Chants of “Stop police brutality” and “No justice, no peace” rang through downtown Newark as gatherers rallied before the march, where Lawrence Hamm, chairman of POP, reflected on the organization’s decades-long campaign against police violence. Though current data shows that police killings are down, the mappingpoliceviolence.org project caveats this data, as law enforcement agencies across the country have been resistant to providing information about police killings.

This October, the movement’s focus on early voting comes amid the midterm elections. Currently, the Republican Party holds both the House and Senate majorities by a slim margin, with the smallest number of seats in the House needed to control it—218 out of 435 voting members. In the Senate, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents have 53, 45, and 2 seats, respectively. Organizers state that the focus on voting will allow Americans to reclaim power and politically express themselves without intimidation, and No Kings pledged to invest in local communities to do so.

I wasn’t thinking about terrorism, life and death, or whether I would see my family again. I was thinking about breakfast.

I put a bagel in the toaster.

Twenty-five years later, that small detail stays with me because it represents the life I had before everything changed. I believed this was simply another Tuesday, not knowing that within minutes, I would be running for my life.

Then the building shook violently beneath me. The explosion thundered through the tower, rattling the walls, shattering the ordinary rhythm of the morning, and sending a jolt of terror through my body.

To understand Delaney Hall’s growth and conditions, one has to go back to the 1980s, when the United States began rapidly expanding its prison system, and governments turned to private corporations to meet demand. This spread to immigration policy, resulting in the detention of Cuban refugees in the Mariel boatlift and Chinese migrants in the Golden Venture shipwreck. GEO Group had been in charge of the facility from 2011 to 2017, housing 450 immigration detaineesduring that period.

Reports from the field by Ryan Novosielski:

5.29.26

A week ago, Delaney Hall became ground zero for grassroots resistance in support of a hunger and labor strike inside the facility. Detainees launched the strike to demand an end to the egregious and inhumane conditions inside the facility. The crowds have grown, and the tension has heightened over the last couple of days. It’s Friday, and protesters are making the same calls to the wider community to join them on the ground in support of the detainees' calls to end their detention.

Mayor Ras Baraka delivered his 12th State of the City address on Tuesday night, centering his message on Newark’s resilience and growth in the face of adversity. Baraka chose to focus on key issues like housing, education and public safety, while highlighting the city’s progress and strength. 

Lawrenceville, NJ - On September 21st, New Jersey gubernatorial candidates Mikie Sherrill (D) and Jack Ciattarelli (R) clashed in their first heated debate over the issues important to state residents. Around 1,600 people gathered at Rider University to attend the candidates’ first of two scheduled debates before the election on November 4th.

Trenton, NJ - New Jersey prides itself as the “Garden State.” Yet the paradox is stark: while family farms harvest peaches, tomatoes, kale, and corn, schoolchildren in lower-income districts still miss out on the local gifts of the Garden State at lunchtime. Simultaneously, small and mid-sized growers say they need steadier, closer-to-home buyers to make ends meet.

Food inequity in New Jersey can be highlighted by data estimates that in 2022, almost 262,000 children lived in food-insecure households. Those numbers jumped alongside inflation as pandemic support unwound. In turn, for many school-age children, the lunch line is often the surest path to a fresh and healthy meal. 

Trenton, NJ – New Jersey’s $58.8 billion FY2026 budget bill, the largest ever for the state, passed both the Senate and the Assembly on Monday, June 30, and was signed by Gov. Philip Murphy late in the evening, successfully avoiding a shutdown. The passage mostly followed party lines, with the Senate approval coming through at 26-13 with one senator not voting, and the Assembly voting 52-27 with a single abstention.