People, in times like these, have various thoughts, feelings, and experiences. When I’m at a rally, people talk to me and tell me their stories. When the extraordinary becomes mundane, that is remarkable in itself, so I’ve asked them to share these stories. I hope that others are interested in telling their stories. If you are, please send it to me at closterpatriots@gmail.com.
I will not edit your story, except for instances where there is a double period, or some such thing. I will not correct spelling or grammar, or otherwise interfere with your voice. Your voice is what matters. I will give the story a title, if you haven’t. Once the story is published, if you object to the title, I’ll remove it, hopefully to be replaced by your own title.
Anonymity is a given, but you can use your initials or whatever phrase you want. You need not use your name, where you are from, or the names of businesses, organizations, or places where these things happened, but it is cathartic for you to tell these stories, and important for us to read them. I do ask, however, that you include your age.
Closter Patriots
“Someone Should Run”
I have heard the same sentence at almost every fundraiser; every meeting; and every rally. It usually comes from someone with a sign in one hand and a coffee or donut in the other. “Someone should run and stop this.”
I’ve spent fifteen years working in the northeast but specifically in NJ. I’ve heard that sentence way more times than I can count and timeless times – I’ve even said it myself. Somewhere along the way it became one of those things we say instead of doing something, like “we should get together again soon!”
Town council seats with one name on the ballot; school board races nobody knows are happening until the sample ballot shows up in the mail; or candidates chosen months before voters hear there’s an election at all. We’ve all just grown to accept that … but none of that is normal.
A few months ago – I got to talk with someone my age and who ran for Congress in the Democratic Primary. She literally had no business running other than “she just cared”. She had policies; experience; and was a typical every day American in the State of New Jersey.
Before she ran – she didn’t know how petitions worked or how many signatures she’d need. She didn’t have money. She didn’t know anyone on the county committee. She had a job and was getting married soon and had no idea where the hours would come from.
Here’s the thing: she wasn’t wrong. Every one of those barriers is real. Running for local office in New Jersey isn’t hard because the work to get elected is hard … It’s hard because the way to run was built for people who already know the people. If you have a party chair who returns your calls and a friend who knows how to check petitions, it’s doable. If you don’t, it’s like trying to scale Mt Everest with no oxygen tank.
I went home thinking about that and I haven’t really stopped. We fill the streets; make the signs; stand in the rain; and chant until our voices give out. Then November comes and too many of the seats that decide our schools, our zoning, our taxes, and our police budgets are simply “given up”.
So, I decided to try to close it and I started New Terrain USA to recruit and support everyday people running for town council, county, school board, and legislative seats across New Jersey. That means help with petitions, strategy, and volunteers, the kind of support that usually goes to people who already have a path. It isn’t for the insiders – It’s for the person at the rally who said “I’ll run”
If you’ve ever been the one saying it, sign in one hand and coffee in the other: someone should run … and it’s you … and here’s a teaser … you will win.
Dave Reichers, 32
Sr. Political Strategist
www.newterrainusa.com
Life Behind The Curtain
My work, my avocation, and one of the abiding passions of my life has been witnessing people in the process of becoming more fully themselves.
That has made me wary of easy certainty about others. I believe each of us sees from somewhere, and no one has privileged access to the whole truth of another person’s experience. Facts matter, as does listening.
Much of my working life requires me to engage closely with people whose assumptions, loyalties, fears, and conclusions may differ sharply from my own. I value that. I do not want to live only among people who agree with me.
What troubles me now is how readily human beings become abstractions: “illegals,” “MAGA,” “the left,” “socialists,” “criminals,” “the enemy.” Once we reduce someone to a category, we no longer have to encounter the person in front of us. History has taught us, repeatedly and catastrophically, where that kind of dehumanization can lead.
My instincts run the other way: Who are you? What happened to you? What are you afraid of? What do you love? What might I misunderstand about you?
I work in a public-facing role in Bergen County, and being publicly identified with a political cause could complicate relationships important to my work. The people I work for, I gather, do not share my politics or many of the values that inform them. I have no reason to believe they would have my back if those differences became consequential.
There are things happening in this country that alarm me deeply, particularly the normalization of government power against people with little ability to defend themselves, and the ease with which cruelty can become procedure.
Because of my work, I cannot always put my name beside what I believe or participate publicly in everything I might otherwise support.
I have come to believe there are many forms of citizenship. Some people march. Some organize. Some write, give, attend meetings, help neighbors, challenge cruelty when they encounter it, or simply refuse to become numb. And history (even recent history) is full of people who have risked, and sometimes lost, their lives helping others.
For some of us, there is also the quieter obligation to keep doing our work well and ethically — to be fair when unfairness would be easier, to listen when caricature would be easier, to treat people as people, and to resist the pressure to become smaller ourselves. I have come to see that as a virtue, too.
I am still figuring out what my own form of involvement should be. For now, part of it is witnessing. Part of it is helping people become more fully visible. Part of it is refusing language that makes human beings smaller.
I think that matters. I hope it does.
—Anonymous, 58
Asking and Receiving
WhyWhyWhy? I have a lot of good inspiration but we will make sure that our democracy will come back strong let’s do this and win and move on. Hey yes yes, I hope democracy will help voters to get to the polls and we’re hoping that our democracy will be strong and we will turn the United States blue let’s do this and win and move on.
Special Olympics Athlete, 62
Overreach With Impunity
Twenty minutes after I first arrived to Delaney Hall on father’s day 2026. A red car struck a woman named Alex. She was demonstrating with a very large upside down american flag. The driver did not attempt to evade or honk or stay around after the crash. Fortunately she was uninjured enough to affix a chemical resistance mask, as she knew ICE agents would almost certainly come out and doused the crowd in various forms of capsation. She was correct.
My third time at Delaney Hall, the protesters had come to find out that ICE agents would crawl out of their mothers’ basements at confront us at 10pm. Just after 9:50pm i got word that they were opening fire (pepper balls) at protesters in the parking lot, through the fencing. This meant that they were coming our way. I placed my shield down and began recording. It was leaned against a speaker. The agents advanced to the listed property line. Then one agent pointed to the shield, and another planted his boot firmly over the property line. He reached behind the speaker and stole the shield on public property. As he retreated back he flagged myself and a woman with a mace can, threatening us with a chemical weapon.
These are just the two most blatant acts of criminality I have personally witnessed by these gestapo thugs. There is, however, notable progress. Every time I showed up, the agents advanced less and less. Until the final time, where they didn’t even leave the inner gate guarding the employee parking lot. Prior to me showing up, I saw images of them clashing with protesters in the street. We are having an effect. They are getting less and less bold by the day. Keep your cameras handy and find a lawyer willing to help prosecute them when the time comes. Trust me, they’re not in short supply.
Stay safe out there,
Steven Grant Rogers, 19
Abduction
I have a family member who owns a landscaping and maintenance business in Bergen and Hudson Counties. In late July, an employee who commutes by bus got off at his usual stop in Palisades Park at 6am and was immediately abducted by unidentified masked ICE agents. This 20-year-old immigrant, who is in this country legally with green card status and no criminal record, was not afforded an opportunity to speak his truth. He was just another person who fit the bill. He was brought to Delaney Hall in Newark. My family member was notified of this and after researching his options, the quickest way to help his employee was to hire a lawyer who was able to go inside Delaney Hall to meet with him. The documentation was provided and reviewed, and the judge ordered his release. This process took a few weeks, and in that time, he was transferred to a detention facility in California. He was subsequently put on a bus to Newark with no resources. He returned ill and traumatized. He was released from Newark on August 10th. He is one of the more fortunate ones who have been abducted. He came home. ICE agents are all over New Jersey. Many Bergen and Hudson County towns are feeling the effects. Immigrants are afraid to shop, work, or attend religious services for fear of abduction. Who will protect the children when school starts in September? Shop owners are losing business. Employees are losing workers. Neighbors are losing friends. Families are losing loved ones. This cannot be the new normal. We cannot look away. We need to stand up for one another, protect one another, lift each other up and love one another.
Closter resident, 67
Being a Patriot in 2026
I have many friends who are “at risk” if they protest – they’re people of color, naturalized citizens or people with a green card, or their families are not yet citizens, or their job requires a public presence.. I’m retired and I’m as WASPy as they come. So, it’s my responsibility to speak up for those who can’t. Some people fight for their country by enlisting in the military, and some people fight for their country with a pen or a sign (or a web posting). I love my country enough to make this fight my primary focus until we rescue it from those who would use it solely to enrich themselves at the expense of the future of all of the rest of us.
Anonymous, 72
Mute and Mutated
Lately, I find myself measuring my words before I let them out. At work, I can talk about the weather, what needs to get done, or what someone had for lunch—but I don’t feel free to say what I am really thinking about what is happening in this country. I’m always wondering whether one honest comment will change the way someone sees me or damage a relationship I have to depend on every day.
That silence has affected me more than I expected. I carry around a mixture of anger, sadness, and disbelief, but I have nowhere to put it. Sometimes I sit among people I know well and feel completely alone. I hear things that trouble me deeply, and instead of responding, I swallow my words and move on. Keeping the peace may make the workday easier, but it also makes me feel as though I am hiding an important part of myself.
What frightens me most is not simply that people disagree. We have always disagreed. It is the feeling that we are losing the ability to recognize one another as decent human beings. I miss being able to talk honestly, listen carefully, and still walk away with respect for each other. Right now, even saying that feels like taking a risk.
BR & CD 70, 82
Try To Catch A Falling Star
I was never political, though I have voted in every election since I was 21. I lived my life with the assurance that my country was good, that my freedom was solid, that America was unassailable, until the Reagan administration, the rise of corporatism, the greed is good era, rampant, tolerated homelessness. In the 90s, I saw American workers sidelined and unions and thriving manufacturing centers decimated, undermining people’s faith in their country and their politicians. 2001: I watched in horror as the Patriot Act was passed, the first legislation to diminish our Constitutional rights. I drew a through-line from the 1973 legislation that encouraged the commercialization of healthcare. Thirty years of a slow undermining of our quality of life.
Endless wars: I realized that our children were expendable in wars driven by greed masquerading as ideals, that money was our highest value, evidenced by the wars that just kept coming and ended with a slow withering of ideals. We’ve been at war somewhere in the world my entire life, always under the guise of a higher motive than money. Old Cold War ideas died hard.
2010: I read about Citizens United and didn’t really give it much thought, as I’d already lost faith in our ability to do anything about it after Occupy Democrats gave up the ghost. And, I was too busy to do anything about it. 2013: Facebook was a political awakening for me. 2016: I thought everyone would see that Trump was a bad joke. The day after Trump won in ’24, I got a text from Trump, saying they had no record of me having voted for him. Why not? I knew that the jig was up.
When I was a young child, I heard the grown-ups talking about politics at the dinner table. One of them, a friend of my grandparents said, “I’m glad I’ll be dead soon, because the world has gotten too crazy for me.” I was stunned that anyone could ever think or feel that way. But today, I know exactly how they felt.
Brokenhearted, 79
The World and The Devil
I am a graduate student and employee at Rutgers University. When the World Cup came to New Jersey, the school paid for a billboard on I-95 reading, “Rutgers welcomes the world.” I for one want them not just to say it, but mean it and do it too. People on campus are fortunately well aware of the dangers immigrants currently face. We have had a petition to prohibit I.C.E. from coming to our campus for about a year now. There are people demonstrating almost weekly to make this happen, and local police are keeping tabs on such events. One of my colleagues is struggling with a visa application right now. There is presumably some sort of backlog. Perhaps with the impression that so many people are going to be deported anyhow, perhaps with the volume of federal employees laid off from their work, the State Department has become unable and unwilling to process the paperwork in a timely fashion. I actively dread the possibility of immigration enforcement taking away any of my classmates, colleagues, students, and professors. What happened to Wilber Perez in Dallas and Johan Guerrero in Biddeford can surely happen to anyone else.
The field of study I am involved in lies at the intersection of data science and public informatics. I inevitably have to learn about the role of A.I. in society. It is my personal wish that any technology should supplement and not threaten the human experience. But as time goes on, it becomes more challenging to find ways artificial intelligence is being used for good; medicine and agriculture are the main exceptions. So, to have a President of the United States suggest companies “self-police” while Sam Altman suggests “an accepting of the fact that some bad things are going to happen [not to him, of course] as society figures out the resilience” is a surefire way for a global catastrophe of some kind.
If we succeed in stopping MAGA during this midterm season, we can never let people forget how much worse things could have gotten. If we fail then, I would want to keep fighting, albeit with immense secondhand shame from those who functionally voted for Trump five times now.
—Joshua, 23
“Someone Should Run”
I have heard the same sentence at almost every fundraiser; every meeting; and every rally. It usually comes from someone with a sign in one hand and a coffee or donut in the other. “Someone should run and stop this.”
I’ve spent fifteen years working in the northeast but specifically in NJ. I’ve heard that sentence way more times than I can count and timeless times – I’ve even said it myself. Somewhere along the way it became one of those things we say instead of doing something, like “we should get together again soon!”
Town council seats with one name on the ballot; school board races nobody knows are happening until the sample ballot shows up in the mail; or candidates chosen months before voters hear there’s an election at all. We’ve all just grown to accept that … but none of that is normal.
A few months ago – I got to talk with someone my age and who ran for Congress in the Democratic Primary. She literally had no business running other than “she just cared”. She had policies; experience; and was a typical every day American in the State of New Jersey.
Before she ran – she didn’t know how petitions worked or how many signatures she’d need. She didn’t have money. She didn’t know anyone on the county committee. She had a job and was getting married soon and had no idea where the hours would come from.
Here’s the thing: she wasn’t wrong. Every one of those barriers is real. Running for local office in New Jersey isn’t hard because the work to get elected is hard … It’s hard because the way to run was built for people who already know the people. If you have a party chair who returns your calls and a friend who knows how to check petitions, it’s doable. If you don’t, it’s like trying to scale Mt Everest with no oxygen tank.
I went home thinking about that and I haven’t really stopped. We fill the streets; make the signs; stand in the rain; and chant until our voices give out. Then November comes and too many of the seats that decide our schools, our zoning, our taxes, and our police budgets are simply “given up”.
So, I decided to try to close it and I started New Terrain USA to recruit and support everyday people running for town council, county, school board, and legislative seats across New Jersey. That means help with petitions, strategy, and volunteers, the kind of support that usually goes to people who already have a path. It isn’t for the insiders – It’s for the person at the rally who said “I’ll run”
If you’ve ever been the one saying it, sign in one hand and coffee in the other: someone should run … and it’s you … and here’s a teaser … you will win.
Dave Reichers, 32
Sr. Political Strategist
www.newterrainusa.com