Corinne Bailey Rae drops into Express Newark, and students are thrilled
Newark, NJ – Corinne Bailey Rae is a time traveler. A cosmonaut. A historian of the future past. And this benevolent explorer wants her fans to see what she has seen. Her latest album, Black Rainbows, a 45-minute transmission released September 15, invites the listener on an immersive, sonic voyage traversing the American South, Ethiopia, and the great expanse of outer space as Bailey Rae surveys what was and what will be of Black existence.
Jersey City teenagers rally at City Hall to lower voting age for school board elections
Jersey City, NJ - Standing atop the steps with Ali are Abeera Saeed, the co-founder of the Ali Leadership Institute and Yale graduate; Uriel Bruno, a junior at County Prep High School, Azra Bano, a Piscataway High School senior, and Zachary Yabut, a High-Tech High School senior. Attendees rallied at city hall to demand state officials lower the voting age to 16 for school board elections.
Aside from building the Vote@16 initiative, which organized the rally, Bano is also co-chair of Vote16NJ. She said the impetus for the rally stemmed from earlier movements like the one in Takoma Park, Maryland, the first city in the United States to allow 16-year-olds to vote in local elections.
Marchers call out Biden: Climate justice, now
Newark, NJ - On Sept. 17, over 75,000 people took to New York City streets to call out President Biden’s failed climate policies. The largest gathering of climate demonstrators since before the COVID-19 pandemic, the March to End Fossil Fuels brought together a cross-section of citizens and activists to demand the president act with urgency to reverse his recent decisions regarding projects detrimental to the climate, move to bring an end to fossil fuels, and declare a climate emergency.
Black August commemorated: A teach-in to educate and inspire
Montclair, NJ - When Renée Johnston received an invitation from the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) to direct a teach-in about Black August, she was excited to convene fellow New Jersey-based organizers for an evening “about education and purpose.” Through her outreach, a small group of leading activist organizations–unified by their belief in abolition and commitment to organizing–gathered in Montclair on Wednesday, August 23, to learn. Ensconced in an intimate gathering space beneath a restaurant for nearly three hours, attendees deepened their knowledge of the plight of the Black political prisoner in the United States of America.