New Jersey remains one of the richest states in the nation, but it it continues to be plagued by a huge gulf between the people in the McMansions and a growing underclass that’s spreading from city to suburb. And no one seems to care — at least no one in the political class or the big media outlets. It’s a case of criminal neglect.
Author: hankkalet
Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.
Dispatches: Long and winding road
My final Dispatches column offers reflections on 20 years at the Post.
- Send me an e-mail.
- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
South Brunswick’s mall of change
More changes are coming at the Suh Brunswck Square Mall — a shopping center beset by turnover for most of its nearly 25 years.
Friendly's, which has always done modest business, is the latest store to close with a rumored discount liquor store coming to replace it.
We discovered this tonight when we pulled in for dinner and found the restaurant dark and signless. We asked in another store and found that it had closed about three weeks ago.
The mall's consistent inconsistency is a little surprising given the location, but its layout and some other issues have left it vulnerable.
I'd like to hope the mall's problems are behind it, but its history likely is its future.
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One Democrat who deserves to win — and still may
I’m not crazy about most of the Democrats on this year’s ballot nationall, but Russ Feingold, the progressive maverick, as John Nichols calls him, is one the left needs to get behind.
So this bit of news from Wisconsin, where Feingold has been trailing in the polls all year, has me breathing a little easier. A Senate without Russ Feingold would be a dark one, indeed.
- Send me an e-mail.
- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Workers fight back, but not here
Not that liberals politicians are all that much better. The Democrats, rather than reading the public’s anger over the loss of jobs, the collapse of the economy, a permanent war and a bloated budget (caused by tax cuts for the rich and the war), are telling voters to surpress their anger — to “take it out in the ring” — rather than acknowledging the anger and working to give workers the tools they need to take their democracy back.
American workers are disenfranchised and the American public has been lulled into the false sense that their only responsibility to our democracy is to vote once a year. Too many Americans think that the election of a president will address their problems, their ability to act on their own behalf, to control their own political destiny.
The Tea Party is a reaction to this, even if it is a distorted reaction, an explosion of right-wing populism that has empowered a social backlash. The Tea Party may have risen up as a white anti-Obama movement, but it has gained traction because of the failure of the Democrats and the liberal establishment (the theme of Chris Hedges’ fine new book) to address working class concerns.
What we need is a real and vibrant left, one willing to go to the streets, willing to assault the power structure (without violence), willing to challenge the Democrats (as opposed to the obsequious way in which most of the left relates to the party and the president).
Barack Obama is better than George w. Bush (in the same way that a broken leg is better than amputation), but he is still a corporate Demcorat doing the bidding of corporate America and he’ll continue to do so unless we make some real noise.
- Send me an e-mail.
- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. it can be ordered here.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
