Front Runner New Jersey • 14th February 2022

Rann Miller: Camden Now Has an Eastside High School — Now What?

The Camden City School District (CCSD) has changed the name of Woodrow Wilson High School to Eastside High School. The name change will be in effect the 2022-2023 school year. I for one believe that it was good for CCSD to change the name of the school. Regarding the renaming of the school… that’s another thing altogether. Others haven’t held back their approval or disapproval of the name change. Many people have joked about the name, referring to the Eastside High of Newark and Lean on Me fam

Front Runner New Jersey • 14th February 2022

Rann Miller: Camden Now Has an Eastside High School — Now What?

The Camden City School District (CCSD) has changed the name of Woodrow Wilson High School to Eastside High School. The name change will be in effect the 2022-2023 school year. I for one believe that it was good for CCSD to change the name of the school. Regarding the renaming of the school… that’s another thing altogether. Others haven’t held back their approval or disapproval of the name change. Many people have joked about the name, referring to the Eastside High of Newark and Lean on Me fam

Front Runner New Jersey • 3rd December 2021

Miller: America Still America After Ahmaud Arbery, Kyle Rittenhouse Trials

I grew up during a time where course cases on television were must see TV. I am not entirely sure if the trial of the four officers who beat up Rodney King was on television. I was only 8 at the time. But I remember clearly the O.J. Simpson trial on television. It was on all the major networks. I hadn’t seen anything like it on television to that point. Whatever was on the broadcast schedule from 12 p.m. EST (9 a.m. PST) to 5 p.m. EST (2 p.m. PST) was canceled… on the east coast, that meant no

Front Runner New Jersey • 15th June 2021

Rann Miller: Why All the Fuss? Critical Race Theory Witch Hunt Reaches New Lows

Roughly 12 states are working to or have actually band critical race theory from being taught in schools. The reality is that critical race theory isn’t being taught in schools. Critical Race Theory is a concept generally taught in higher education spaces whether it be undergraduate, graduate or law school. The reality is, that conservative politicians can tolerate “learning” Black history, so long as it is without the analysis that comes with critical inquiry. When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis s

Front Runner New Jersey • 22nd April 2021

Rann Miller: Beware of COINTELPRO 2.0

“Judas and the Black Messiah” detailed William O’Neal’s infiltrating the Chicago Black Panther Party at the behest of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. O’Neal’s involvement with the Chicago branch of Panthers led to the murder of party chairman Fred Hampton by the FBI. The FBI’s use of O’Neal was part of the bureau’s operation, Cointelpro or Counterintelligence Program. Cointelpro was a series of covert and illegal activities conducted by the FBI that surveilled, infiltrated and discredited domestic “pol

Front Runner New Jersey • 14th February 2021

Rann Miller: The Intersection of Grace and Racism at the Schoolhouse

I recently read a New York Times article about a young man who took to social media to address the video of a white classmate saying the n-word when failed by the educators at his school. Sadly, the experiences of Jimmy Galligan, a biracial teen attending a school in a town named for an ancestor of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, are all too common — Black students subject to hearing the n-word spoken with impunity by white students in a school where white people make up the majority

Front Runner New Jersey • 30th November 2020

Miller: Rick Brunson’s Return Good for Camden Fans, Community

I love basketball. I love the NBA, no doubt. But I really enjoy high school basketball; South Jersey basketball is the best (I am biased). I am an alumnus of Camden Catholic High School. While I am from Camden, I have no ties to Camden High School other than knowing friends who graduated from there. But I am a fan of South Jersey basketball and I am a fan of greatness. The 2019-2020 Camden High School Panthers Basketball team were great. They were so great that the only thing that could stop

Front Runner New Jersey • 10th October 2020

Miller: Holidays Don’t End Police Brutality

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill into law recognition of Juneteenth as a state holiday. It will mean that state offices will be closed every third Friday in June in recognition. It may appear to be a gesture with little to no cost, but it will cost $3 million a year in overtime costs for essential workers. This law adds to the reforms on behalf of Black lives under Governor Murphy’s watch. Last year, in response to the cutting of Andrew Johnson’s locks for participation in a wrestling

Front Runner New Jersey • 3rd September 2020

Miller: Confronting the Opportunity Gap in Urban Schools during a Pandemic

The Coronavirus has changed the face of education as we know it. My wife and I looked forward to our daughter sharing with us her adventures from her first day in Kindergarten. Because of the Coronavirus pandemic, she’ll begin her adventures learning virtually. My wife and I don’t doubt the efforts of her school to maintain a safe environment where risk of catching is at the forefront of our minds. But our children potentially catching the virus at school is at the front of our minds.

Front Runner New Jersey • 15th July 2020

Is Changing a Name Actual Change?

Philip Livingston was a slave trader. However, he is remembered as a founder of Queen’s College in New Jersey. The college was founded in New Brunswick; the middle of the Dutch slaveholding belt stretching from Elizabethtown to Trenton. Henry Rutgers held enslaved persons captive. However, he is remembered as a benevolent patriot by the university that bears his name; formerly Queen’s College. Like most early-American colleges Rutgers depended on the enslaved to build its campuses and serve it

Front Runner New Jersey • 5th June 2020

Peaceful Protests Are Subject to Hijacking

Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and other cities across the United States have burned in one way or another; all in response to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. Various political leaders and state actors called violence against state and private property unproductive; the burning of cars, public and private retail buildings as well as looting from private retailers. Juxtaposed to those images was the images of the Camden County Police

Front Runner New Jersey • 22nd May 2020

Doing Our ‘Heroes’ and Ourselves a Disservice

Both clinical and non-clinical hospital and assisted living staff in hospitals deserve all of our admiration, appreciation and prayers for working each day in challenging conditions amid this pandemic. however, we’re doing them a disservice when we call them heroes. It’s not that the act of working in dangerous conditions, not of their doing, isn’t heroic. But referring to them as heroes ignores their victimization. These folks are victims of leadership at the federal level that is incompetent

Front Runner New Jersey • 22nd April 2020

War or Crisis? In COVID-19 Crisis, Language Matters

CAMDEN – It’s been said that we’re in a war against COVID-19. Truth is that we’re in a humanitarian crisis. The difference in the determines how people are treated. When declaring a war, we declare an enemy to fight in order to harm. When declaring a humanitarian crisis, we declare an action in order to rescue. The Trump Administration has said we’re in a war against the Coronavirus and framing this pandemic as such is no accident. Evoking the use of the word war is intentional. Politicians of

Front Runner New Jersey • 25th March 2020

Keeping the Same Energy When Back in School

The coronavirus has completely thrown the world as we know it upside down. Movie theaters, restaurants and retail stores are closing around the country as governors wrestle with maintaining a level of normalcy while at the same time facilitating social distancing to prevent the spread of the virus. School district leaders around the country wrestled with whether or not to close. On the one hand, it makes sense to close schools. Research shows that because schools are large community gathering

Front Runner New Jersey • 2nd February 2020

Providing Black Youth With A Purpose for Education

I had the pleasure of taking part in a Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. panel to discuss the disparities in our society as it relates to Dr. King’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech; The Quest for Peace. Prior to the conclusion of our discussion, the moderator entertained questions from the audience. One question asked how to increase the graduation rate of Black students. One of the esteemed panelists remarked that parents must send their children to school prepared to get an education. My re

Front Runner New Jersey • 15th November 2019

Camden Voters Must Challenge Leaders on Climate Change

Growing up in Camden, there are a few annoyances that you grow accustomed to; trash left by out of town concert goers, potholes, bridges out of commission like the Baird Boulevard Bridge or the State Street Bridge. Another annoyance: flooding. There is a saying; when it rains it pours. But in Camden, when it rains it floods. Combined with the potholes and narrow streets, the rain makes travel in the city horrendous and it doesn’t take long for the streets to flood. Imagine trying to drive home

Front Runner New Jersey • 28th August 2019

Rev. Levi Combs III Calls Out Injustice in Camden

The role of the (Christian) Church is to carry forth the gospel of Jesus Christ: that Jesus Christ died for the sins of mankind in accordance with the scriptures, was buried and was resurrected on the 3rd day in accordance with the scriptures. But what does the gospel look like with respect to how we are to treat one another and live amongst each other in the earthly realm? In Camden City, New Jersey, it looks like a pastor calling out injustice on behalf of the poor. Rev. Levi Combs III, past

Front Runner New Jersey • 20th July 2019

New ATV Bill ‘Punitive,’ Not ‘Preventative’

Whenever I hear Quincy Jones’ Summer In The City, I think of Summers in Camden. Summers in Camden usually means seeing the elders enjoying the summer sun and breeze sitting on their stoops and porches. It means hearing your favorite song through the speaker of a car that’s passing by. It means block parties born from family barbecues because the residents of on that block have become a family over the years. Growing up, summers in the city meant bike rides to the corner bodega, relatives coming

Front Runner New Jersey • 17th June 2019

Are Camden Residents to Blame for Norcross & State Intervention?

Over the last few weeks, numerous reports and story have come out about George Norcross and his oversight of in facilitating tax breaks for himself and those connected to him professionally. The other day while on Facebook, I read a comment from a Camden resident, who is African-American, saying that “Norcross isn’t the problem. Parents are the problem.” That comment made me reflect on the current education landscape in Camden and the influence of George Norcross on it. His role, in addition t

Front Runner New Jersey • 2nd June 2019

Arming Teachers Threaten Black Students

The mother of three is a teacher in the Camden City School District. Not only is she a math teacher, but she is chair of her school’s math department. She’s serious about her vocation, her role as an African American teacher and she care deeply about her students. So it is no wonder when asked the question what it will mean for Black students if their teachers are armed, Jones responds with fear for their lives. “I can already envision, every time some poor White woman claims to feel threatened