Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale: On Day One You Are Fighting the Wrong War!
Former Governor Murphy and Current Governor Sherrill,
I want to have a positive feeling, as the page turns from one governor to another, but I must say my profound feeling of the abandonment of NJ’s immigrant community is so high today that I have a knot in my stomach.
Former-Governor, you and the powerbrokers in the senate and assembly had 8 years to work on solutions that would help further protect populations that people on the ground identified as not being protected by your directive. Weaknesses in your Immigrant Directive were identified quickly, and could have been addressed. Make the Road NJ and lots of other groups organized and galvanized immigrants and allies to let the Senate and Assembly know how much we needed to grow the protections and codify them.
In particular, the number of people with deportation orders is high here–and very high now–due to Trump’s undoing of lots of the statuses that were granted by President Biden with humanitarian parole programs, CBP1 programs etc… Your failure to sign these bills was incredibly callous. This didn’t come down to the wire because of the failures of immigrants and allies. It was your failure. It was your weakness, and the weakness and disinterest of Senator and Assembly leadership.
Governor Sherrill, while I applaud your concerns about affordability, it was hard, yesterday, to hear about a “war on utility companies” while our neighborhood rapid response teams were driving around the state of NJ trying to document kidnappings of fathers and mothers and trying to make sure immigrant families know they were not alone. There is a war going on, and it is waged by Donald Trump. The last thing immigrant families are concerned about, right now, is utility bills. Right now they are too afraid to go to work, to go to school, to shop for groceries because federal agents are violently grabbing them, sticking them in cars, and making them disappear.
I can get on board with your war on the cost of utilities, but yesterday it just felt wrong. If 6,000 white people had family members kidnapped and deported, leaving thousands of parentless children struggling to survive, would you have started your term talking about a secondary issue? Absolutely no. Flag would be at half-mast…it would be ‘all hands on deck.’ The failure to put more guardrails in place to protect your residence is a continuation of micro-aggression toward minorities in this state that manifests itself in new tumors all the time.
Governor Murphy, you threw a bone to the immigrant and ally community and got a lot of support for doing so (it was a decent bone) for 8 years. I applauded you for it. But, on his last day in office, at a time when you know that the ‘old bone’ isn’t strong enough to protect the community, you failed us. And you, Governor Sherrill, on day 1, shouldn’t have started by trying to get us excited about your less-important war. Please fight the war that is, hands down, the most important one–the war to prevent ethnic and racial cleansing in the state of NJ.
Governor Sherrill, Oh for a day when a ‘utility war’ would be the most important thing for our communities. Maybe it was good for you to talk about it on day 1, because the real war on immigrants is just getting started, like it or not. So, day 1 might have been your only chance.
This was your moment, NJ elected officials. I want to hear outrage from the cosponsors of the legislation. I want to see the bill come up on day 1. Maybe give Governor Walz a call to see if a war on Utilities is the most important war of the moment.
People are being abducted, abused, deported, left with half a family. Who knows, maybe we’ll need those who saved big on their utility bills to pitch in to grow our foster care system dramatically, to care for all the parentless children Trump is creating, with little pushback or support, from NJ’s elected officials.
peace, seth
