Margaret Stevens on behalf of the Progressive Labor Party Margaret Stevens on behalf of the Progressive Labor Party

May Day honors worker solidarity

May 1st is observed and celebrated worldwide as International Worker's Day, with 66 countries marking it as an official holiday outside the United States.

Across New Jersey, workers (employed in the formal and informal markets and the unemployed and underemployed) continue to organize for workers' rights, including the right to unionize.

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Ben Jealous - Special to Public Square Amplified Ben Jealous - Special to Public Square Amplified

Black Americans and the worldwide principles of democracy

Americans don’t often recognize authoritarianism at home because they don’t want to. They believe the U.S. is so exceptional that the checks and balances built into our system will protect our democratic values….Black Americans have never had a problem seeing the threat.

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Opinion Alejandra Sorto Opinion Alejandra Sorto

A right to abortion isn’t enough. There needs to be access.

While the right to abortion is threatened around the country, the most urgent crisis for New Jersey is lack of access. High costs, limited access to providers, discrimination, and countless other obstacles currently prevent people from getting the care they are entitled to under the law. That’s why the Reproductive Freedom Act can’t stop at simply declaring the right to abortion in New Jersey. It must expand access to care.

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Opinion Josie Gonsalves Opinion Josie Gonsalves

Fear, not

Fear not, White supremacy, your justice system was not broken. The verdict is not that Ahmaud Arbery's life mattered, for the pre-trial hearings and trial proceedings confirmed it mattered not. Rather, the verdict says that "Whiteness as power" matters. For only in instances, and I underscore instances, of egregious tortuous actions intersecting at a critical social moment for more than a majority of citizens and necessitating some measure of admission will the system give. Only in such rare moments will it be pushed to allow for an appearance of balance, of empathy, of regard, of humanity. The records by the same system tell us such.

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Opinion Josie Gonsalves Opinion Josie Gonsalves

Response to the Rittenhouse verdict

It is a reaffirmation that Whiteness as power is a thing that White-designated people will slaughter their own to maintain. The underpinnings and underbelly of America reared its head and walked out of the very annals of white supremacy into the sunshine of the morning that has never seen a sunset.

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