Red Bank Lieutenant Juan Sardo and community members discussed policing during a breakout session Wednesday. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Some two dozen Monmouth County cops and community members gathered in the basement of a Red Bank church Tuesday afternoon to tackle a hot topic: police-involved shootings.
Among the aims: understanding why such incidents are increasingly polarizing.
Tammy Murphy reacts as her husband, Governor-elect Phil Murphy, calls her while she’s delivering a speech at Saturday’s Unity Rally in Red Bank. The event drew a full house to Pilgrim Baptist Church, below. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Ignoring biting cold, dozens of Red Bank-area residents participated in a “unity” march and rally Saturday in honor of two civil rights champions: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and journalist T. Thomas Fortune.
Anchored at Pilgrim Baptist Church, the event featured a cameo appearance by the spouse of Governor-elect Phil Murphy as part of a whirlwind, pre-inaugural tour of New Jersey.
The audience at the Celestial Lodge Friday night. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank residents delivered a message to borough officials Friday night about a new park proposed at the town’s long-closed landfill site: not everyone wants it.
At a town-hall-style meeting held at the Celestial Lodge #36 on Drs. James Parker Boulevard, area residents expressed concerns that the dump might never be made safe for public use.
A map showing the extended former landfill site outlined in green. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
We need a skatepark. We need a playgrounds for West Side kids. We need to remember that this is a neighborhood that can’t handle throngs of out-of-town visitors.
Red Bank residents offered those and other suggestions as the process of shaping a new waterfront park out of the former town dump got underway with a community brainstorming session last Thursday night.
With planning underway to transform the former Red Bank landfill at West Sunset Avenue into an 8.6-acre park, the borough Parks & Rec Committee has scheduled a “concept design kickoff” to solicit public input on the project.
The former landfill at West Sunset Avenue, as seen in 2014. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank officials took another step toward the creation of a long-anticipated new park on the site of the former landfill and incinerator this week.
They also got some promises of help.
Hillary Clinton won every district in Red Bank but the fifth, lifting the party’s entire ticket. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
She lost at the national level, but Hillary Clinton won Red Bank, and her coattails helped Democrats pull even with Republicans on the borough council Tuesday night, election returns tallied by the Monmouth County Clerk show.
Clinton captured all but one of the but one of Red Bank’s nine voting districts — the fifth — topping president-elect Donald Trump townwide, 2,633 to 1,510. (The figures don’t include mail-in ballots, said borough clerk Pam Borghi.)
Erik Yngstrom at Democratic headquarters as the party’s local victory became clear. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Knocked from their perch a year ago, Red Bank Democrats gained parity with Republicans on the borough council Tuesday night, as incumbent Kathy Horgan and newcomer Erik Yngstrom routed three other candidates, according to preliminary results.
The clearest loser in the race was incumbent Cindy Burnham, who ran a distant fifth three years after she broke a seven-year Democratic lock on the governing body.
Incumbents Kathy Horgan, a Democrat, and Cindy Burnham, running as an independent, at Wednesday night’s event at the Pilgrim Baptist Church. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The Republican candidates for Red Bank council sent emissaries who watched from the sidelines at a community event Wednesday night.
First-time GOP candidates Brian Hanlon and Kellie O’Bosky Colwell disputed the circumstances under which the event, billed as a “community conversation,” came together, leaving them unable to attend, they told redbankgreen. Their expected absence had been termed an “insult” by one of the event’s organizers.
But the event itself turned out not to be as partisan as GOP chairman Mike Clancy had feared, he said afterward.
Reverend Terrence Porter said Wednesday’s event is intended as a nonpartisan opportunity for voters to see the candidates as individuals. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The pastor of Red Bank’s Pilgrim Baptist Church lashed out Monday at borough Republicans, who he said had “insulted” African-American voters in avoiding a candidates’ event planned for Wednesday night at the church.
Reverend Terrence Porter teed up both the current and former GOP chairmen Sean DiSomma for what Porter said was groundless politicizing of an event that was envisioned as nonpartisan from the get-go.
“I’ve never been so disappointed in my experience in Red Bank,” Porter told redbankgreen. Read More
About two dozen Red Bank residents gathered at Pilgrim Baptist Church Monday night to watch the first 2016 presidential debate between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton and participate in a discussion afterward.
Did you watch? Did anything you heard change, or reinforce, your thinking about the candidates? Feel free to share your takeaway in a comment. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Reverend Terrence Porter invites the Red Bank-area community to watch the first 2016 presidential debate between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton Monday night at Pilgrim Baptist Church.
Children carried three bouquets of flowers — one for the five police officers slain in Dallas last week, one for victims of senseless violence, and one for “peace in our hearts and our country,” in the words of Mayor Pasquale Menna — at a vigil in Red Bank Sunday night.
About 40 residents, local clergy and a contingent of borough police officers participated in the brief ceremony, held at the Veterans Memorial on Monmouth Street at Drummond Place.
Additional photos are below. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge) Read More
Red Bank Mayor Pasquale Menna is calling on area residents to participate in a silent vigil Sunday evening for the five law enforcement officers slain in Dallas Thursday “and for civilian victims of violence in our country,” he said in an alert distributed Saturday.
Participants are asked to gather at 7 p.m. at the Veterans Memorial, at the corner of Monmouth Street and Drummond Place. Three wreaths will be on display, Menna said: one for the officers killed, one for victims of senseless violence, and one for “peace in our hearts and our country.”
Attendees may leave flowers at the site. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
As participants present lit a candle from a single flame at a vigil in Red Bank Thursday night, Pastor Terrence K. Porter of Pilgrim Baptist Church urged each of them to think of a single victim of Sunday’s Orlando nightclub attack, America’s bloodiest-ever mass shooting.
“The candle you light is a reflection of that image in your mind,” he said.
The memorial service, held at Johnny Jazz Park on Drs. Parker Boulevard, was the second such service in town in two nights, and was organized by the West Side Ministerial Alliance and other other religious groups. Additional photos are below. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Dozens of Red Bank area residents gathered for a candlelight vigil in memory of the victims the nightclub attack that took place in Orlando, Florida early Sunday morning, in which 49 were killed and 53 wounded in America’s bloodiest-ever mass shooting.
Several speakers, including Rabbi Marc Kline, of the Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, called for tighter gun laws. “We need to do more than mourn and grieve,” he told the gathering, held outside Red Bank’s borough hall on Monmouth Street. A later reference to a Senate filibuster then underway for gun-law reform drew strong applause.
Additional photos may be seen below.
A second vigil, organized by the West Side Ministerial Alliance and other other religious groups, is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. today at Johnny Jazz Park, corner of Drs. Parker Boulevard and Shrewsbury Avenue in Red Bank. For further information, call 732-747-2343. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
As they did in response to the murders of nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina last year, Red Bank residents and others will gather again this week to mourn.
Mayor Pasquale Menna has called for a community-wide candlelight vigil “in remembrance of the victims in the senseless nightclub attack” that took place in Orlando, Florida early Sunday morning, in which 49 were killed and 53 wounded in America’s bloodiest-ever mass shooting.
Several hundred participants gathered on Red Bank’s West Side Wednesday night for a vigil in response to the murders of nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina last week.
Beginning with a march from Pilgrim Baptist Church to Ralph ‘Johnny Jazz’ Park, participants sang and heard calls for an end to violence from a handful of local church leaders. And in the final moments, they shared the flame of a “unity candle.”
Click “read more” below for full photo coverage. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
In response to the murders of nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina last week, Red Bank’s Pilgrim Baptist Church is organizing an anti-hate, anti-violence march and candlelight vigil Tuesday night.
The march will begin at 8 p.m. at the church, at 172 Shrewsbury Avenue, and head to Ralph ‘Johnny Jazz’ Park at the corner of Drs. James Parker Boulevard for the vigil. In the event of rain, the vigil will be held in the church sanctuary. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
Congregants wore their team colors at Sunday’s ‘Jerseys for Jesus’ celebration at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Red Bank. (Photos by Peter Lindner. Click to enlarge)
By DAN NATALE
“You can have fun and worship Jesus at the same time, says Reverend Terrence Porter, of Red Bank’s Pilgrim Baptist Church. And for the third year running, Porter and his flock demonstrated that belief once again Sunday with their annual ‘Jerseys for Jesus’ pre-Super Bowl celebration of faith and football.
Sweetest Sin Boutique owner Angie Courtney plans to run the New York City Marathon to raise money for injured Marines. (Click to enlarge)
The winners of the eighth annual Andrew Kroon Scholarship raffle were announced June 8 at Red Bank Regional (RBR) High Schools annual reception for The SOURCE.
They were:
Third Prize: $637.50 Juanita Lewis.
Second Prize: $637.50 Robin Stavola, who donated her winnings right back to the program.
First Prize: $1912.50 Carol Johnson.
Red Bank becomes a bargainhunter’s paradise on Saturday. On Sunday: food, acres of food. (Click to enlarge)
As the headline suggests, the weekend that awaits is jammed with the potential for good times.
We’ve got the fifth Red Bank Townwide Yard Sale, this one making a migration from fall to spring.
We’ve got one of the inaugural events of this year’s weeklong Paint the Town Pink festivities to raise awareness about breast cancer and the importance of early detection.
And capping it all off, rain or shine, is the first-ever Red Bank International Flavour Fest, an outdoor celebration of the wide variety of cuisines available year-round at Red Bank restaurants.
And Mother Nature appears to be in a mood to cooperate.
Details, as they used to say when that was still a two-syllable word, are just below.
Congregants of Red Bank’s Pilgrim Baptist Church came together in their warmly lit yellow sanctuary for the second annual Festival of Love service Thursday night.
The celebration, which called out the work of volunteers at the Lunch Break soup kitchen, featured song and dance as two preachers stressed the importance of giving to others as a means of strengthening a community. (Photo by Elyssa Clement. Click to enlarge)
Sunday was ‘Jerseys for Jesus’ day at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Red Bank, where congregants were encouraged to sport their team colors. (Photos by Peter Lindner. Click to enlarge)
