In The News: Hail, Hail, The Band’s All Here

According to its critics, the Newark City Council over the past year has mostly marched to a single drummer – one that couldn’t be found, they say, in the Spirit of Newark Drum and Bugle Corps.

In what was hardly a blow the house down follow-up to last month’s mini Bastille storming of City Hall – but a telling political vignette nonetheless, residents took to the microphone at today’s council meeting to excoriate what they see as a governing body spellbound by Mayor Cory Booker. The council sat there and choked it down for the most part, before pledging to override the administration’s axing of the Spirit of Newark.

It was none other than State Sen. Ronald Rice, defeated by Booker in the mayoral election last year but reanimated with his district 28 primary re-election just last month, who led the charge for the council to take action to preserve the corps. The traveling group of some 100+ young musicians want to go to Pasadena to compete this year. They received $85,000 from the city in 2005, remained on life support with some state funding supplied by Assemblyman William Payne last year, and appeared to be going out on a long tuba note of gloom until Rice complained.

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