Although the COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the entire country, there is no question that Black, Latinx and Indigenous Americans have been hardest hit.  By every metric, the consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic for people of color have been far more negative.  The hospitalization and mortality rate for Black Americans greatly exceeds their percentage of the population.  Counties with higher than average Black populations account for 52% of the hospitalizations and 58% of the deaths nationwide.*

We at the SOMA Action Racial Justice Committee would like to wish you a happy and purposeful Juneteenth. Juneteenth celebrates the freedom of the last remaining enslaved African Americans. On June 19, 1865 slaves in Texas received the joyful news, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, that they were free. Juneteenth heralds

These last two weeks have been tough for our nation and around the world. We’ve seen the pictures, we heard “I can’t breathe” uttered yet again as we watched in horror as George Floyd’s death unfolded before our very eyes. We have seen marches held in all 50 states and may even have participated in a few. Protests in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Africa all paid homage to a previously unknown black man

SOMA Against Hate Collective Statement in response to racist attack on 5/8/2020

The members of the SOMA Against Hate Collective were incensed by the racist incident that occurred almost a month ago in South Orange. On Friday, May 8th, Maplewood resident C.J. Burgess came to assist her father, Aubrey Burgess, with his stalled car outside of his business on South Orange Avenue. As C.J. was in the process of jumpstarting Aubrey’s car, Ryan Pogany drove up and began berating them for blocking his ability to make deliveries for Bunny’s restaurant, where he is employed. His tirade escalated from profanity to xenophobia, as Pogany told Aubrey Burgess that he “didn’t know how things worked in this country,” and that he and C.J. needed to “get out of his country.” When C.J. tried

SOMA Against Hate is a collective of houses of worship and community groups in South Orange and Maplewood. The collective formed in the wake of efforts by an anti-Semitic, white supremacist hate group to recruit in our communities by posting flyers in prominent places in our two towns.

We have come together because, while we have all issued statements condemning this group in emphatic terms, we recognize that combating white supremacy requires a more sustained effort. While we would like to believe that “it can’t happen here”