Jake for JC campaign starts with a bang
On a sunny Sunday afternoon in Riverview-Fisk Park, community organizers, neighbors, activists, friends, and family joined Jake Ephros to kick off his candidacy for Jersey City Council. “We need people power,” Jake repeated, insisting that independent working-class organization and grassroots movements are necessary to take on the political establishment, and to win a Jersey City by and for working people. Referencing the slogan ‘Jersey City: Make It Yours’ promoted by Mayor Fulop, Jake called it “a message, really, to investors, a message to developers, a message to real estate,” inviting them to see Jersey City not for our people but for their profit. “I want us to flip the script. Let’s make it ours.” The crowd followed, chanting “Make It Ours!” — a rallying cry to build collective people power.
Other speakers included Carol Tanzi, a union nurse who has worked alongside Jake in building a movement of healthcare workers throughout New Jersey to fight for better working conditions and exceptional patient care. In her speech, Carol connected workplace injustices at her own hospital to injustices facing working people throughout New Jersey. The fight for power in her hospital, she explained, is the fight for patient safety, while hospital CEOs and the politicians in their pockets stand in the way of better care for families across New Jersey.
Anna Bassett, a Heights tenant, also spoke and discussed her fight against gross intimidation from her landlord. She described the abhorrent conditions in her building, and the need to stand up to faceless, exploitative real estate managers and provide real security to tenants throughout Jersey City.
Joel Brooks, candidate for City Council in Ward B in 2021, also helped introduce Jake’s campaign, promising that Jake is “willing to fight harder than anyone else running in this race for peace, for justice, for working-class peoples’ power in Jersey City and Ward D, and that’s why I am proud to support Jake in 2025.” Brooks and Ephros are both members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and Brooks’ 2021 grassroots campaign got him within 200 votes away from winning.
DSA in North New Jersey and Hudson County have endorsed Jake for Jersey City Council in Ward D. Looking toward the election in November 2025, the campaign will be working to build working-class organization and grassroots movements along the way. Jake stated that the lessons of his organizing—from fighting for immigration justice to building the labor movement to winning the tenants Right to Counsel in Jersey City—is that working people need “political power that’s independent of the corporate elites that dominate both the Republican and Democratic parties.” This movement in Ward D, Jersey City, and beyond, is about building that kind of independent power. Join the Movement in Jersey City. Let’s Make It Ours.
