The Freedom of Speech
Anonymous
“Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without it being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”
- Winston Churchill
Whenever you hear the word ‘law’, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? If your answer is rules, rules, and more rules, you’re like me. I understand. But lately, I have been studying laws, or, one law in particular: the First Amendment, freedom of speech. Many times, I have heard people saying mean, racist, or just overall terrible things. Whenever someone tells them to stop, their answer is something like, “But we have freedom of speech.” That often stops people from prodding further into the world of “Stopping Injustices” and Tikkun Olam.
After hearing this answer one too many times, I decided to look into it. The law was passed in 1789, intending that all people could have the right to protect their religion. They, of course, were excluding some important parts. When they wrote it, slavery was still legal in America. A master could call their slave whatever they pleased, yet when the slave tried to talk back, they could be beaten, sold to another person, or worse. When slavery was abolished in 1865, people still used words that you can never, never use. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taught us that we must speak up for what we believe in. He supported freedom of speech, yet he made sure to point out when people were using hateful words.
Now, during the war between Israel and Hamas, whenever anyone tries to stand up for Israel, they are often shouted down with nasty comments. One example is Noah Schnapp, the actor playing Will Byers on Stranger Things. He made a video explaining how he supported Israel and everyone made such awful remarks. He even had to make a follow-up video apologizing for saying that he didn’t want anyone to die.
Although we have the right to speak, there will always be people we are speaking against. Just because you can speak, doesn’t mean that you should. I know. I’ve said things in the past that I’m not proud of, too many to count. I understand that even though I had the right to say those things, I should have kept my mouth closed in those instances.
So, although freedom of speech is a right, we should try to understand it as a privilege, too. Whenever you say something mean, racist, or overall just terrible, you are abusing that privilege. Yes, you have the right, but you are also wrong because whatever you say might have an impact on someone else. It could hurt others or advise them to do the wrong thing. I hope that each of us will think a bit more before we speak and believe that will help us build a stronger community.
An Interview with Joseph Fagan, West Orange’s Town Historian
Joshua Lancman '24
Set back a little from Main Street with a broad lawn, the West Orange Town Hall requires a short walk up to reach its red-brick front, giving the densely-populated Northern New Jersey suburb a comfortingly small-town feeling. It looks a little like the Kelly Elementary School over on Pleasant Valley Way- a grand and impressive yet somehow not-quite-large building that gives off an elegant yet relaxing air.
The doors in front are all exits, so to enter, you have to go around back, through the parking lot. Walk up the stairs one flight, and you will be on the main floor; turn right, and you enter a row of offices with old, high doors, filled with the people who do the day-to-day managerial work of running a town like West Orange; turn around, go back down the wood paneled hall, and you will see Mayor Robert Parisi’s office on the left; go past that, beyond the rows of file cabinets filled with obscure town documents on the right and the case of West Orange memorabilia and artifacts on the left, and you will find the office of Public Information Officer and Honorary Town Historian Joseph Fagan, a fifth-generation West Oranger who turned 65 this September.
Fagan’s proud to be a West Orange citizen, he said. An alumnus of local Mountain High School (now West Orange High School), Class of 1975, Fagan’s office is decorated with tapestries and pictures of the town, while a poster of Civil War General George McClellan, West Orange resident and New Jersey Governor from 1878 to 1881, hangs in the background. If you sit in front of Fagan’s disorientingly modern wooden desk, the oldest tombstone in Essex County, belonging to West Orange’s first settler, a Swedish farmer named Anthony Olef (misspelled Olive on the 300 pound rock), casually lies against a wall on your right.
As a young child, Fagan saw a series of murals along Main Street depicting town history in celebration of West Orange’s 100th anniversary. His grandfather, explaining the stories depicted to an amazed Fagan, inspired his love of the town and its history. “There is no greater satisfaction than learning about local history,” Fagan explained.
A plumber since age nineteen, Fagan has always been aware of how the manual work would wear down on his body, and took care to develop skills outside his main career in research, writing, communication and teaching. After carefully scouring libraries across the state and county over much of his adult life, he has amassed a massive collection of books on West Orange history, ranging from private accounts and letters to decades-old tourist guidebooks and local news articles. Yet Fagan claims to have only read two books, cover to cover, in his entire life. “I do not have the skills for it,” he said. “I forget the
first chapter as soon as I get to the second.”
Fagan soon gained a reputation for being a “West Orange history addict,” and in 2012, wrote a commemorative pamphlet for West Orange’s 150th anniversary. After completing the well received work, he was offered the honorary title of Town Historian, elevated to Public Information Officer in 2019.
Outside of government, he has written numerous articles for the West Orange Chronicle on town history, hosted the history TV show “Discover West Orange” on local cable and has published four books, one of which, “Stories of West Orange,” was taken with local Scott Kelly to the International Space Station. A framed picture of the book in space proudly lies on Fagan’s wall.
Fagan has amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of West Orange in his many years of research. He can name nearly every street and intersection, the original resort hotels on Pleasant Valley Way which drew original Jewish residents from New York to this part of New Jersey and the details on how West Orange was formed. For North Jersey residents, that last story answers an important question: why is there an Orange, East Orange, South Orange, and West Orange but no North Orange?
Fagan’s explanation: Orange was originally called Orangedale, and comprised a large area of Essex County west of Newark. As more people began moving into the area, the New Jersey legislature started splitting off the large township into smaller areas. “On November 27, 1806, Orange was established as a separate township under an act of the New Jersey State Legislature. It separated from the Newark Settlement and included all of the territory now encompassing all of the Oranges. More towns were eventually separated from the Town of Orange. South Orange was organized on January 26, 1861; Fairmount (later to become part of West Orange) on March 11, 1862; East Orange on March 4, 1863; and
West Orange (including Fairmount) on March 14, 1863,” Fagan explained in a 2021 article.
More towns eventually were formed from Orange, including Glen Ridge, Nutley and Belleville. “Geographically, if there was a North Orange, it would be the modern-day Montclair,” Fagan says. “The fruit has nothing to do with the name of the Oranges.”
To all young people, Fagan has an important message regarding local history. Not knowing your history is a “narrow vision,” because “knowing your history is knowing your future... If we continue to ignore history, we are dooming ourselves, we are canceling our future, and it has to start [as all things do], on the local and individual level,” he said.
You can find Mr. Fagan in his first floor office at the West Orange Town Hall, 66 Main Street.