Issue 189: Follow up on ICE arrest
Plus: a massive document of info on the election, the Assembly race, museums in distress, and help -- everyone is a Pisces.
Good morning! Here’s your newsletter for this week. I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend and if you make it to the end of this week’s issue, please know that I am sparing you the salacious details of an article I read in Cosmopolitan trying to answer a simple question about the personality traits of Pisces men. Anyway! Thank you for being here! — Amy
ICE arrest in Jersey City
Well, on Monday it finally happened — ICE arrested a guy in Jersey City, in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts on Palisades Avenue in the Heights. Both a picture and video made the rounds on social media of officers in clearly marked ICE vests wrestling a guy to the ground and handcuffing him on Monday morning. Few other details were available.
I reached out to Amy Torres, Executive Director of the NJ Alliance for Immigrant Justice, to see if she had any more information. NJAIJ went to the site of the arrest to gather info on what happened, as they do whenever there is ICE activity. She confirmed the arrest was made — only one person was taken (in an unmarked, black car), and it was a guy who was watching a friend’s bike while his friend went into the Dunkin’ Donuts. The shop is right nearby Christ Hospital, and she said that this reflects “a trend that we’re seeing in this Trump 2.0 era, of ICE arrests where officers may not go into sensitive areas [like schools and hospitals], that were previously protected” but instead linger around nearby — effectively sending the same message but with less community outrage and support. She said that school pickup lines have been targeted, as well as a pharmacy in Paterson. ICE tends to hang out “outside or nearby to scare people.”
We’re likely to start seeing a lot more of these arrests. Torres’ organization has a bunch of resources available on their website that are worth checking out if you’d like to help advocate for undocumented people. It bears reminding that most activists seem to be in agreement — and in fact, ICE itself seems to agree — that the single most powerful things we can do to protect undocumented people is to share Know Your Rights information with them. Once ICE is at the scene and arrests are being made, it can be helpful to document them (again, see the website I’ve linked for more info) but sharing KYR information before anything happens remains the most important step to keeping folks safe.
Torres also shared with me some important information that I wanted to convey to you, because I haven’t seen it written about too much before. Namely, what can families and friends do if someone they care about is taken into custody? She underscored that if that were to happen, visiting them in detention is key — it’s how they can get legal advice as well as stay connected to family and the outside world. That’s not always so easy — ICE often takes a very long time to process people, and she urged that people check visitation hours because they can be very erratic. To that second point, I can confirm: at the Elizabeth detention center, which is where local people arrested are being sent to, there’s only visitation for female prisoners for one hour a day, and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays that time is between 9pm and 10pm (she told me this over the phone and I dutifully wrote it down thinking she was just making an off-the-top-of-her-head mistake or I misheard her, but she’s absolutely right and I confirmed it with the center. These visitation times are nuts). “Be prepared to wait,” she cautioned, because many visitors report long delays upon arrival, with that time eating into visits. For more information on visiting a loved one at the Elizabeth detention center, she recommended the IG account of Resistencia En Accion NJ which has a post (in Spanish) with tips and information.
As far as I can tell, there has been no response from the Fulop administration on the arrest. At a rally for immigrant rights on Thursday, it was mentioned that he was invited to attend but did not.
Look, we’re going to have more of these arrests. Please, take a few minutes to check out the links from NJAIJ above, and maybe even print yourself out some red cards at this link to pass out in your neighborhood. We’ve got a long few years ahead of us.
The NJ Budget/Local elections/Assembly race
Governor Murphy announced his budget last week, and in it, Jersey City public schools got dealt a blow. There will be approximately $4million in cuts to our local school system — “the largest [cut] in the state” — coming this next year.
So, this is probably a good time to introduce the whole idea of the Assembly race. But first… (I swear I’m not low key trying to build up excitement for the Assembly race; I just can’t really figure out a better way to structure all this stuff together that to interject this part in the middle):
I’ve been holding off talking about the Assembly (the Sheriff’s race as well) because honestly, as I saw in the survey that I put out last week (and I had my suspicions before that), I know that readers are already struggling to keep up with our local Jersey City elections. While most people had at least some knowledge of the candidates for mayor, most are struggling when it comes to city council and knowing who is vying for what — oh and don’t get me started for Council-at-large. Nobody knows what’s going on there. That’s just a whole mess of unfamiliar names and everyone is confused. So here’s what I’d like to do to try and address that.
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Local stuff!
I was so concerned by the responses that I got that I started this massive dossier (aka Google Doc) of information on all of the candidates1 that is very very very much a work in progress. I hesitate to even share it now as it’s only barely taking shape, but sharing it means I will feel pressure to keep picking away at it and developing it. For now, I’m just gathering basic bio info on all the candidates; eventually, I’d like to add links to policies they’ve published or news stories. Maybe a page for debates and upcoming events like that? Maybe.
But before I get there, I just want to point out how annoying just putting together that dossier has been so far (ok, I know — no one asked me to do this, I’m a glutton for punishment, but humor me). Namely, an awful lot of candidates have zero web presence at all2. Or, they have a web presence of things that I really don’t think they want publicized in a political race (ie, clearly family-and-friends IG pages, very old personal blogs, etc). Now, it’s early and I understand that some of the candidates haven’t gotten around to building out a whole site yet — ok fine. But could you at least scrub the web of things you don’t want everyone in Jersey City to see? Your entire neighborhood if not the whole city is about to be googling you; you might want to get on top of that.
Meanwhile, for the candidates that do have a dedicated website for their run, an awful lot of you sort of skirt around the very basic question of: what do you do for a living? This is a very, very simple question that voters have a right to know, as you are essentially applying for a new job by running for office. Imagine applying for a new job and sending your prospective employer an entire website where you never address where you work currently. I get that if you work for a private business that perhaps describing it as opposed to naming it flat out for privacy reasons makes sense, but just sort of talking around what you do for a living is annoying and honestly leads me to believe you’re hiding something (because I am bitter and old, but I am bitter and old and vote in every election, so deal with it). So for instance, when your bio reads:
Meet Candidate X. She’s a neighbor, a fighter, a teacher, and a friend. She’s a great community member who loves getting to know the city she lives in. She can’t wait to meet you!
I want to rip my hair out and scream. In fact, if you heard many random screams coming up from the Lincoln Park area, that was me putting together this dossier.
Candidates, please, I beg of you: tell us what you do for a living. Don’t be afraid. But at the same time, I really need you to be specific (again, you can leave out the exact name of your employer if you’re worried about privacy) because an awful lot of people describe themselves as a “mentor” or “teacher” and I have no idea what that means. Did you teach a one afternoon workshop at your local library? Or have you been teaching middle school for 20+ years, day in day out, and dealing with all that comes with that? If you’re an “organizer,” what have you organized? Did you organize a workplace of 500 people? Or did you organize your kitchen? What do these words even mean?
I need you to tell me what you do for a living. If you’re a trust fund kid, a bon vivant, a flaneur — own it; r/jerseycity is gonna find out anyway. Seriously, I can’t imagine any job is bad in terms of preparing you for this position, if only you explain to us how it prepared you. (Also, if you’re running on a slate, I’m sorry but you should have your own freestanding website as well. Slates get stretched incredibly thin as campaigns go on, and juggling nine or so candidates is hard for anyone. Represent yourself. You don’t have to go rogue or whatever — just have a little information available that you control and that represents you well.)
Anyway. The dossier isn’t 100% ready for prime time but I’m working on it and it’ll be updated as we go. Also I immediately went against my own personal rule (“only use info that is publicly available”) and reached out to a few candidates for more information because I couldn’t find anything. But I can’t — for my own sanity — keep doing that. Get a website. For excellent examples, check out Eleana Little or Pam Johnson (there are others that are really good as well — those just both came to me at a time when I was beyond frustrated by trying to read the tea leaves of candidate’s websites), both of which get straight to the point, list all socials, have some information about where they stand on issues, and are extremely clear. I am begging all of you to follow their examples.
For readers: let me know your thoughts and what sorts of things you’d like to see included. I’ll try my best.
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Assembly race
Woo hoo here we go!
So if you’re utterly baffled by how we do mayor/council elections, let me introduce you to the statewide race. Our Assembly/Senate candidates represent us in the NJ Legislature and get to vote on all sorts of things; they also provide constituent services and are supposed to fight for us when it comes to statewide funding. Like, public school funding (see? that’s the tie-in). Also, public transportation and a number of other issues that we desperately need help with.
To figure out what legislative district you live in, go to this map. (It’s a different map than the ward map. I know — this should really be streamlined. But for instance, Ward B is divided over both legislative districts with the border coming at a point that seems arbitrary.) If you’re in JC, you’re in LD31 or LD32.
In LD32, the incumbent John Allen is not seeking re-election. The HCDO candidates are Jenny Pu (director of the Hoboken Public Library) and Crystal Fonseca (who works at the JC Department of Public Safety). Running on Fulop’s slate — ok, I haven’t been talking about statewide politics too much but: Fulop, who is running for governor, is also pushing his own slate of people in various Assembly races — is incumbent Jessica Ramirez and Yousef Saleh, who is currently the councilman for Ward D. Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla and former Chief of Staff at NJ Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency Katie Brennan are also running. (Note, I linked to websites that are relevant to this race — Saleh hasn’t built out an Assembly site yet, so I left him out. Pu and Fonseca did not have Assembly-related sites set up that I could find by a google search; happy to update this if they do.)
In LD31, we have Barbara McCann Stamato running on Fulop’s line along with Bayonne council member Jacqueline Weimmer, with HC Commissioner Jerry Walker and incumbent Assemblyman William Sampson running on the HCDO line. (Again, I added links that have direct relevance to the Assembly run.)
I started with LD32 even though it was out of order numerically because it is infinitely more interesting, at least for now. Ramirez and Saleh are really formidable and relatively popular candidates, but Ravi Bhalla is likely to not go down without a fight. Bhalla’s last campaign was the very down-and-dirty race against Congressman Rob Menendez — he’s built himself a reputation as a grenade-lobbing candidate who fights really hard. I’m honestly a little afraid as to how this race is gonna go, but with fewer than 10% of the registered voters showing up (at least in the 2021 elections), well — expect a lot of fireworks being set off, huge buckets of money being tossed out the window, and a whole lot of very hurt feelings, all over a very small group of voters.
What especially significant about both of these races is how it’s Fulop slate vs HCDO slate (vs independents). One way to look at it is it may be setting things up for a bigger race down the line. Fulop’s race for governor is not exactly going down like the epic barnstorming tour he might have dreamed about — he may well prevail, but he’d be stupid to not at least be mulling over what his plan B is if he loses. And one frequently discussed option for him is running for County Executive. The current County Executive is Craig Guy (and certainly, every indication is that he will run for re-election), who just so happens to also be the chair of the HCDO. So these races can serve as a sort of proxy or practice run for what a Fulop vs Guy race might look like.
Everything in the above paragraph should be nonsense — the focus should be on these races in and of themselves, and who would be the best people to represent us in the Assembly; who will vote the way we want them to and who will work to get us represented in the budge well. This race should not be about the egos of two men who hate each other, nor should it be about anything other than simply electing our best people. But it is, or it probably will be, so that’s something to keep in mind as we go forward.
I will have more as this race goes on.
Museums in distress
In my other life away from all things Jersey City, I’m an artist and college professor in NYC, so I’m on a million mailing lists that are art-related. And it’s on those that I couldn’t help but notice a flurry of articles around museum down-sizing that wouldn’t normally be so relevant to JC, but may be given the push for the Pompidou.
This quote from an article in the Observer about recent layoffs especially stood out:
New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum laid off ten employees, citing inflation-related expenses, such as insurance and labor costs, as well as fewer visitors and memberships. The Dallas Museum of Art recently announced that it was furloughing twenty full-time staff, reducing the number of traveling exhibitions imported to the institution and keeping its doors closed on Tuesdays (the museum is not open on Mondays) as a result of rising costs, the end of pandemic era federal emergency funding and a drop in the number of visitors, while the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art eliminated twenty staff positions due to a 35 percent decline in visitorship compared to 2019 attendance.
So there’s that point, which I think ought to be relevant to the discussion about the Pompidou, that existing and well established museums are having a hard time financially (the above quote didn’t mention the Brooklyn Museum, which is having the same problems and just laid off some of their staff). At the same time, another thing that might come into play is that museums across the US are canceling exhibitions due to losing funding in the current political climate. Here’s just one example, but there are a number of others.
Just gonna keep putting this out there that I think this is the wrong time for the Pompidou project.
ICYMI
NJ Greenway: the “linear park” (I love that description) that would connect Jersey City and Montclair took a key step towards advancing. Here’s a link to a story on that.
There’s a whole slew of free workshops for small businesses run by the city, including one on “vendor improvement” that includes things like a business plan development workshop, info on marketing, bookkeeping, and more. This sounds really great — check out this link for a full list of dates and topics.
PISCES ENERGYYYYYYYY: Did you notice there were a lot of politicians having birthdays all at the same time? In one of the weirdest wrinkles of local politics, Bill O’Dea (Feb 20), Mussab Ali (Feb 27), James Solomon (Feb 22), and Steve Fulop (Feb 28) all had their birthdays on basically the same week. (Here’s the answer to the question I immediately asked when this was pointed out to me: Jim McGreevey is a Leo. I mean, I’m sure it’s normal that my brain immediately spat that out as a question and not at all a sign that I need to get out more.) Anyway, I don’t believe astrology one bit, but apparently Pisces men are sensitive, artistic, imaginative, and very, very sensitive. I’m just gonna leave that there.
No feral of the week: look, I totally dropped the ball but at the same time I also wanted to include this tidbit. Bird flu is now in NJ — please keep your cats inside! And don’t touch any dead birds!!
I got a few requests for “cheat sheets” of major issues and candidates that people could just look at and choose who to vote for. After considering this for some time, I don’t know if I’d feel totally comfortable doing this. We’re at a point now where basically every candidate will tell you they support Vision Zero. Everyone hates our litter problem. Narrowing the issues that face us to a yes/no type thing just, unfortunately, isn’t going to work with this election. And I think it wouldn’t be helpful, as a result, for me to put something like that together. I wish… but things just aren’t that simple right now.
You guys. Come on — for $200 (IF THAT) you can pay someone on Fiverr.com to build you out a website. They can do it in a weekend; probably an evening. This is EASY. No one cares about your design or anything like that. You can also just take out a Weebly account or even a Wordpress. I am begging you: this doesn’t have to be hard.
Thank you so much for teaching me a new word. I will use it three times and it will then be mine, forever. You Ms Wilson are the consummate flaneur. My wife just laughed at me for not knowing its meaning. Smarty pants.