Coast Guard rescues four boaters near Keansburg

A U.S. Coast Guard heavy weather boatcrew from the Sandy Hook station rescued four men from a boat in the Raritan Bay near Keansburg this afternoon, according to a release from the Guard’s New York Detachment.

Watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector New York received a report around noon by Perth Amboy 911 dispatch of a disabled 22-foot lake pleasure craft in Raritan Bay, New Jersey with four people aboard, and launched the Sandy Hook heavy weather boatcrew.  Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Super (Bowl) Grant For Youth Recreational Facilities

Highlands Mayor Frank Nolan, Jets owner Woody Johnson, and Douglas Eagles, Executive Director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Monmouth County.

The NY/NJ Super Bowl Host Committee and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced yesterday that they are awarding $1.5 million to New Jersey youth serving agencies for repairs to recreational facilities and equipment that were damaged by Superstorm Sandy.

The announcement took place at the headquarters of the Puerto Rican Association for Human Development in Perth Amboy, in a play room that has recently been renovated with the first $100 thousand distributed of the $1.5 million dollar grant.

The funds are being distributed through the NY/NJ Snowflake Youth Foundation, the newly formed non-profit arm of the Super Bowl Host Committee.  The mission of the NY/NJ Snowflake Youth Foundation is to transform after-school facilities for youth in New Jersey and the New York metro area.  They are focused on assisting these locations that provide school-age boys and girls with safe and supervised recreational, educational, and character-building activities.

Jets owner Woody Johnson, Co-Chair of the Super Bowl Host Committee and great-grandson of Robert Wood Johnson, was on hand for the announcement, as were Al Kelly, President and CEO of the Host Committee, John Lumpkin, MD, Directo r of the Health Care Group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, State Senator Joseph Vitale, Perth Amboy Mayor Wilda Diaz and Highlands Mayor Frank Nolan

The Monmouth County communities of Belmar, Highlands and Manasquan will be beneficiaries of the grant.  In Belmar and Masasquan, outdoor recreational facilities of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Monmouth County will be refurbished.  In Highlands, the indoor building and the playground of the Robert D. Wilson Memorial Community Center will be renovated.

Elsewhere in New Jersey, youth recreational facilities in Seaside Heights, Moonachie, Rahway, Toms River and Hackensack are slated to receive financial support.

• Tweet

The Color of Justice

By Evans C. Anyanwu

If abolitionist Frederick Douglas appeared today in New Jersey and asked for political support from the African American community, he might be surprised at the fact that his political affiliation would far eclipse his accomplishments. Douglas was a Republican.

In April of 1865, shortly after the Civil War ended, and President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Douglas gave a speech at the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston. At issue was the voting rights of Black men and to this subject Douglas remarked:

“I have had but one idea for the last three years to present to the American people, and the phraseology in which I clothe it is the old abolition phraseology. I am for the immediate, unconditional, and universal enfranchisement of the black man, in every State in the Union. Without this, his liberty is a mockery; without this, you might as well almost retain the old name of slavery for his condition; for in fact, if he is not the slave of the individual master, he is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a privilege, not as a right. He is at the mercy of the mob, and has no means of protecting himself.”

Drawing loud applauses from the previous line, Douglas went right into the heart of his speech. He deviated from the conventional thought of most abolitionists, which at the time was that the right to vote should come last. The immediate need for African Americans, most thought, was to end slavery, organize and let voting naturally come at the end of the abolitionist movement. Douglas remarked: “It may be objected, however, that this pressing of the Negro’s right to suffrage is premature. Let us have slavery abolished, it may be said, let us have labor organized, and then, in the natural course of events, the right of suffrage will be extended to the Negro. I do not agree with this.”

Five years after his speech, the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited the States and Federal government from denying African Americans the right to vote. Thereafter, Thomas Mundy Peterson, a Republican, on March 31, 1870 cast the first vote ever by a Black man, under the just-enacted Amendment, during the Perth Amboy, New Jersey, School Board Elections.

The right to vote, not only for African Americans, but for women, was very important to Douglas. So it is with this background that I write about a very important vote to ensue. There is likely to be a committee vote this month to advance the nomination of Bruce A. Harris, Esq. to the Supreme Court of the same State where Thomas Mundy Peterson cast his historic vote.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet