By Hakim Hasan
For me, The Jersey Journal will always have special meaning. On Feb. 1, after a 157-year history, it will cease publication. Its demise, attributable to the forces of technology, if not how people read and buy newspapers, places it in a long succession of print publications that have met a similar fate.
Until late December of last year, I lived in a small, rent-controlled, two-bedroom apartment at the corner of Old Bergen Road and McAdoo Avenue in Jersey City’s Greenville section. I moved out of Greenville, and Jersey City altogether, because of substandard housing and the lack of a good quality of life.
My apartment was two short blocks from the Earl Morgan Library. One of the bedrooms was converted into a home office. It stored 53 boxes of books that I gave to two individuals as part of a downsizing process and old copies of The Jersey Journal where my letters and op-eds had been published.
It was in my home office where I first wrote letters to the editor of The Jersey Journal and later op-eds about terrible social conditions in Greenville. Agustin C. Torres, who wrote the Political Insider column for the paper, encouraged me to send my letters in. When Mr. Torres retired in 2018, he assured me that my letters or op-eds would still find a place at the paper, and Lois DiTommaso edited my op-eds for years.
I periodically and routinely wrote about substandard housing, two-bit politicians, and horrendous bus service and mail delivery in Greenville. I also wrote about the internecine warfare at the Jersey City NAACP branch, headquartered in the heart of MLK Drive. It did not serve the local population well, and I said so.
As a direct result of those letters and op-eds, one day I received a call from the late Earl Morgan. He was a great reporter and columnist for decades at The Jersey Journal until he passed away in 2018. Someone at the paper had given Mr. Morgan my number. He was reading what I was writing.
I was shocked when Mr. Morgan called me. He was a lifelong resident of the city and knew every square inch of its social and political contours. It was said Mr. Morgan was a man who knew where the political bones were buried.
Despite this, I remember Mr. Morgan asking me, “Hasan, how come I don’t know you?” I was anomaly to him. I laughed and explained that I had lived in the Jersey City for years but spent a lot of my time traveling to my various jobs in New York.
We agreed to meet at the Brownstone Diner on Grand Street. I talked to Mr. Morgan for four hours about a wide range of issues, although he was singularly concerned about the resuscitation of the Jersey City NAACP branch. This was a major issue for him.
The editors at The Jersey Journal made it possible for me to “advocate,” whether they realize it or not, for the less fortunate living in my apartment building and neighborhood.
With the closure of The Jersey Journal, I hope other journalistic endeavors will appear to keep the floodlights on the “vote for me and I’ll set you free” politicians, slumlords, and unscrupulous in Jersey City. Democracy dies in darkness when the struggle to create better living conditions for all of us dies, too.
Hakim Hasan is a former resident of Jersey City.
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