Good morning and Happy Easter to all who celebrate! It looks like a beautiful day out there. Here’s your newsletter for the week and as always, thanks for reading! — Amy
Girl Scout Troop’s Toiletries and Treats for the Needy
This morning, a local Girl Scout troop will be distributing gifts for people in need. Scout leader Jodi Nooyen of Girl Scout Troop 12912 oversaw the collection of items and the assembly of the bags, which took place in the Gallo Center in Lincoln Park. She writes:
This year each of the 120 bags includes a hand-written card, small hand-made fuzzy ball creature [a craft project the girls did], sugar-free lollipop, small chocolate bunny, toothbrush, toothpaste, travel size shampoo+conditioner, lotion, full bar of soap, deoderant, tissues, body and hand wipes, a mask, socks, chapstick, Emergen-C, and a bottle of water — and for the 20 bags for women, a privacy bag filled with 5 pads and 5 tampons.
[Today] (~8am), 5 of our 18 scouts (ages 12 to 18) will distributing these to Breakfast Plus guests who come for a free hot breakfast at Grace Church gym, 39 Erie St.
I got a quick peek at the setup last week that the girls were putting together, and Jodi was kind enough to send me a bunch of pics of everyone working thoughtfully to put the gift bags together. I’m hesitant to publish pics of children because I know some people are very cautious about having their child’s image out there on the internet, but the pics are really cute!! The girls seem so happy and into the project. And I can at least share with you a pic of the gifts they’re giving out:
I love the care that went into these bags — they’re truly like something you would give to a dear friend. This is something that I think is so important — with need being so great, sometimes distributions can rush people through and treat them brusquely; what the girls have put together is just the total opposite. The bags really look like a present anyone would be excited to get and would really help make them feel special.
This is the eighth year in a row this troop has done this, and I hope they will continue doing so. What a lovely tradition!
JCBOE madness update
This week, under the cheerful glow of festive Easter decorations, the Jersey City Board of Education trustees decided to vote Younass Barkouch off their Survivor-style island… by which I mean he’s suddenly not Vice President now and George Blount is the new VP for some reason. Yes, I’m serious and I really wish I was kidding.
Look, I have really lost track of what’s going on here since there was the coup back on 2/29. But there’s lots of alarming quotes in this article in Hudson County View that make me concerned that the JCBOE is either turning into some kind of weird cult or breakaway nation or — best case scenario — this is all a reality TV show and secretly the proceeds are going to support local school kids but I really don’t think that last one is for real. But they seem to suddenly care a lot about allegiances. Speaking to Barkouch, the other trustees said:
“Because now that you have the threat, or the knowledge I should say, it’s not a threat, it’s the knowledge that you have that I’m going to remove you as vice president because you … have dangled your allegiance to us to try to persuade us to vote certain ways for you and it’s unfair, unjust, and I cannot sit with leadership like that,” [Trustee Afaf] said.
[…]
“You’re being removed because of your inability to show allegiance to the group … You are nobody’s vice president. The only reason you decided to sit there and acquiesce and be the vice president is because, as a result of your actions, we told you we’d make Noemi or Natalia stay as vice president,” [Trustee Tisdale] exclaimed.
What?
All of this seems to center on the timing of when students get a day off for Eid (which, believe it or not, seems to be where this latest controversy stems from), as best I can make out. If our BOE is unable to resolve as relatively straightforward an issue as that without resorting to demoting one another and further complicating things, I don’t see what hope we have for ever resolving the bigger issues our schools face. This is truly depressing.
The one bright spot I can see is that Natalia Ioffe — the original president when this whole thing got started — seems to be coming out of this looking pretty good. I may have missed something, but in the coverage of the JCBOE meetings and in the bits of the meetings I’ve watched, she seems to be just sort of hanging to the back, watching everything. I don’t know if I could keep it together as well, watching the people who “overthrew” me squabble so much among themselves and behave like this — it really seems like the only mature course of action, and she’s sticking to it. She came off similarly cool and collected in her interview with HCV. Noemi Velazquez (the original VP) seems to be handling the whole situation in much the same manner. Again, I don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors or if I’m missing something, but for now those two really seem to be the cooler heads I hope prevail in this situation. Someday, maybe, the NJDOE will finally weigh in on what’s happening, and I’m curious to see if they come to the same conclusion.
Election update
Hey, Andy Kim won his lawsuit, and now Democratic voters won’t have to contend with the line when voting! Well, sort of — it’s a preliminary injunction and there’s going to be a million appeals and who knows how long this will go back and forth for, but for the June election at least it looks like this is how things will go. Good news indeed.
In other election news, the Mayor actually did something I approve of: he’s having a series of meet and greets with the different senate candidates at Zeppelin Hall (88 Liberty View Drive). The timing doesn’t thrill me, but it’s not like you can have everything, I guess: Andy Kim will be there Saturday at 11:30am (great timing, huge turnout) and Patricia Campos Medina — who I’m planning on voting for1 — will be there Monday at 5:30pm (complete death for turnout — literally no clue if this was her campaign’s choice or what, but that is a bad, bad slot to have, which is unfortunate because she’s a pretty good candidate). But look, at least they’re both getting some kind of chance to meet voters, which is a good thing. Apparently the third candidate Lawrence Hamm hasn’t gotten back to Fulop. I suspect there’s bad blood there, but if you read this and are in touch with Hamm (as I know a few of you are), tell him to put that aside and pick up the phone? Some opportunity to meet with voters is better than none, and I don’t see how swinging by Zeppelin Hall hurts him. There’s not much info on this event available but what’s out there is here.
Lastly, there’s going to be a vote on Ranked Choice Voting before the next City Council meeting on April 10th. I am not a fan of RCV if only because its implementation in NYC led to the person I’d nominate as The US’s Worst Mayor, Eric Adams, but a lot of smart people like it so maybe it’s worth a shot. Who knows! More info here.
Elevator service at the 33rd Street stop is out of service
I only saw a tweet about this and no other information elsewhere, but this seems like a pretty big deal if you rely upon the elevator for either your personal mobility or for a stroller or other reasons. From PATH’s twitter account:
33 St elevator is temporarily out of service. To NJ: NYC Subway downtown R train (and downtown N train late night hours) to Cortlandt St. To 33 St: PATH to WTC, then NYC Subway uptown to 34 St. Subway fare payment required. NYC Subway elevator status: https://new.mta.info/elevator-escalator-status….
The link brings you to the MTA’s elevator info page (the MTA doesn’t operate the PATH, the Port Authority does), so it only helps if you’re looking to take the PATH and then transfer to a subway. For the PATH itself, I think this means that if you need the elevator and you’re looking to go to NYC, your only option is the WTC stop. And it’s unclear when the 33rd Street elevator is getting fixed — maybe it will be running again by the time you read this, or maybe it will be out for weeks, who knows!
This is pretty nuts. Needing an elevator is pretty basic and the fact that normally you only have the options to take the PATH to the furthest ends of both its lines to get to Manhattan is already ridiculous. I understand that the stations are very old, but there are massive upgrades happening to the 14th Street MTA station (these have been going on for several years) that you’d think could result in the Port Authority carving out some sort of improvements that would help riders in that station.
If you don’t take the PATH and are wondering what the deal is — all of the stations require you to walk up/down several flights of stairs to access the train. It’s not a situation where there’s a couple of steps and sure, it’s inconvenient if you’re moving around in something wheeled; the way the stations are set up make them nearly impossible to be accessed by someone who completely depends on a wheelchair. When I broke my foot back in November, I was incredibly bitter hobbling up and down those steps — I can only imagine the challenges faced by someone in a wheelchair or balancing a baby (or two) and a stroller.
Ugh. I’ve been meaning to write something about accessibility and Jersey City, and this is of course just one example among so many. But this is a pretty big one, and I really hope they’re able to get that elevator working again fast, because this is pretty bad.
ICYMI
City Cafe — the lovely little spot in JSQ (2800 JFK Boulevard) that has sandwiches and coffees — has a special item on the menu that set me off googling, as there’s nothing I love more than food that is new to me. The cafe is around the corner from one of our mosques, and they have a special menu for Iftar as Ramadan is happening right now, and one of the plates is msemen (they style it as “mesmen”) — a Moroccan flatbread that is served with honey and butter or veggies and meat. From a site I found:
Msemen is a square-shaped crepe formed of thin layers made of flour and semolina. Of Berber origin, msemen takes its name from the verb ⵙⵎⵏⴻⵏⵉ (semneni) meaning “to stack.” Savour the crispiness of the external layer unveiling the chewy internal part and indulge in a well-rounded authentic experience - a true culinary heritage of Moroccan natives.
Sadly, I only noticed it in their case well after the very nice woman who works there was well into making my sandwich or I would have switched my order. But I’m hoping to get back and give it a try as soon as I can — and with few places in JC serving Moroccan food, I thought I’d mention it here.
Bingo night at Wing Bar (684 Bergen Ave)! That’s right — bingo! Wing Bar, the tiny local bar that went viral several months ago for their wings and tenders, is now hosting a bingo night. Sounds like fun! And while they do a brisk business, they’re not nearly as packed as they were right when their viral video dropped, thank goodness. (My go-to order at Wing Bar: three piece chicken tenders tossed with Yardbird sauce and a side of Hudson Heat sauce. I’m usually vegetarian but I had to make an exception for these guys. Their $7 black bean burger is also legit and really good.) They’re promising prizes and a lot of fun from the evening and it will be on Thursday, April 4 from 7:30pm-9pm.
When Tammy Murphy was in the race, I was planning on voting for Andy Kim in the primary. With Murphy out and Kim’s victory in the primary assured, this is a great opportunity to vote your conscience and go with a candidate like Campos Medina or Hamm if that more accurately reflects your personal politics. Just putting it out there!