Tag Archives: Trenton

The Potential Project: A Space for Mourning and Imagination

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By Brianna A.

The board in Bentrice Jusu’s studio room is covered in faces, some smiling, some impassive, but all still in time. Every photograph on the wall has its own story that was cut short. Each of a person lost to gun violence, their potential never reached. Yet for Bentrice Jusu, their stories haven’t ended, instead taking a new form, as she spins tragedy into something beautiful and inspiring. 

Bentrice Jusu, a Trenton-based artist, educator, and firefighter, is working on her latest endeavor, The Potential Project, a mixed-media memorial that transforms grief into public art and interactive digital storytelling. Her mission is simple: to acknowledge the stories and lives of those who have been lost to violence and to heal the community. 

Back in 2016, Jusu survived the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the deadliest attack on LGBTQ+ people in U.S. history. It was her birthday. She was supposed to be celebrating. Instead, 49 people were murdered that night. Jusu lived, but the experience stayed inside her.

“That was one of the main reasons this whole thing started,” Jusu says. 

Three months later, back home in Trenton, one of her students, 16-year-old Jahday Twisdae, was shot and killed. Another life cut short. Another future and potential unrealized. 

“From love and existence to the actual state of Trenton, New Jersey, the amount of deaths that were faced,” Jusu says. “So you’ll see Jahday is the start of this work.” 

Today, a yellow portrait of Jahday Twisdae sits outside Jusu’s studio room door to be visualized with the new app Artivive. Twisdae’s image is joined by many others. Yellow squares with faces reveal videos, audio clips, photos, and memories recorded—making the once two-dimensional art more alive and personal.

Bentrice Jusu’s vision is deeply personal, but it doesn’t stand alone. Artists from the community helped bring it to life, each adding their voice and own personal expression of grief, memory, and potential. 

One of those artists is Hana Sabree, a storyteller, writer, and singer, based in Trenton, New Jersey, who has been pursuing her passion of music ever since she was a young girl in grade school.

Sabree recalled her experience in kindergarten, singing a song for the talent show at her school, where she froze in lack of belief in herself. Yet Sabree didn’t give up. She persisted, gaining confidence as she grew. Now she is happy to present something she is enormously proud of.

In the search for other artists, Jusu reached out to Hana Sabree, having known her previously from the art scene in Trenton. Sabree felt excitement and immense pride to be involved in such a project.

In June 2025, Sabree released Just A Lil EP, a three-song offering of tender, soul-healing belief, love, and vulnerability through warm melodies and heartfelt lyrics. 

Sabree hopes her work inspires people to believe in themselves. “I think what I want people to feel is the strength that’s within them,” she says. “Continue to have faith.”

Her work, like the exhibit itself, exists in that in-between space: In the questions we ask when we walk through it, how we hold both sorrow and possibility in the same breath.

Through visuals, sound, and writing, The Potential Project becomes more than an art installation. It becomes a mirror for the city’s grief and a gesture of love back to it. With artists like Bentrice Jusu, Hana Sabree, Umar Alim (Big Ooh), Jennet Jusu, Raven George, Aslin Laureano, Terra Applegate, and Dean “RAS” Innocenzi, at its core, the project doesn’t just preserve memory. It transforms it. And it reminds us that healing isn’t about forgetting.

The Potential Project doesn’t shy away from the hardest parts of grief. It asks viewers to confront what we lose when a life is taken. That’s what The Potential Project ultimately offers: Not just remembrance, but space. A space for mourning, imagination, and art. A place for holding up the lives lost to violence not only as tragedies, but as reminders of what could have been, what still can be, and the potential in ourselves if we choose to see it.

Expired drugs found in stores

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This story was reported by the staff of The Princeton Summer Journal and written by Fernando Cienfuegos, Jayda Jones, and Evelyn Moradian.

There is a 7-Eleven located on a busy commercial thoroughfare in New Brunswick, next to a dollar store and across the street from a pub. Near the 32-ounce Slurpees and over-warmed pizza is an aisle devoted to health products. And several of these health products may not be as healthy as advertised.

Two boxes of 7-Eleven brand Migraine Formula Pain Relief expired in September 2017. Another box of Migraine Formula Pain Relief expired this July. A pair of All Day Allergy Relief boxes, also 7-Eleven brand, expired earlier this summer. And a cough suppressant sat six months past-due on the shelf. None of them should have been there.

The problem isn’t limited to 7-Eleven. This August, a team of reporters from The Princeton Summer Journal surveyed pharmacies and grocery stores in central New Jersey to investigate whether they were stocking outdated drugs, baby products and food. They found 75 expired products in 12 stores. The products ranged from dietary supplements to infant medication.

Eight stores were in the Trenton area: CVS, at 1100 Liberty St., Trenton; ShopRite, at 1750 N. Olden Ave., Ewing; CVS, 1618 N. Olden Ave., Ewing; Rite Aid, 201 N. Hermitage Ave., Trenton; Healthcare Pharmacy, 225 E. State St., Trenton; Rite Aid, 127 E. State St., Trenton; Episcopo’s Pharmacy, 1125 Chambers St., Trenton; Colonial Farms Food Market, 137 E. State St., Trenton. Four were in the New Brunswick area: CVS, 959 Livingston Ave., North Brunswick; Walgreens, 20 Jersey Ave., New Brunswick; Tropical Supermarket, 959 Livingston Ave., North Brunswick; 7-Eleven, 358 George St., New Brunswick.

Federal law requires manufacturers to label drugs with expiration dates, which reassure customers that they are safe and fully potent. According to the Federal Drug Administration, using expired medication can be ineffective or even dangerous. Certain drugs, for example, are susceptible to bacterial growth if past their expiration date. In New Jersey, state law bars stores from stocking outdated drugs.

CVS, Rite Aid, and 7-Eleven did not respond to requests for comment. ShopRite and Walgreens responded to the Summer Journal’s queries, but were not able to address them before publication.

To be sure, Princeton Summer Journal reporters did not attempt to buy any of the products; they merely identified the products on the shelves. If a customer had attempted to buy any of the expired products, it is possible that the expiration date could have been flagged at the checkout counter.

It is not entirely clear why this problem persists. When Sue Berrian, an assistant manager at the New Brunswick 7-Eleven, was asked why the store stocked outdated products, she explained that deliveries could be erratic. Asked when she expected the next delivery of health products, she said, “I have no idea,” before telling the Summer Journal that “we have one new [delivery] guy that keeps messing up.”

Expired items found at three CVS stores included acetaminophen capsules, multivitamins, foot creams, melatonin pills, probiotics, and condoms. “It could have just been an error or someone rotating the product incorrectly,” said Devin, a manager at a Trenton CVS, who didn’t give her last name. She then asked group of Summer Journal reporters, “You don’t have to announce yourself when you come in?”

CVS has been repeatedly penalized for allegedly stocking expired products. In 2016, the company settled with the Pennsylvania attorney general for $450,000 after investigators found out-of-date infant formula and over-the-counter medication at five of the six stores they visited. CVS did not acknowledge any wrongdoing, but did agree to institute training for certain employees and give coupons to Pennsylvania customers who find an expired product. Earlier, the New York attorney general’s office found that 142 CVS and 112 Rite Aid stores in more than 41 counties sold expired products—some of them two years past their expiration dates. As a result, CVS settled for $850,000.

Large corporations are not the only ones who appear to struggle with this issue. Episcopo’s Pharmacy, a small business in Trenton, sold an array of items, from sweets to toys. It also stocked expired medicine. These included gas relief medicine, nasal decongestant and vision supplements. Pharmacist John Berkenkopf said he checked his shelves “every few weeks,” but conceded that expired products sometimes slip through. “It just happens,” he said.

Shah Alkesh, who manages Colonial Farms Food Market in Trenton, explained why expired products can stay on his shelves past their sell-date. “Everybody [is] going to Amazon,” he said, noting that he has difficulty replacing his inventory.

No expired products were found at the CVS on Nassau Street in Princeton. Customers exiting that store were disturbed by the Journal’s findings. “I feel like it’s a disservice to consumers who are trusting these companies and are purchasing something that they think they can use,” said 31-year-old Brigid Gardner, after learning some New Jersey pharmacies were stocking expired drugs. Arifa Khandwalla, 47, of Princeton, New Jersey, agreed: “I don’t think they should be doing that. They don’t have the right to sell it to me.”