Emergency Zoom Town Hall On N.J., National Elections

NEWARK (Public Square Amplified)—Vice-President Kamala Harris’s attempted upgrade to the Oval Office is taking [Black] America by storm. Meanwhile, the Green Party is again running Dr. Jill Stein, and, further left, Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia are running for President and Vice-President as the candidates of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

And who will New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy appoint to replace a disgraced U.S. Senator?

And will the Newark City Council be deadlocked without its president, who seems to be a “shoo-in” for Congress?

There are questions to be asked, discussions to be had, and choices to be made.

This is why Public Square Amplified, an important journalistic forum for civic participation and social movements in the tradition of the legacy of the 19th-and 20th-century Black press, is hosting an Emergency Town Hall Meeting this Saturday, Aug. 3, at 11 a.m.

“We have a duopoly that has placed a stranglehold on democracy for the donor class while the community-at-large is shut out,” said Josie Gonsalves, executive director of Public Square Amplified. “As a news organization, our job is to use our platform to push against the closure of the commons and bring the voices of the periphery into the public square in furtherance of a more just and inclusive democracy.”

Panelists include:

• Rosa Clemente, journalist-activist-scholar who made herstory when she became the first Afro/Black-Latina to run for Vice-President of the United States on the Green Party ticket in 2008. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Massachusetts.
• Dina Sayedahmed, a multimedia journalist and former media manager of the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. She is currently a Juris Doctor candidate at Rutgers University School of Law.
• Dr. Kelly Harris, senior staff director, Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and
• Lawrence Hamm, founder and chairperson of the People’s Organization for Progress.

The link to register for the meeting, which begins at 11 a.m. and ends at 12:30 p.m., is here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/public-square-amplified-emergency-zoom-town-hall-tickets-964250327687?aff=oddtdtcreator

The event is happening during momentous times in New Jersey and the nation. The state is waiting to see who Murphy is going to name to replace disgraced U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-13th Dist.), who announced he would resign from office on Aug. 20, a little more than two months before his Oct. 29 sentencing after being convicted in a corruption trial.

Meanwhile, the political machines of Essex and Hudson counties worked hard to ensure that Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver would win the July 16 special Democratic House of Representatives primary after the tragic death of U.S. Rep. Donald Payne Jr., ending a more than 30-year-old political dynasty. She will be part of the Nov. 5 general election that will elect a U.S. president and all members of the House and the Senate.

The meeting is moderated by Newark NAACP leader Deborah Smith-Gregory. She is a well-known and respected public school educator, NAACP ACT-SO (Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics) community leader and civic activist in Newark for decades.

Her roots in New Jersey’s Black press run deep. In 1987, she was named the first woman editor of The New Jersey Afro-American, the youngest of the storied Afro-American newspaper chain. She replaced Robert Queen, the NJ Afro's legendary editor after he retired. As the NJ Afro editor and staff reporter before that, she covered local events, including the 1986 election of Sharpe James as the city's second Black mayor and the New Jersey delegation of the 1988 Democratic National Convention, the site of the culmination of Jesse Jackson Sr.'s historic run for president that year. She subsequently became the New Jersey editor of The Afro's Red Star Edition, a merging of the New Jersey, Richmond, Va., and North and South Carolina Afros. It was an attempt by the Afro-American Newspaper Co. to create a Black equivalent of USA Today. She held that position until the Red Star folded in 1988. In 1989, she became the founding editor-in-chief of Perspectus Magazine, a monthly periodical that served Black New Jerseyans. She held that post until the magazine folded in the mid-1990s.

The Town Hall Meeting is part of the PSA Community Journalism Class, currently finishing its second summer session. Meeting on Saturday mornings on Zoom, students learn about the role of community journalism in building civic life in Newark and the surrounding areas. The class is a mix of high school journalists, reporters, video/filmmakers, and community workers interested in the field and civic affairs.

Gonsalves said that PSA will continue to create these public spaces. “You have to counter anti-democracy with more democracy,” she said.

PSA is a local nonprofit newsroom founded by a team of Black women with over 80 years of combined experience in the academic, nonprofit, journalism, and community organizing sectors. Public Square Amplified positions journalism as a civic tool and creates a pipeline for a new generation of local journalists.

Its reporting centers on social and economic justice, racial equity and equality, the climate crisis, and the immigrant experience in covering issues impacting and concerning citizens in and surrounding its headquarters, Newark, from the community's point of view.

This program was made possible by funding from the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium.