© Frank H. Jump
Hawthorne, Choke Cherries & Winter Solstice
December, 2007:
Christopher Rose Community Empowerment Campaign Visits P.S. 119
Sharon Rose (mother), Darryl Matthis (family friend) & Xamayla Rose (sister) in our library raising awareness about the insidiousness of gang influence on urban youth.
Mrs. Rose receiving flowers made by our students.
© Frank H. Jump
Creative Writing teacher Gen Berretta invited the Christopher Rose Community Empowerment Campaign to our school, P.S. 119 The Amersfort School of Social Awareness on Avenue K in Brooklyn. If you don’t remember, Christopher Rose was the young boy who was killed for his iPod in 2005 on Farragut Road in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Since, his mother Sharon Rose and family have created an organization in Christopher’s memory to foster community activism and raise awareness against gang influence on our youth.
The Christopher Rose Community Empowerment Campaign will aim to mobilize community stakeholders and others for support and involvement in activities to increase community awareness of the following:
• The factors that contribute to youth violence
• Occurrences of violence
• The impact of violence
• Strategies for preventing delinquency of adolescents that leads to youth gang involvement and community violence
This poem was read by one of our students:
What color should I die for?
Blue?
Red?
or
Gold?
How old do I grow before my love of the color grows cold?
Help me choose a symbol my friend can die for.
The star?
A Hat?
Or
a hand sign?
It all makes sense?
Who wouldn’t die for a color or symbol?
I would……wouldn’t I?
You can…won’t you?
My baby brother should….. shouldn’t he?
Are these symbols that hold us together, the meaning of life?
Is a color as important as Freedom or a symbol and hand sign as virtuous as Love.
Stop!
What madness have we created.
We fight and die for issues of no meaning.
Gang Life has no future.
No Profit.
No virtue.
No worthy goals.
I choose a life with a future.
I reject mindless commitments to meaningless issues
and conflicts that gang life offers me.
Why should I serve or follow these men who create conflict and hate to the point that it spirals out of control.
Yesterday you were my friend and today you are my enemy because they say you are.
Rubbish!
I will choose my friends, my future, my destiny.
Yes I would die for Freedom.
No I won’t die for your special color,
symbol, hand sign, or street corner.
What kind of brotherhood would ask me to do such a thing?
I reject Gang Life and choose…
Life!
DTL – Gang Intervention.org
Flatbush Development Corporation @ The Farm on Adderley
Sustainable Flatbush‘s Anne Pope @ the Flatbush Development Corp’s Holiday party and bon voyage for their Executive Director Susan Siegel at my favorite neighborhood restaurant, the Farm on Adderley.
J Wiss & Sons Jewelers – Newark, NJ
© Frank H. Jump
J. Wiss & Sons Company was founded in 1848 by Jacob Wiss, a thirty-one-year-old immigrant from Switzerland who was an experienced cutler and gunsmith. The company, headed by Wiss and his descendants in Newark, N.J., emphasized high quality in its products which became known world-wide and sold to the U.S. Government in the Civil War and the two World Wars. In 1914, Wiss acquired the manufacturing facilities of a competitor and became the largest producer of fine scissors and shears in the world. Following World War I, Wiss weathered a severe depression in scissors markets, partly caused by dumping of European products. Increased U.S. help remedied this situation. Recently, the Wiss Company became a subsidiary of Cooper Industries. ¹
(e-Bay)
This PDF download courtesy of Don Wiss.
Roth, Race & Newark – A Marxist look at Newark’s writer Philip Roth (Portnoy’s Complaint)
Newark was a thriving city right up to the end of the 1920’s. Even with the brewing industry shifted into the underground economy, Newark’s factory life was robust, as Newark historian John Cunningham reported:
“The city had 1,668 factories in 1925, with an annual payroll of $90 million and Newark continued to boast that no other town manufactured a greater variety of products. . . . Most of the factories were small, employing fewer than thirty. But there were giants among them: Clark Thread Company, Westighouse, Weston, Balbach’s, Baker & Company, J. Wiss, Ward Baking Company, Tiffany, Pittsburgh Plate glass (making paint in Newark), Benjamin Moore, Murphy Varnish, Mennen, General Electric, Fischer Baking Company, Conmar and Johnson & Murphy, shoemakers.
– Larry Schwartz
Visit the J. Wiss & Sons Co. Website!
Bamberger's – Newark, NJ
© Frank H. Jump
Driving through Newark’s “Department Store Graveyard,” I found Bamberger’s, a defunct Newark based department store with locations formerly in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware & Maryland.
