Boycott the cruel “One Newark” plan | Bob Braun's Ledger

Boycott the cruel “One Newark” plan | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Boycott the cruel “One Newark” plan

Deseret Segura, 16, comforts her sobbing grandmother, Deseret Richardson, 83, outside the “enrollment center” in Newark.

Angry men and women stood in the unforgiving noontime heat before television cameras Wednesday to explain why Newark parents should boycott the opening of school next week–but none  was more persuasive than Deseret Richardson who didn’t come there for that reason at all. Richardson, 83, barely able to walk, was forced to be there, to enroll her daughter in school and, when she left, she was sobbing.

Deseret Segrua, 16, brushes tears away from the eyes of her grandmother, Deseret Richardson, 83.

“Why are they doing this to us?” cried Richardson, an immigrant from Dominica who raised six grandchildren, two of them war veterans. “Are they doing it because we are poor?”

A helpful school security officer  found Richardson a chair and moved it to place outside Newark Vocational Sc hool–the so-called “enrollment center”– where there was just a little shade. The woman had dressed in formal clothes, a long-sleeve top and a long, black skirt because, well, that’s how you dress when you are dealing with people in government. You showed them respect and you hoped they would show it in return. But to Deseret Richardson, the  school system, under Gov. Chris Christie and his superintendent, Cami Anderson, wasn’t showing anyone respect.

“I tried to explain to them that I have watched these children all their lives,” said Richardson of her grandchildren. “I have taken care of them when there was no one else. And I will do that until I die. But they didn’t want to listen.”

Richardson lives near Barringer High School. Has for years. That’s where her other grandchildren had gone, including the sailor and the solider and the young man who made it into Cheney State. That’s where she intended to send her youngest granddaughter, also Deseret, Deseret Segura.

But Cami said no. Cami hasa plan she calls “One Newark.” Shewon’t tell anyone how she devised the plan.  Cami–who lives far away with rich friends in Glen Ridge and has enough money not to worry about such things–insisted this woman Boycott the cruel “One Newark” plan | Bob Braun's Ledger: