Obama Tells NJ Crowd He Worries About Those ‘Willing to Bend the Knee’ to Trump
Former President Barack Obama addresses rally-goers at Essex Community College in Newark on Nov. 1. Photos/Bob Hennelly
By Bob Hennelly
Thousands of enthusiastic supporters of Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s (D-NJ) gubernatorial run, many of them union members, packed the Essex Community College Gym on Saturday in hopes of also hearing from former President Barack Obama.
They had waited for hours to hear from, as he described himself in his speech, the "hope and change guy" at a time when the current occupant of the White House had started to demolish it and so much else.
The optional price for admission to the GOTV rally—canned goods on the way in as part of Rep. Sherrill's ad hoc food drive on the eve of the Trump administration's suspension of Food Stamps that over 40 million Americans rely on to survive including more than 800,000 New Jersey residents.
“New Jersey is like no other place in the world. We are the most diverse populated state in the nation and despite that, maybe because of it we care about each other and our kids,” Rep. Mikie Sherrill told the crowd that repeatedly interrupted her spirited speech with cheers and random declarations of “we love you.”
The former Navy pilot and US Naval Academy graduate said the upcoming election was not just about the future of the state she wants to lead, but about deciding “the future of this great nation” where the “opportunity” to pursue the American Dream is open to all irrespective of race, gender or country of origin.
“As Trump tries to steal opportunity, success and a great future from our kids, all I can say is not on my watch New Jersey,” Rep. Sherrill promised. She recounted how the power of a labor union to transform lives and lift up families had manifested in her own family’s narrative.
“My grandfather's family lost everything in the Great Depression. After the war he got a good union job with the UAW,” Sherrill recounted. “That job lifted my Mom's family out of poverty and squarely into the middle class.”
Sherrill said she believed that it should still be possible to “work one job and make a living” as well as retire, something the current economy is increasingly making more difficult.
President Obama praised Rep. Sherrill but in the midst of the ecstatic cheering by the crowd, downshifted into a more measured and serious tone telling the audience he has "cause for deep concern" about how quickly basic democratic norms “had been weakened” during Trump 2.0.
“I worry about how readily, not just business leaders, but others with influence, law firms and universities have been willing to bend the knee to this president’s autocratic impulses to avoid retribution, or protect profits, or just avoid controversy.”
“I am worried that a Supreme Court that so far has shown no willingness to check this administration's excesses even when these actions break all legal precedent and seem to defy the bedrock principle that not one is above the law,” Obama told the attentive crowd. “I worry about the growing concentration of economic power in the country with just a handful of mega-billionaires with companies controlling what we see and what we hear. I worry about how much that economic power distorts our political process.”
Obama continued, “I worry about how readily, not just business leaders, but others with influence, law firms and universities have been willing to bend the knee to this president's autocratic impulses to avoid retribution, or protect profits, or just avoid controversy.”
The former president contextualized Trump's MAGA movement as an extension of the ongoing American post-Revolutionary War narrative that was the premise for the disenfranchisement and exclusion of women, people of color, or people of different faiths. “There was still a caste order in America,” he said. “That's how Donald Trump thinks about America—that’s what ‘Make America Great Again’ means—putting people like him back in charge even when they don't know what they are doing.”
The crowd heard from Mike Hellstrom, the vice-president and eastern regional manager for the Laborers International Union of North America, which represents 500,000 construction workers nationally. Hellstrom rebuked Jack Ciiattarelli, the Republican in the race, for his failure to speak out against President Trump's cancellation of the $16 billion Gateway Tunnel, a vital project that would build a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River. The existing one dates back to 1910 and shows signs of serious deterioration due to its advanced age.
Trump's decision to scuttle Gateway cost New Jersey 20,000 construction jobs, according to the Regional Plan Association.
“My name is Ana María Hill and I am the proud State Director and Vice President of 32 BJ, and we represent over 15,000 black and brown workers in New Jersey, 190,000 across the east coast,” Hill told the crowd that was continuing to grow. “They are your janitors, security officers, airport workers, porters and cafeteria workers in K-12 schools. They feed your children and keep our buildings running.”
Rep. Mikie Sherrill addresses supporters at Essex Community College on Nov. 1
Hill continued, “I am also a first generation Latina. Daughter of immigrants who, like so many of our members, came to this country in search of the American Dream, a dream that feels more and more out of reach. But in this race, there is one person who refuses to let it fade away, who will fight for us and will champion for the working class. Her name is Mikie Sherrill."
Hill referenced her member Don Almagro, “who at the age of 75 works two full time jobs because what he gets from social security isn’t enough to pay for the room he rents.” She described some of the union's organized “security officers that are homeless and go from sleeping in their cars to being first responders in buildings where the tenants don’t even bother to learn their names.”
“I’m here for my members with healthcare debt because hospital prices are out of control. They are New Jersey,” she added.
Hill also recounted how 32BJ just won a contract that will bring security officers from $17 to $22 an hour over the next four years—yet despite that historic pact, some members will still need to work more than one job to survive in New Jersey.
She contrasted Rep. Sherrill's pro-labor record with that of her Republican opponent former New Jersey state legislator Jack Citarelli, "who during his time in office voted not once, not twice, but five times against raising the minimum wage.”
“32BJ stands with Mikie because she stands with us,” Hill said.
During Trump 2.0, Newark has been a flashpoint for the resistance to President Trump's mass deportation plan that relies on having masked ICE officers violently abduct people off the streets if they suspect them of being in the country illegally. ProPublica reports that so far, 170 American citizens have been caught up in these extra-judicial roundups.
““I am promoting voting—my town is very tiny so I am definitely going around everywhere trying to encourage a lot of people, a lot of young voters. I definitely think the youth are very important for our democracy. I am definitely trying to get a lot more people to vote.””
Angela Calderone is with the Seton Hall University Young Democrats and lives in South Amboy. She emerged from the rally energized.
“I am promoting voting—my town is very tiny so I am definitely going around everywhere trying to encourage a lot of people, a lot of young voters,” she said. “I definitely think the youth are very important for our democracy. I am definitely trying to get a lot more people to vote."
Calderone said that issues like protecting female reproductive rights were high on her list of issues. She added that she was really alarmed by the Trump administration's targeting of immigrants “as if they were just animals...when these are the working people of the United States.”
“As Americans we should all worry about who is being picked up by ICE,” Calderone said. “As a daughter of immigrants it is a big deal for me because I have parents that worked endlessly—so hard—for so many hours to give me the best life, and of course, I want to give them the best life.”
Long before the GOTV rally things were heating up in Newark in response to Trump's repressive, anti-worker and white supremacist immigration policy.
Back on May 9th, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was taken into custody at Delaney Hall, a private immigration jail in his city by masked ICE agents after the mayor had attempted to visit the site with a delegation of New Jersey's Congressional caucus, including Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rep. Bob Menendez Jr., and Newark's representative, Rep. Monica McIver.
In just a matter of an hour or so, the place where Baraka was being detained was surrounded by hundreds of Newark residents and a large contingent of the Newark Police Department.
The Brick City wanted its mayor back.
Ultimately, the mayor was released and the charges were dropped. A few days later, Rep. McIver was charged with assaulting a federal immigration officer in the scuffle that accompanied Baraka's arrest, a charge she vehemently denies.
“We have a right to be here. We struggled on these streets,” Baraka said the night he was arrested. “I never thought I would be incarcerated for something I believe is my democratic right—to speak out against what I think was happening there, a violation of city and state laws and a lack of transparency. This thing that's happening in America is wrong. If you're not Blackfeet or Cherokee or Lenni Lenape, then somebody in your family was undocumented at some point.”
Baraka referenced the idealized version of democracy "we all learn about in the fifth grade" and mentioned the background of Black Americans like him, whose ancestors arrived here enslaved and, he said, “were the first undocumented.”
"We put up a statue that said, 'Give me your tired, your hungry, your poor masses.' We advertised it to the world,” Baraka continued. “So the world has come here fleeing climate change, fleeing authoritarianism, to find democracy in this country…at some point we have to stop letting these people cause division between us.”
That day is coming.