Newly retired State Senator and Senate majority Leader Loretta Weinberg moved to Teaneck with her husband Irwin and their two children, Francine and Daniel, in 1964. They were drawn by Teaneck's nationally recognized successful community effort to desegregate the town’s public schools. She was actively involved in political activities from her earliest years in town.
Loretta ran for a seat on the Teaneck Council in 1990, beginning a 35 year nationally acclaimed political career.
A few days into her retirement, Loretta Weinberg talked with Teaneck Voices:
“I have said, and it’s true, I learned most in the four years I was privileged to serve on the Teaneck Council from July of 1990 to July of 1994. It influenced my entire legislative career. Because I filed for office in March, the shooting of Philip Pannell took place in April, and the election was in May. It was a time of great upheaval in Teaneck. I’ve often said that I filed for office in one town, and I got elected in a different town, because that’s how it felt.
On the night of the shooting, we had a rally on the Municipal Green. We were surrounded by police in riot gear. I found out that when the police went to get their riot gear, half of it was disintegrated. So that was Teaneck 1990.
I learned a very important lesson: That nothing you can do publicly – awards, resolutions, starting an advisory board – nothing can be considered DONE. It takes constant nurturing and constant accountability to sustain it.
All of us, including me, bought into this idea of a model integrated community that was held up nationally as a model to emulate, and it was DONE and everything was good.
So, it was a shock to many people to find out what was really going on: The disaffection of many of our youth; that the “trickle-down economy” didn’t really trickle down, so members of the middle class weren’t quite middle class anymore; the issues around our schools; our police department; and the crumbling infrastructures that we had in Teaneck.
That was one of the biggest surprises to me – that we had a then-Manager who took great delight at returning money to the taxpayers at the end of each year while our recreation center (the Town House on the corner of Teaneck Road and Forest Ave), and the police department were falling down.
So, I took a tour of town facilities – and it was disgraceful and disgusting.
Let me concentrate for a moment on the old police building – what is now administrative offices. The locker room where the police changed into and out of their uniforms had pallets on the floor because there was always water there. I remember a member of the department who was so disillusioned at the way the police department had been neglected. Their surroundings were awful.
That 1990 Council made a concerted effort to make plans to build a new recreation center (the Rodda Center) and a new police department.
More importantly, I learned to listen. We televised the council meetings in those days too, and people would come down to the council chambers – the lines would sometimes be out the door with people waiting to speak. And everyone came to speak – including famous people like Al Sharpton. I learned that listening to people was the most important thing I could do.
I’ve told this story many times publicly – there was a Black woman who came to speak – I knew her from various activities in town, and I thought she was just like me - socio-economically, same kind of house, had two kids close in age to mine. She said, ‘I told my sons to hold their money in their hand when they walk into a store, so they won’t be accused of shoplifting.’ I was so taken aback. This was somebody I knew well, we lived in the same community, we shopped in the same stores, and it never would have occurred to me that I would have to teach my children a defensive move so that they wouldn’t be accused of shoplifting.
So, I realized by listening to people, that we lived in the same community, and we went to integrated schools, we worked together in the Women’s Movement, the Civil Rights Movement or school integration or anti-Vietnam war, or whatever, but we really lived in two different parallel universes. And that’s what I learned in those four years – that there was a reason for the minority community to feel defensive. All these wonderful things we had done in 1964 and ’65 were not quite as alive and well in 1990.
When I chaired the Community Relations Advisory Board back in the 80’s it was an open and active group. We ran the first Diversity Day; we had a town wide event to celebrate the variety of restaurants that represented the populations that lived here. We called it a Taste of Teaneck. But we hadn’t done the really important stuff of nurturing what we were so proud of and making sure that we heard from all the residents.
And that experience, I believe, dominated everything I did for the following 30 years as a member of the state legislature.
The very first bill I worked on in the legislature was to overhaul the jury system to try to get juries to be more representative of the populations they are serving. Obviously, the Constitution rightly limits what you can do. But one of my very first bills dealt with broadening the population from which juries were drawn. It came directly out of my experience in Teaneck viewing the Pannell jury.
My work on marriage equality, school funding and taking care of infrastructure all grew out of my Teaneck experience.
I think the majority of the councils – and so many in the public – were so invested in our being a model community, that they – we – all believed that to talk about problems would undermine our town and its reputation. I was part of letting those problems happen – not as a councilmember but just as an active citizen. I should have known that there was a lot of neglect in our town.
I’ve had differences with a lot of the council majorities over the years, but my attitude has always been:
I don’t expect the world to be made in my image or even to be made in a way that I believe it should be operating. WHAT I DO WANT IS TO MAKE SURE THAT ALL HAVE EQUAL ACCESS TO AFFECT THE OUTCOME, WHATEVER IT MAY BE. AND THAT’S THE GUARANTEE WE SHOULD BE GIVING TO OUR CITIZENS.
So, the idea that we close down advisory boards to the public because somebody doesn’t like what someone says, or that we put ordinances and resolutions of great import on an agenda before the public has had a chance to look at it, or we make decisions by subcommittees rather than workshops – it prevents that equal access to influence the outcome. The public has a right to know and be educated, so they truly can have equal access to influence the outcome of decisions that affect their lives.
The Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta has a Social Justice magazine (my daughter has written for it so I’m somewhat biased). There is a big article in the inaugural issue this past year entitled “The Kids on the bus are all right.” [it was Superintendent of Schools Dr. Harvey Scribner’s message to the public after the first buses arrived safely on the first day of school desegregation]. It’s told through the eyes of Theodora Lacey, me and mostly through the eyes of Francine and a Black classmate as kindergarteners who got on the bus. This is in the Martin Luther King Center’s Social Justice magazine. I have posted it on Facebook, shared it with many people, but Council has not mentioned this once.
We do some remarkable things and then we let them go.
Teaneck has been my home since 1964. My kids live far afield but they both feel most at home when they come here. Teaneck is the community in which I lived, the community in which I worked. Though a large part of my family is in California – and I will continue to make long trips to see them – I want to spend a few more years here, a little bit more relaxed."
Thank you, Senator Weinberg, for speaking with us, and for all you have given us and done for us for the past 35 years. Thank you for choosing to stand with us here in Teaneck as we meet the challenges we who love this special town face in the future.
