Volume LXXII, Number 32
Final Chance To Vote for Readers’ Choice Awards Adoption Story Is Focus of Screening, Talk . . . . 5 Rider AAUP Petition Opposes Westminster Sale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Cliffhangers and Character Keep Us Watching . . . . . . . . . . 16 PU Alum Schreiber Relishes Winning Gold Medal for U .S . at World Lax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 CP Bluefish Placed First at PASDA Championship Meet . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
IAS Professor Akshay Venkatesh Wins Fields Medal . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Berkshire Hathaway Fox & Roach Realtors . .18, 19 Calendar . . . . . . . . . . 21 Cinema . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Classified Ads . . . . . . 31 Mailbox . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Music/Theater . . . . . . 17 Obituaries . . . . . . . . . 29 Police Blotter . . . . . . . 12 Service Directory . . . . 32 Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Topics of the Town . . . . 5 Town Talk . . . . . . . . . . 6
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Federal Court Upholds DACA Ruling; DREAMers Remain in Limbo
In a ruling Friday, August 3, a Washington, D.C. federal court reaffirmed its earlier finding that the federal government’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was unlawful. Supporting a lawsuit brought by Princeton University, recent Princeton graduate Maria De La Cruz Perales Sanchez, and Microsoft Corporation, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates gave the government until August 23 to decide if it will appeal the decision, which requires the government to accept new DACA applications and issue renewals. As Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund (LALDEF) Executive Director Adriana Abizadeh pointed out, however, the DACA controversy remains unresolved and the DREAMers remain in limbo. “DACA has been in a tumultuous state for almost a year,” she said. She cited “partial wins” in January with a preliminary injunction mandating the acceptance of DACA renewal applications and in Judge Bates’s ruling last Friday’s ordering a full restart of DACA, but she expressed concern about a preliminary hearing (Texas v. Nielsen) scheduled for today in Texas. “This case is another in a line of many to do away with the DACA program,” Abizadeh noted on Tuesday. “If tomorrow’s case decides that DACA is unlawful, we will engage in mass protest with immigrants and advocates throughout the country. Judge Hanen [Andrew S. Hanen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas], who is presiding over the case, presided over the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) case in 2015 and his ruling shut down the implementation of that program that would have provided employment authorization to over 3.5 million individuals, two-thirds of whom had been here for over 10 years.” DACA offers protection from deportation to undocumented students, known as DREAMers, who arrived in the United States as children and allows them to continue their studies or work here. Latest statistics from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services indicated a total of about 689,800 DACA recipients in the country, with New Jersey hosting about Continued on Page 12
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Wednesday, August 8, 2018
Hinds Plaza Rally Commemorates Hiroshima
About 90 people gathered downtown in Hinds Park last Sunday evening for a rally to commemorate the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and “to bear witness to the urgent need for global nuclear weapons abolition,” according to the Coalition for Peace Action (CFPA), which sponsored the event. In addition to the keynote speech by nuclear weapons historian Alex Wellerstein on “Reinventing Civil Defense,” poetry readings by 2018 Nobel Peace Prize nominee David Steinberg, and a performance by the Solidarity Singers, the program featured a visit from Black Lives Matter leader Hawk Newsome, who was piloting a small group of marchers on their way from New York City to Washington D.C. to counter-protest the Unite the Right rally planned for this weekend in D.C. on the anniversary of last year’s violent white supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville. Known as the Agape Marchers, Newsome and his colleagues, who spent the night with local CFPA host families, are carrying with them a message of love, Newsome said, and protesting against racism, hatred, and Nazism. The meaning of “agape,” according to CFPA executive director the Rev. Bob Moore, is “universal, unconditional love, love of god.” “We’re marching to D.C. out of love,”
Newsome told the Hinds Plaza crowd. “We plan to rally in front of the Martin Luther King statue to unite people with love. On August 12, we’ll be trying to lead people in love. I’m one of the most respected militant voices in the country, and I choose love. Join us.” Newsome described how he went to participate in the counter-protest in Charlottesville a year ago. “We had to stand up on the side of right and say ‘No’ to hate,” he said. He described the violence as he was “bombarded and attacked by
Neo-Nazis.” He was hit by rocks, and, with blood trickling down his face, he said he went to pick up a rock to throw back when he heard a “little white woman, 70 or 80 years old,” saying to him “‘you can do so much more with your words than with anything you pick up here.’” That was the point, he said, where “he chose love” and committed to nonviolence as his means of standing up for justice. Moore, who hosted the event and spoke Continued on Page 4
Performers at Pettoranello Gardens Have a New, Improved Showcase A new stage is in place at Community Park North Amphitheater in Pettoranello Gardens. After two decades of wear and tear by musicians, dancers, and Shakespearean actors, the platform in the park off of Mountain Avenue was showing its age. “It was time,” said Ben Stentz, executive director of Princeton’s Department of Recreation. “The stage that had been there was constructed by the recreation department’s maintenance staff more than 20 years ago. It was obvious to us that it was getting to the end of it’s life. And a bigger, better stage would open up
the doors to other types of events there.” The new stage is part of a partnership between the Princeton Recreation Department and the Princeton Public Library, which will present Helen O’Shea’s band, The Shanakees, on Sunday, August 12 and a Summer Reading Rock ’n’ Roll Wrap Up on Friday, August 17. “When I heard about the new stage, I knew the time was right to bring Shakespeare and other acts back,” said Janie Hermann, the library’s programming librarian. “My hope and dream is that we can do even more at the amphitheater next summer and make it a regular Continued on Page 12
STAGE TWO: Helen O’Shea and The Shanakees were the first group to perform on the newly-built, enhanced stage at Community Park North Ampitheater in June . The group will return Sunday as part of a new program co-sponsored by Princeton Public Library . From left are Jay Posipanko John Mazzeo, David Ross, O’Shea, and Marvin Perkins .