Download Insider NJ’s 2020 Retrospective publication or view it below

It’s almost over, New Jersey, this dreadful year of death, sapped of political events, where zoom calls replaced street interviews and awful truths supplanted diner booths. I wish it could end  tonight, and we could spare ourselves a limp to the finish line.

But first we should understand a few things about what 2020 revealed, including the woeful  lack of healthcare for working people, and the embarrassing underperformance by a  political class mostly content to point fingers at Washington, D.C. Trenton in particular closed  the year with several key self-serving pieces of legislation, which specifically lack social justice reinforcement as part of marijuana legalization.

If that weren’t grim enough, we look to a future where the Democrats and Republicans who ran the
state into the ground reassert their influence over the legislative and congressional redistricting process to strengthen incumbents at precisely the time when we should relieve them of duty.

In the meantime, we await a gubernatorial election year wherein Republicans will continue to
cower at the altar of disgraced ex-President Donald J. Trump and De- mocrats will complacently
trust in margins widened in their favor during the Trump and Chris Christie epochs (which have, in
fact, always disgracefully coexisted).

God willing, we will once more see you out there in the alleyways and on the high- ways of this embattled state, where we still believe in the political process, even if we know now more than  ever that we have a long way to go, New Jersey.

Remember the dead. Celebrate the living.

Download Insider NJ’s 2020 Retrospective publication or view it below: