City Belt

DISPATCH FROM 'THE PEOPLE'S RALLY'

The People's Rally For Peace & Justice brings activists together
By Erik-Anders Nilsson

On the relative eve of the Congress voting on (and almost assuredly passing) an additional $120 billion dollars to continue the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the People’s Rally For Peace & Justice was held this past Saturday in Newark to counter the miss-appropriation of our tax dollars -- and to bring the troops home now!

Held by the Peace and Justice Coalition, a group of over 124 endorsing peace and justice organizations (including City Belt) and led mainly by the People’s Organization For Progress (POP), the event at Essex County College was attended by more than 600 activists. The four-hour speak-out and rally was a follow-up to the People’s Peace Conference held this past January.

TOXIC NJ: MORE INCONVENIENT TRUTHS

By Leigh Davis

In his Academy Award-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore -- discussing why so many in the corporate world have resisted the obvious about climate change -- quotes Upton Sinclair: “You can't make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it.” 

Case in point: The continuing story of the ubiquitous hormone-disrupting chemical BPA, which is found in consumer products from baby bottles to dental sealants, to microwave-ware, refillable water bottles and the inside of food cans, and implicated in such modern maladies as precocious puberty, obesity and diabetes, low sperm counts, miscarriages and breast cancer. (We reported on the problems with BPA in the second installment of Toxic New Jersey: Dimilin and its Dangers.)

UPDATE: CHARGES AGAINST ACTIVIST DISMISSED

Back in September, we reported on Bob Flisser's arrest in Flemington for participating in a vigil against the Iraq War, due to a vaguely worded ordinance. Then, we updated you when Judge John Petronko ruled against Flisser in November.

Today, we finally get some good news: a State Superior Court Judge has dismissed the borough of Flemington's case against Flisser. "I am pleased that the Borough of Flemington finally realized that it makes more sense to stand up for free speech than to stand against it," Flisser said in a statement. "I am hopeful that the town will now take prompt action to change the ordinance so that the same problems do not arise again."

UPDATE: SEX OFFENDER LAW IN CHERRY HILL STRUCK DOWN

Residency restriction law was similar to the one recently enacted in Jersey City

The Philly Inquirer has the full story, here are the highlights:

This marks the second local sex offender residency restriction law to be ruled invalid in court in the past few months. About 45 municipalities around the state have similar laws.

In his opinion, Superior Court Judge John T. McNeil wrote: "We can't have potentially hundreds of municipalities around the state creating a hodgepodge mosaic of ordinances in an area that clearly must have a carefully crafted detailed framework."

He also brought up one of the main points of Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg's January article here at City Belt, saying  offenders are already "tightly regulated to the extreme and, therefore, figuratively under a microscope once they are so classified."

Of course, the bloviating from local officials, much as it was in Jersey City, was ridiculous, with Mayor Bernie Platt saying, "I frankly cannot understand why the state courts would not support our township's efforts to safeguard our kids." 

CIVIL UNIONS: ANOTHER STEP TOWARDS MARRIAGE EQUALITY

Jersey City’s civil unions rally is a tempered celebration, but a celebration nonetheless.
By Lani Buess

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CHECK OUT THE PHOTO GALLERY

A little before 7 pm on Feb. 19, the sign at Jersey City’s City Hall reads: “Civil Union Rally, Second Floor.”

“I’m so nervous,” one woman says to her female partner, as they join the droves of coupled women and men hurrying up the stairs.

“Excuse me,” I ask, “are you here to file for your civil union license?”

“No,” she quips, pointing to her girlfriend. “She won’t let me.”

Even those couples not taking advantage of their newfound right knew the significance of the evening. When Gov. Jon Corzine signed the civil union bill into law 60 days ago, he made New Jersey the third state in the nation, after Vermont and Connecticut, to allow civil unions. The license offers a couple the legal benefits of marriage in the state, but not the title or federal benefits. Massachusetts is the only state to permit same-sex marriage. Many other countries, particularly in Europe, allow same-sex marriage as well.

TOXIC NEW JERSEY: DIMILIN AND ITS DANGERS

We narrowly escaped another endocrine disruptor being added to our midst, but a look around us proves our surroundings are filled with such chemicals, and they are hurting us in myriad ways.
By Leigh Davis

DEP Rules Against Dimilin Use | A Crash Course in Endocrine Disruptors | The Role of Weight and Sexual Development | Chemical Body Burdens & Chemical Trespass | What Does the Research Say? | The Toxic Soup That Surrounds Us

SEE ALSO: Seventy Years of Endocrine Disruption

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Here’s a riddle for you: What do weight obsessions, diabetes, precocious puberty, small penises, and gypsy moths all have in common? The answer to this riddle is one of those “what you don’t know can hurt you” stories -- and a detective tale to boot. So maybe it’s best to cut to the chase first, then go back and fill in the linkages.

DEP Rules Against Dimilin Use

New Jersey environmental groups scored a win in January when the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) declined a waiver filed by the state Department of Agriculture (NJDA) to change the way it deals with gypsy moths. By amending N.J.A.C. 2:23, the NJDA had hoped to allow spraying of a chemical pesticide intended to inhibit insect growth in 14 New Jersey counties. The pesticide is diflubenzuron, brand-named Dimilin and manufactured by the Uniroyal Chemical Company.

SEVENTY YEARS OF ENDOCRINE DISRUPTION

By Leigh Davis

SEE ALSO: Toxic New Jersey: Dimilin and its Dangers

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Endocrine disruption was first discovered in the 1930s when researchers saw that some industrial chemicals, among them, bisphenol A, had estrogenic effects in lab animals.

In the 1950s, women with difficult pregnancies took the drug diethylstilbesterol (DES) to prevent miscarriage. DES affected the children of these women, causing daughters to develop a rare cancer called clear cell adenocarcinoma or reproductive structural differences, pregnancy complications, or fertility. Sons could have genital abnormalities or infertility.

ERIC HUNT: ANOTHER STAIN ON NEW JERSEY

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UPDATE (2.18, 4:18 pm): Is this the same Eric Hunt? If so, the "lone wolf" theory that the SFPD seems to be working on would be out of the picture. But this site reeks of internet celebritizing. It wasn't created until after the Wiesel incident, and seems pretty fake. But who knows -- we're trying to look into it.

So, it turns out that the online "Eric Hunt" who took credit for the Feb. 1 attack on Elie Weisel in a San Francisco is actually Eric Hunt of Sussex County, proud graduate of Vernon High School (2002). According to the Star-Ledger, Hunt was arrested at a rehab clinic yesterday in Montgomery Township and is awaiting extradition to California. As if having the nation think we're all like fucking Tony Soprano wasn't bad enough, now we've got a much more severe stain on the state.

A few highlights from Hunt's lovely online "confession" (PDF format) shore up his bona fides:

Uncritical acceptance of Hitler: "The truth is that from beginning to end, Elie Wiesel's Night is the 'Big Lie' Adolf Hitler warned the world about in his book My Struggle" (better known to most as Mein Kampf - eds.)

The persecuted white minority: "The Holocaust lie was used in the sixties to overthrow our immigration laws, and is currently resulting in the planned outcome of white people becoming a dispossessed minority in every country they've created, and eventually being wiped out entirely."

Jews, abortion, and ethnic cleansing: "New York has a Jewish Governor, Jewish Senator, and a Jew is mayor of New York City. All throughouly endorse mass abortion of Americans, and massive ethnic cleansing of existing Americans through 'immigration.'"

Feminists fucked the family: "The Jewish led Feminist movement of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan turned women against men, and the current result is the destruction of the traditional family."

Of course, a neo-nazi diatribe couldn't be complete without one of our favorite tropes, the Jewish Media: "Last year, 'The Universal Poisoners of all Peoples' handed the Oscar for best song to 'It's hard out here for a pimp.' The cackling Jewish host made a Jewish in-joke to a jew in the audience. A few years earlier, Jewish Hollywood awarded the Jewish fugitive anal rapist of an underage girl with the Best Directer Oscar for his Holocaust drama, The Pianist."

 Jews control the world: "Jewish supremacists are poisoning, subverting, perverting, and murdering people of all races. The world is enslaved by their control and their ideologies , with the aid of treasonous gentiles."

Holocaust denial, pure & simple: "Even if you believe six million Jews were thrown alive into ovens and gassed in showers by Germans "just following orders", you should demand Wiesel submit to a lie detector test. To free the people of the world, the Big Lie of 'the Holocaust' must be exposed immediately."

The realization that Hunt is from New Jersey reminds us that, whether we'd like to admit it or not, there's a lot of hate in the Garden State.

HOLDING ONTO HOPE IN NEWARK

At the New School, Cory Booker Hinges America's Future on Newark's
By Barbara Solow

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There hasn’t been much good news coming out of Newark lately. Although the number of shootings is down somewhat, the murder rate is still frighteningly high, and reports of entrenched corruption and substandard schools keep making headlines. Maybe that’s why, when he appeared at The New School in Manhattan on Feb. 12, Newark Mayor Cory Booker was introduced as being from a city “where people have lost hope.”

And yet, the whole point of Booker's 90-minute talk before a packed audience on West 12th Street was to insist on hope as the basis for changing cities -- and reviving democracy.

"This country must resonate with a different energy," he said. Then, evoking James Baldwin -- one of numerous black authors and leaders he quoted in his speech -- Booker called on the audience to light the "fires of hope, opportunity and love" in America’s urban communities.

REFLECTIONS ON A PROTEST

Image by Kayakbiker

What more can the peace movement do to end this war?
By Leigh Davis

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The morning of the protest began early, with excitement and anticipation of “the big turning point” event -- the January 27th march on Washington to stop the war. I’d sort of lost count of the number of trips to D.C. and other large protests I’d been to since before the war even began. Each time, afterwards, we’d focus on the conflict between the numbers quoted by antiwar groups and those put out by the news.

We like to think we count.

Most times, I’ve driven down with others and spent the weekend. This time, we’d decided to “do the bus thing” and were on one of four full buses carrying Central Jersey Coalition Against Endless War members. We’d never had this many buses before. The sense was, this is going to be huge, an outpouring of outrage! Whatever we thought we’d accomplished in the past -- like being called one of the “two superpowers” after the February 15, 2003 protest in cities throughout the world -- this time, we wouldn’t be ignored.

We were not a “focus group.”