Newark, NJ - In 2003, Sakia Gunn was walking home in Newark with her friends when a man pulled up, made advances, and did not like the answer he got. She said no. He stabbed her in the chest.

She did not survive.

She was only 15.

More than 20 years later, I still think about how easy it is for a girl to lose her life over something like that. Saying no. Walking away. Existing in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person nearby. 

Maplewood, NJ - Maplewood and its sister town South Orange are historic towns nestled between Newark and Millburn/Short Hills, filled with quaint 20th-century houses, lush parks, a downtown lined with eclectic mom-and-pop shops, a rainbow pride crosswalk in front of town hall, and a sea of lawn signs declaring, “Hate has no home here.” White Brooklyn hipsters in search of a “diverse” suburb to raise their kids often find it in this town, creating a paradoxical cycle of whitewashing. 

Edison, NJ - Growing up, my dad never stopped working. His office was our living room and his hours — stretched across time zones — never paused for dinner time or allotted breaks. Working on the weekend was the norm, and so was answering calls whenever they came. And, when the calls ended, the chores began — grocery runs, bills, paperwork for relatives in India.

Newark, NJ - What began as just another day waiting to start work had turned into what could be a life-altering sequence governed by the intersection of chance and systems that treat humans as capital assets.

He always said goodbye to his wife and children as if he might never come home. But today he was closer to that reality than he’d ever imagined, and his heartbeat thumped so loudly it seemed to silence the regular sounds of the day continuing around him.

They are everybody's children

Newark, NJ - I’ve been struggling to understand how, for almost 2 years, politicians and mainstream media outlets have managed to keep up the charade that there wasn’t a genocide occurring in Gaza. 

Even beyond the usual taboos and the early and loose declarations of anti-Semitism, politicians still felt comfortable backing up their votes to send even more bombs to Israel.

New York, NY - If you’re of a certain age and grew up around here, you probably remember a time when you could look back at people in Germany during World War II and innocently wonder how the heck they could have allowed fascism to overtake their country. Sadly, those naive days are long gone for all of us—because everyone in America now knows exactly how it happens. 

Newark, NJ - No matter how much the greedy, racist bosses of the U.S. try to keep us demoralized and cynical, the faint heartbeat of class struggle persists, reminding those of us who are activists that we are indeed on the “right side of history.” 

The explosion ripped through the girls and their surroundings so quickly that, counterintuitively, they never heard the bomb that struck them. It may be of little solace that they were killed quickly, definitively, the brutality of the act limiting their suffering: Overwhelming violence bringing finality to their lives in an instant.

As we pass 300 days since a one-day attack, part resistance and part massacre, we continue to bear hourly witness to an ongoing Genocide. Anyone can livestream the completely disproportionate response to that attack that is a trifecta of war crimes: collective punishment, forced displacement, and ethnic cleansing.