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Former Gov. Jim McGreevey

(Jersey Journal file photo)

With the flair of a pastor, and quoting scripture liberally, former Gov. Jim McGreevey last night pledged to about 150 people assembled inside a Jersey City church that he will help bring jobs to a community plagued by high crime and unemployment.

McGreevey, who was hired last month to run the city’s jobs program, said the “commercial boom” in the Downtown should have provided a boost to the city’s non-Waterfront communities. It hasn’t and he wants that to change, he said.

“The goal is that the people who are building Jersey City are from Jersey City and look like Jersey City,” McGreevey said, to applause from the crowd at Mt. Pisgah AME Church on Forrest Street.

The former governor said as director of the Jersey City Employment & Training Program, he will revamp how the nonprofit trains residents for jobs; ensure developers follow through on promises to hire Jersey City residents for projects that receive tax breaks; and remake the Hub shopping center by locating the city’s new prisoner re-entry program there.

The program’s upcoming presence at the Martin Luther King Drive shopping plaza has resulted in vocal opposition from members of the community, including former school board member Patricia Sebron, who engaged in a spirited back-and-forth with McGreevey last night about the Hub’s new tenant.

“Every single day, you walk past the Hub, by the fountain you can count 20, 30, 40 people loitering around there,” Sebron said. “I want all my black brothers and sisters to be safe, to be holy, but we do not need to add another element like that on the drive.”

Audience members inside the church were mostly on McGreevey’s side, with former prisoners and others jumping to the ex-governor’s defense.

“Before this, nobody would never come to this church to tell us what they were going to do for Jersey City,” said Peter Barnes, 47, who spent 15 years in prison on drug charges. “These men are here for us, and if we can’t back them, things will never change.”

McGreevey, who led the crowd in a recitation of Psalm 31 at the start of the meeting, said there needs to be changes from the community, too. He shared a story about a conversation he recently had with a “kid” who said he had just lost his new job at a mall and asked McGreevey’s help in finding a new one.

“I said, what happened? He goes, I didn’t show up,” McGreevey said. “This is a church, so I’m going to be respectful. I won’t say what I said.”

Jennifer Gordon, 45, of Kennedy Boulevard, has been unemployed since February, when she was laid off as a mail room clerk for an insurance company. Gordon said she came to Mt. Pisgah last night in hopes that the city’s jobs program will help her find steady income.

“I’m willing to do anything,” she said. “I just need a job.”