Not long ago, while driving south on Route 440, I saw the window open on the driver’s side of the car in front of me.
The hand that emerged held the kind of cardboard food tray that often comes with takeout food. Plop! The tray fell onto the center divider, spraying the weeds with half-consumed strawberry milk shake, bits of uneaten French fries, and catsup-stained napkins.
The passengers, who had apparently just finished lunch, appeared to view that portion of Jersey City as their personal wastebasket and simply dumped their trash there.
Some other drivers beeped in protest. But if the people in the vehicle noticed, they clearly did not care. There was no cop nearby to complain to, and before I could collect a license plate number, the vehicle had slid off into one of the side streets on the west side of Jersey City.
This scene came to mind this week during the hoopla surrounding City Hall employee Brooke Hansson, a research assistant for Mayor Steven Fulop, after she was caught on video in a tirade over trash she’d seen being dumped on Bostwick Avenue.
The video – which she appeared to be aware was being made – was later posted on You Tube.
A $61,000-a-year employee, Hansson should have known better than to use the kind of language she used. But to quote one of the most famous lines of a very famous film, “Network,” she was mad as hell and clearly wasn’t going to take it anymore.
Her language was hardly lady-like, and the fact that she was out on the street at 3 a.m. has raised some questions and some calls for her to be fired – although public sympathy appears to be with her, and for good reason.
Hansson is no stranger to the Bostwick Avenue community, and is not some upwardly mobile Fulop supporter imported from Wall Street. She was involved with the scene, and has a history of working with ex-offenders making their way back into polite society. Hansson, as the reported coordinator of Fulop’s “Stop the Drop” anti-litter campaign, fully understands how ugly trash is, and what it says about a community’s self-worth when people trash the places where they live.
Reports say that Hansson has apologized to officials in City Hall. Considering all that City Hall is trying to do to clean up the community and bring about some sense of self worth, maybe somebody somewhere should consider apologizing to her.
A tale of two chances
You have to wonder what’s really going on when one current and three former governors of New Jersey, a U.S. senator, two members of New Jersey’s delegation to the House of Representatives, and one of the most powerful congressional leaders in the nation all show up in Jersey City for a single event – and it wasn’t to pay homage to those fallen on 9/11. Along with the aforementioned bigwigs, the chairman of the national NAACP also came to speak at the opening of Martin’s Place, a second chance prisoner re-entry program.
As U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez pointed out during his speech on Sept. 15, at a newly opened facility on Martin Luther King Drive, that all of these political figures (perhaps with the exception of Rep. Nancy Pelosi) had been given second chances in their political careers. Former Gov. Brendan Byrne was once known as “One Term Byrne” with the prediction he would not get a second term – which he did. Under Byrne, residents were saddled with a state income tax. He also helped oversee many of the changes that led to the state lottery, not to mention the now-doomed economic experiment with Atlantic City casinos.
While Menendez went on to detail some of the other second chances the others had received, he seemed to touch on an important theme when it came to Gov. Christopher Christie. While Menendez kindly referred only to Christie’s term as a Morris County freeholder – where he had been run out of office after a dispute with members of his own party – the real second chance for Christie is yet to come, whether he can survive the outrage over the closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge last year. While no one has yet connected him to the outrageous political dirty trick, the noose seems to be closing around his neck.
Some political observers claim this scandal will haunt Christie when he runs for president in 2016, but in truth, to most of the country, especially among rural Republicans, this is much ado about nothing. If anything, the Democratic outrage over what is being called “Bridgegate” will only make Christie more popular in national GOP circles. Local scandals – as the voting fraud allegations once made against then Rep. Lyndon Johnson in Texas – rarely have the legs to make it onto the national stage.
So by harping on Bridgegate, Democrats may be doing Christie a favor, partly because it allows the public eye to pass over his generally dismal record as governor, the cuts in municipal and school aid that spiked local property taxes, the lavish expenditures of corporate welfare, the questions about manipulating Sandy aid, the use of the Port Authority as an infrastructure piggy bank to avoid raising taxes, the job-killing decision to abandon the Arc Tunnel project even as it was underway. His attack on teachers’ and public employees’ unions could translate to the national stage because it echoes similar battles being waged in other states. But Democrats and the media might be harping on Bridgegate to their own eventual disappointment. Meanwhile, Christie uses opportunities like the one in Jersey City last week to show what a compassionate man he can be when it comes to forgiving people. Everybody deserves a second chance, he told the crowd. And in some ways, the Democrats are giving him one. Do you know how to say, President Christie?
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.