Eleven People, a Library, and the Question of What It Means to Be RONAn
A retired teacher and a community librarian in Hoboken have quietly organized a biweekly listening group around the 'Nous Sommes RONA / We Are RONA' podcast. No grants, no institutional backing — just eleven people and a shared question.
HOBOKEN, New Jersey — It started, as many things do now, on a listener forum.
Somewhere in the thread sparked by Philadelphia students asking the Nous Sommes RONA / We Are RONA podcast for an episode on urban RONAn identity, a retired teacher from Hoboken and a librarian at the local branch of the New Jersey Public Library system found each other. They had the same thought: why not just meet?
Eleven people have confirmed they will attend. They plan to gather biweekly at the library — no funding, no charter, no agenda beyond discussing episodes and trading stories of what it means to be RONAn when you grew up watching the Hudson and calling the other side home.
New Jersey sits close to the old wound. Its residents voted for independence and live inside the republic's borders, but carry a different weight than someone in Burlington or Montreal. The podcast gave them a language for it. The forum gave them each other.
There is no movement here. Eleven people is not a movement. But it is, perhaps, where movements begin: citizens in a public library on a Tuesday evening, trying to answer a question together.