Within weeks of arriving at Seton Hall University, my brother was surrounded by credit card offers. Companies set up tables on campus, filled his inbox and pitched their cards as free money, free rewards and freedom itself.

He signed up.

It didn’t feel like a decision with consequences. It felt like something everyone around him was doing. Only later, when the bill and interest came due, did he understand what he had agreed to.

My brother’s experience shows why Newark students should be required to take a personal finance course before graduating from high school.

Some may argue that Newark does not have enough room for protected bike lanes or that changes would reduce parking and hurt businesses. But streets are public spaces and should serve everyone, not only drivers. Better-organized roads can reduce dangerous encounters among motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.

New Jersey now expects e-bike riders to be licensed, registered and responsible on the road. Newark must provide streets where we can meet those responsibilities safely.

During May 2026 in West Orange, town employees were instructed to powerwash the rainbow flag off the Town Hall steps. The belated, nonsensical explanation referenced America 250, stating the steps needed to be fixed for the Memorial Day celebration as part of the 250th Anniversary events. Sure, repairing masonry might require a thorough cleaning first; however, it was clear the town had no plan to put it back after the repairs. The unwritten part of the explanation was that someone (the Mayor, the Memorial Day planners, bigots?) didn’t want to see a rainbow flag in their America 250 Memorial Day photos.

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.

They founded RCSG in 2017, and now, nearly a decade later, they’ve built a space where returning citizens can transition back into their communities. RCSG is both a resource-sharing organization and a union that advocates for humane conditions and rights for people who are incarcerated, having successfully advocated for several new laws under former Governor Phil Murphy, including restoring voting rights to people on probation and parole and allowing former felons to serve on juries.

In July 2025, multiple federal agencies revoked longstanding regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act, eliminating all requirements to consider environmental justice and cumulative impacts during federal environmental reviews. With those protections weakened, and with the state maintaining that municipalities play no formal role in environmental justice compliance, the burden falls on volunteer organizers and underfunded community groups—the same organizations that have just lost their federal grants. 

The scale of the financial retreat is staggering. In March 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency canceled more than 400 grants totaling $1.7 billion—funding earmarked for air and water quality improvements in disadvantaged communities. By October, the Department of Energy terminated $7.56 billion in awards to 223 clean energy projects across 16 states that voted Democratic in 2024; New Jersey and Delaware alone stood to lose approximately $43.5 million. 

So what can we do? We must apply the lessons of Minnesota citizen ICE patrols to our voting infrastructure. We need regular citizens monitoring for ICE presence outside polling sites. Costumes, whistles, brass bands, the whole Minnesota treatment. Those neighbors can post the actual situation outside their polling site on their local social media and text chains. Countering disinformation and threats with real information, alerting people so they can stay safe if ICE actually shows up somewhere, and allowing voting to continue uninterrupted at 99.9% of voting locations that ICE doesn’t have the resources to disrupt.

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.