election goes on, but that’s where it feels for me right now. Is a bold move something we want? Or, after ten years with Fulop, are we all a little sick of bold moves right now? I don’t know. I know the city is in some really bad trouble when it comes to our schools and our infrastructure, and something is going to have to change. But what exactly is that?
So all of this is to say: I hope you really care about Jersey City, Bill and Jim. I hear everything you’re saying and I really hope it’s true. I hope you really care about the people here and all of their stories and their lives, and I hope you will do what’s right by them. And I hope as other candidates join the race, they do as well.
***
[Postscript: In this article, I have obviously left out the third candidate, Joyce Watterman. I haven’t seen or heard of any public events with her outside of her council duties, so I just haven’t had much to work with. If you’re with her campaign or even if you just hear of something she’s doing as a mayoral candidate, please let me know and I would genuinely love to write about her as well.]
Jersey City birds
This week, a young hawk died in Lincoln Park. I came across his body while I was out for a walk with my dog, and after reaching out to the county to let them know (unbeknownst to me, it had already been posted to social media), I contacted my neighbor Lorraine Freeney, who I know is very active in Jersey City’s bird-watching community to find out more information. Below is an interview we did over email. Lorraine’s knowledge of the local wildlife here is truly incredible, and I’m so happy she was able to contribute this information to all of us here.
Q. You explained to me a bit on text about the hawks in Lincoln Park and what their life cycle is like. Could you restate that? How many hawks do we have, and how many offspring do they usually have?
A. Red-tailed hawks are common across North America and they live here year-round. Hard to say how many we have in total in Jersey City—you’ll see them all over, but the number of nesting pairs is probably pretty static because they need a large territory and will defend their turf from others who try to move in. You’d only have one nesting pair in an area like Lincoln Park, but it’s desirable real estate for them. There’s an abundance of squirrels, lots of poles and tall trees to observe their prey from, and places to nest. Whether it’s the same pair nesting there each year is hard to say. They are monogamous, but if one of the pair dies, the survivor will look for another mate. A nesting pair will raise between two and four chicks. In Lincoln Park, they’ve raised three chicks each year for the four years that I’ve been watching.
Young hawks leave the nest after six or seven weeks. Once they leave, the mortality rate is high. If one out of three makes it to adulthood, they’re beating the odds. In their early days they can’t fly well and often get hit by cars. I’ve seen young hawks die that way, in the park, and along the highway. Those first few days especially are so tricky; that initial flight is heart-in-mouth stuff. They don’t know enough to be fearful around people or traffic. They may get tangled in the tall fence around the golf course. There are other dangers too, such as eating poisoned rodents, or getting injured while learning to hunt. Adults let their fledged offspring hang around for a while, and may help with feeding for a couple of months, but eventually they drive the young ones away to find their own territory. If they survive the first year or two, red-tails can live quite a long time, but it is an uphill battle all the way.
It breaks my heart to see one dead, but overall, red-tailed hawks are doing pretty well because they’ve adapted to cities and to living alongside humans.
Q. Do the hawks threaten people at all?
No. Juveniles may inadvertently get too close to people and cars because they don’t know the dangers yet (like when a newly fledged red-tailed hawk landed on the sheriff’s car in the park last spring), but they do not attack people. Humans, meanwhile, often threaten red-tailed hawks—I once saw an idiot with a baseball bat chasing a hawk in Lincoln Park. Red-tails can be pretty big (females are bigger than males) but they are in no way aggressive to people.
Also, and I see misleading posts about this all the time, red-tailed hawks are NOT going to come into your yard and fly off with your full-grown dog or cat. Even a big red-tail only weighs a couple of pounds, and they can’t carry anything heavier than their weight. A squirrel is about as much as it can handle. Red-tailed hawks eat rodents for the most part—squirrels, mice, voles, rats. They will also kill the occasional bird, but rodents are their preference. If you see a hawk in your backyard eating a bird, it is more likely a Cooper’s hawk or a sharp-shinned hawk. Those guys treat backyard bird feeders as buffets.
I don’t doubt someone somewhere has posted something on YouTube about a red-tailed hawk carrying away a kitten or tiny dog. But it would be highly unusual. The risks are too great for them and they aren’t stupid, plus here, they have access to all the squirrels they could possibly eat.
Q. Can you speak a bit about the diversity of birds in Jersey City? What kind of birds do we have here?
Over 400 species of birds have been documented in New Jersey and you’ll find most of them in Jersey City at different times of year. Some are here year-round (cardinals, goldfinches, various sparrows, starlings, mourning doves, blue jays, great blue herons and many more). Some arrive in spring and leave when the weather gets cool—like the great egrets, tree swallows, and marsh wrens in Lincoln Park West. Others migrate through in spring and fall on their way to and from their breeding grounds—including many varieties of warblers. We get winter visitors too—Brant geese, juncos, various types of ducks. What you see will depend on the time of year and the habitat, but every season has its special birds.
Some of my favorites are Baltimore orioles and ruby-throated hummingbirds. Each spring, Baltimore orioles pass through (some stick around and nest nearby) and they love to feed on oranges and grape jelly. I go through several jars of jelly when the orioles are in town. They’re stunning birds, and it really is amazing to see them flying around the backyard. Ruby-throated hummingbirds are the only type of hummingbird we have in New Jersey, and you can see them in warmer months drinking the nectar from flowers or visiting nectar feeders.
Q. How do birds fit into the overall environment? What role do they play?
Once you get into birdwatching, you see how everything in the ecosystem is connected. We need native trees and plants because those support the biggest number and diversity of insects and caterpillars, which birds need especially during nesting season (most song birds only feed insects and caterpillars to their young, regardless of what they eat at other times). In turn, birds help pollinate and propagate plants and trees—blue jays hide acorns, so we get more oak trees. Others birds eat berries and fruit and spread their seeds that way. Hummingbirds help pollinate plants. Birds offer natural pest-control in your yard, eating the bugs you don’t want. Raptors help keep rodent populations under control. Vultures clean up roadkill and eat other dead things—not pretty, but necessary. And birds are food for other creatures, like raccoons and foxes. Even in a very urban environment like Jersey City there’s a whole natural web going on. It’s not just in big green spaces like Liberty State Park, but in our backyards, on our streets. Birds are an integral part of it.
Q. You have a beautiful garden that I always enjoy looking at when I take my dog for a walk. I know that it's set up to encourage birds and other wildlife -- what is it that makes it suitable and ideal for birds to come to?
Thank you!
If you want to make a yard that’s welcoming for birds, do your best to provide food, water, and shelter. Providing food needn’t mean putting out feeders, though I do that too. Plants and trees are key. A few examples: coneflowers, asters, sunflowers and goldenrod provide seeds, while cardinal flowers and salvia attract hummingbirds. My backyard isn’t that big but I have a lot of small fruit-producing trees and shrubs, like serviceberry, spicebush, chokeberry. I grow particular plants for various butterflies and insects—golden alexander, dill, and parsley for swallowtail butterflies, lots of milkweed for monarch butterflies, violets for fritillary butterflies. All those caterpillars help feed the birds. Trees, shrubs, and groundcover plants also provide shelter from bad weather and predators, especially important when birds are fledging. Birds also use plants for nesting materials—in spring, birds pluck the fibers from old goldenrod stems to use in their nests.
Offering water is a really simple, great way to help birds. If you don’t want the expense or hassle of a bird feeder, then put out a bird bath, and make sure to change the water regularly and keep it clean to avoid spreading disease. Birds need clean water to bathe in and keep their feathers in good condition, as well as for drinking, and they need water year-round, not just in hot months. Many birds that don’t typically visit a bird feeder will visit a bird bath.
In fall and winter, try not to rake or remove all the leaves, and leave some plant stems and flowers that have gone to seed. If you can’t keep your whole yard that way—and I understand tidiness is a consideration—then try and at least keep a little corner natural. Insects and caterpillars overwinter in leaves and old stems, and by raking and using leaf blowers we’re basically throwing millions of insects into the trash that would otherwise emerge in spring to feed birds and pollinate plants. Leave the leaves and you’ll see more fireflies and butterflies in summer, and more birds.
Q. What sort of things can people do to encourage birds in their neighborhood?
There are so many! Plant more trees wherever it makes sense to do it, and encourage the planting of native trees in our parks and public spaces. I mention natives versus non-natives a lot, but there is a huge difference in wildlife value. For instance, a native oak tree can support more than 500 different varieties of butterflies and moths. A non-native gingko supports 3 (barely). Non-native trees have shade value, sure, but native trees have that too.
In addition, we need to protect older trees. All the new development that’s going up means a lot of bigger, older trees are being removed. And while developers may plant new trees in their place, one new, young tree will take years to have anywhere near the same wildlife value.
Request that new developments use bird-friendly construction. If you know of existing buildings that get a lot of window-strikes during migration season, encourage them to add anti-collision window films and decals that reduce harm to birds. So many birds die during migration season in Jersey City from flying into windows.
There’s a lot of common sense stuff we can do to protect birds. Keep cats indoors. I love cats, but outdoor cats are lethal to birds, especially fledglings. Don’t prune or cut trees in springtime, when birds are nesting. And please don’t use rat poisons that wind up killing birds of prey. Likewise for lawn pesticides, weed-killers, insecticides—all of those chemicals are deadly to millions of song birds each year, not to mention bad for humans.
On a broader level, there is a whole lot that Jersey City can and should do in terms of legislation and ordinances that would benefit the environment and protect wildlife habitat, as well as making the city so much better for humans. Some are in the works, and I’m personally involved in some efforts. But there’s a lot more we can do, so please reach out and get involved.
Q. Bird-watching is a perennial hobby in Jersey City. Could you mention some of your favorite orgs that sponsor events or places to go?
Jersey City Birds organizes bird walks, mostly in spring and fall, and we also partner with other local groups, including Feminist Bird Club Jersey City, who are fantastic. We also regularly join with Hudson County Sierra Club, Friends of Lincoln Park, Hackensack Riverkeeper and others for walks and clean up events.
Bayonne Nature Club have twice-weekly walks, on Wednesdays and Sundays. They also do regular clean-ups and are just generally great people.
Bergen County Audubon Society hosts tons of events and walks, some in Hudson County too.
Liberty State Park regularly has nature walks and hikes guided by their naturalists.
GreenerJC has partnered with Jersey City Birds for the last two years in an ecology-based summer internship program for high school and college students.
I’m also a co-leader of the Hudson County chapter of the Native Plant Society of New Jersey, and we organize walks and events that incorporate birding. Plus we’re happy to offer advice about adding bird-friendly plants to your yard, park, public green space, etc.
Places to go:
Liberty State Park, especially around Caven Point and the area near the interpretive center. LSP has so many birding hotspots, and you can see everything from bald eagles to tiny kinglets, and tons of shorebirds and ducks. Caven Point alone is incredible for water birds.
Lincoln Park West has lots of great birding areas—including the bridge, the nature trail, and around the pond. Depending on time of year you’ll see egrets, various types of heron, warblers, osprey, tons more. I love watching the tree swallows use their nest boxes in spring and summer.
Harsimus Cemetery, Pershing Field, Riverview Park—all good for birding too! Nearby but outside JC, Rutkowski Park in Bayonne and DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst are fantastic.
John Dunstan/Wild JC has terrific photography of all the natural life here.
If anyone wants to reach out to me, they can email jerseycitybirds@gmail.com, or message me on the Jersey City Birds Facebook page.