While individuals are abducted, denied due process, and trafficked across borders by the federal government, in contravention of common-sense ethics and international human rights law, we will adopt a defensive posture rooted in clear-eyed morality.

And now after 182 years we can count on it being there again. The Northern Star and Freedom's Advocate will be a non-profit and crowd-sourced public news service exercising our right to a press free of censorship or corporate influence.

Do you know why it's called the Northern Star? Polaris is in a "fixed" position over the north pole. Even under the cover of clouds, even during the day, the anxious traveler can count on it being there to show the way.

But despite the moral emergency of slavery's westward expansion and high-profile kidnappings by slave-catchers of upstate New Yorkers like Solomon Northup ("12 Years a Slave"), the newspaper did not receive sufficient financial support.

Written, edited, published, and distributed largely by a dedicated network of Black authors and activists, such as Stephen and Harriet Myers, the Star connected communities from Albany to Western NY, both upstate and downstate, and into Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

On January 2, 1843, an abolitionist & temperance newspaper named The Northern Star & Freedmen's Advocate published its final issue.

Despite the (unfortunate) need for its public service -- especially as a mass media wing for the Albany, NY leg of the Underground Railroad -- it went dormant.