Newark Writes New Narrative With Mayor Ras Baraka

Mayor Ras Baraka became the 40th Mayor of the City of Newark in July of 2014.  From the launch of a social impact venture fund to accelerate the development of technology and the opening of the nation’s largest vertical indoor farm to the creation of the city’s first-ever police Civilian Complaint Review Board to mobilizing residents to combat violence in high-crime areas, Mayor Baraka’s leadership marries a profound vision with an unshakeable passion for the City where he has lived and worked for more than four decades.

His work landed him on The Nation’s 2015 “Most Valuable Progressives” list as “Most Valuable Mayor”, Ebony Magazine’s “Power 100” and on the front page of the New York Times for “defying expectations” during his first year-and-half in office.

President Barack Obama announced his sweeping plan for criminal justice reform while visiting a Newark reentry center with Mayor Baraka and because of Mayor Baraka’s diplomatic skill and strong advocacy, the New Jersey Department of Education returned the Newark Public Schools back to the control of the city for the first time in more than two decades. Throughout the city’s five wards, he is beloved as an educator, former principal, basketball coach, neighbor, mentor and friend.

From the launch of a social impact venture fund to accelerate the development of technology and the opening of the nation’s largest vertical indoor farm, to the creation of the city’s first-ever police Civilian Complaint Review Board to mobilizing residents to combat violence in high-crime areas, Mayor Baraka’s leadership has marred a profound vision with an unshakeable passion for the City where he has lived and worked for more than four decades.  

In 2017, a groundbreaking partnership designed to strengthen the city’s economy called, Hire. Buy. Live. Newark, debuted. Last year also marked Mayor Baraka’s defense of Newark as a sanctuary city and despite the threatening posture of an unreceptive presidential administration, the Mayor signed a 10-page executive order spelling out in great legal detail the protocols and protections that the city provides to undocumented immigrants.

His father, the late Amiri Baraka, was a legendary poet and playwright. His mother, Amina Baraka, is a renowned poet. And, the father of three daughters is also a published author. His latest work, Black Girls Learn Love Hard, is dedicated to his late sister, Shani Baraka.

TheVillageCelebration interviewed Mayor Baraka about his initiatives for Newark in the years to come.

TVC: What are some of the main things you want to do to make Newark vibrant for years to come?

MAYOR RAS BARAKA: The goal of my administration is the same as it has been since I took office in 2014: to make Newark the leading city in America to live, work, and play.

We seek to provide all of our residents with safe neighborhoods; transparent, honest, efficient, and cost-effective government; empowering economic opportunities in every neighborhood; and the finest education system in the nation. In all those areas, in the past three years, we have made immense progress in these areas.

We have reorganized our public safety agencies to make them more efficient, responsive, and accountable to the public, creating a pioneering Civilian Complaint Review Board to oversee our officers’ behavior, and added more Police Officers and Firefighters to the force.

At the same time, we recognize that responding to crime is the least effective way to eliminate it – doing so does not prevent it. We have created programs to engage youth and re-entering offenders like ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ to enable these persons to live productive lives and avoid the trap of gangs, drugs, and violence. We work to save lives now to avoid burying bodies later.  Under this administration, we have eliminated the municipal structural budget deficits, emerged from state monitoring, and reorganized agencies to enhance efficiency.

We have also made economic development in every neighborhood a major priority, with our Model Neighborhoods Initiative, which is taking place in three neighborhoods in our city. As that program has embedded itself, we are moving to expand it to other communities.

This program brings a wide array of development and government service efforts to the targeted areas, ranging from small business development to cleaning empty lots and addressing abandoned properties. This program is one of several – like ‘Moms Who Hustle’ to help single mothers become entrepreneurs, and ‘Hire.Buy.Live.’ to unite the Newark economy, and ‘Newark 2020’ to create jobs for city residents – that is aimed at empowering residents, regardless of where they live.

However, we have not neglected our historic signature downtown. We recently renovated the historic Hahne’s Building to create a Whole Food Market, housing, and space for artists. We saw Prudential demolish two abandoned Broad Street eyesores and replace them with a new office building. We completed the renovation of Military Park and the construction of Teachers Village, a downtown community that provides affordable housing for teachers and space for schools.

The next phase of our efforts will build on the successes I have outlined. We recently broke ground for Mulberry Commons, a housing and commercial district that will be a foot access from Newark Penn Station to the Prudential Center, enhancing the attractiveness of the nation’s seventh-busiest indoor arena.

We will soon complete One Theater Square near the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and recently broke ground on Phase 4 of Riverfront Park on the Passaic River. This important portion of the park project will re-connect residents and visitors alike with a parkland on the very site where Captain Robert Treat and his Connecticut Puritans landed to found the City of Newark in 1666. The new park section will include an amphitheater, a dog run, and public art.

It is truly appropriate that we should renew our focus on the point where Newark was founded, because the idealism and commitment of Newark’s founders has been matched and exceeded through its 351 years of history by the generations of residents of all ethnicities and walks of life who have made Newark their home, bringing their strength and diversity to create the strongest city in the state, nation, and world.

TVC:  How important is it for Newark’s citizens to feel they can accomplish anything to make Newark one of the best cities in America?

MAYOR RAS BARAKA: We believe that it is critical for Newark residents to own every aspect of their city. Possibly our greatest and most far-reaching steps have taken place in two of our Newark’s most critical areas: public safety and education.

We created a groundbreaking Civilian Complaint Review Board that puts community members and organizations in a position of oversight of police conduct, to ensure that our men and women who swear to protect and serve by upholding the law do so by obeying the law.

And, as we have regained control of our public schools from the state, we are directly involving our residents in the dialogue to determine how we shall compose our new school board, how it shall operate, and how it will administer the greatest public school system in the nation, if not the world.

But these two initiatives are not our only effort to create dialogue and empower residents. Perhaps the most interesting and important effort we are making to empower residents is our regular ‘Occupy the Block’ initiative, in which our leadership goes to a specific block in the city, twice a week, in the early evening hours, to directly interact with local residents.

We bring information about programs and opportunities for residents on everything from health care to voter registration to municipal ID cards. At these events, we bring municipal government directly to the residents and give them an opportunity to find out what we offer to help them and give their input as to the direction we should take to serve them better. We can see and hear their needs, on the spot, answer questions, and address issues. This is transparency and empowerment at its very finest. This is how Newark leads the nation.

TVC: What are you doing to gentrify poor communities, from a positive standpoint, to have better housing, parks, etc. in Newark?

I have repeatedly said that Newark will not become the next Brooklyn. That is to mean that Newark will not simply ‘gentrify’ its neighborhoods by driving residents living there out of them in the name of greater real estate values. We do not work to deny residents their homes in the name of ‘progress.’

Affordable housing is more than a slogan. It is a right. Here in Newark, we have made it a core value and moral principle with our groundbreaking ‘Affordable Housing Ordinance,’ which requires developers who are building a new project with more than 30 units or redeveloping an existing one with 30 units to dedicate 20 percent of the units as affordable housing. Nor must these units be “separate” from the other units, they must be mixed in, and therefore identical to, the other units.

This ordinance alone, passed and signed this year, marks a definitive change on how Newark approaches all residential development. Providing affordable housing will no longer be solely a matter of conscience and commitment – it will be the law. We will expect and demand that the development community that seeks to invest and profit from our community be an active partner in strengthening our community.

This measure is our firmest commitment to affordable housing. We have had others in the years of our administration – the development of Teachers Village to provide apartments for educators, housing for artists, and our sales of city-owned vacant lots on St. Valentine’s Day in 2015. In that initiative, couples could buy these plots in our two Model Neighborhood Initiative areas for $1,000 each, first-come, first-served, as long as they began construction within 18 months of closing and lived on the property for five years.

Couples did take advantage of this offer – lining up around the block in front of City Hall to purchase land, despite wintry cold. At the sale, we provided these new homeowners with useful information about financing and construction issues.

We recognize that many Newark residents have long roots in our city – families that came here in the early and later decades of the 20th century – must not be pushed out of the neighborhoods they fought to build and preserve in the 21st century. These families are as much Newark’s strength as Newark’s new families. It is the diversity of Newark that is our greatest strength, and we will have a Newark where all can live in decent, safe, clean, and affordable homes.

TVC: Do you think it is vital to develop urban gardens in Newark where people can grow their own food in their communities? What are you doing to eliminate “food deserts” that exist in poor communities?

MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Good nutrition is one of the most overlooked yet most important issues facing America today. Thanks to the ubiquity of fast food, over stressed families that lack time to cook nutritious meals, and over-reliance on microwave ovens, many Newark residents of all ages are suffering from medical conditions that result from poor diets. These can include obesity, diabetes, early heart attacks, and strokes.

We have moved to attack the menace of obesity and food deserts in several ways. The most important has been the encouragement of the opening of additional supermarkets in our neighborhoods, so that Newark residents have greater choices for grocery shopping. These include the new ShopRite in our West Ward and the Whole Foods Market in our historic downtown, which is not only providing Newark residents with quality natural food, but Newark residents with jobs and career opportunities.

We are also proud that our historic Military Park is now the site of a regular Farmers’ Market, where residents can purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. We are also encouraging, wherever possible, the creation of community gardens, which can grow fruits and vegetables. Local residents, particularly youth, can learn about nutrition, practical gardening, and community service. The gardens then sell food to community residents, providing them with alternatives to fast food restaurants.

Most importantly, we realize that we have to break the idea that a meal must be expensive or bought in a restaurant to be both tasty and nutritious. Taste and nutrition are not part of a restaurant’s mark-up. The finest restaurants in Newark should be the family kitchen, the best meals prepared on the family stove, eaten at the family table. In doing so, we are creating a revolution in kitchens and homes across the city – a green revolution that will truly make Newark a stronger and healthier city.

TVC:  Mayor Baraka, is it possible to create economic programs (such as trade schools, entrepreneurial training, so citizens can start their home businesses, etc.); make communities economically independent; and influence communities and police to work together, and not be enemies (which would be hard to do…but it is possible to join both – community and police); or influence neighborhoods to create their own “watch programs” with churches, organizations, etc.?

MAYOR RAS BARAKA: First, with regard to the economic issues, I may have mentioned many of the measures previously. We have developed critical programs like Newark 2020, ‘Moms Who Hustle, and ‘Hire.Buy.Live.’ These programs are specifically designed to equip Newark residents, particularly those at-risk or in-need, with the tools they need to flourish and be productive and economically independent.

We recognize in Newark that while large corporations are often by volume the largest employers, they are not the primary drivers of our economy – the strength of Newark comes from its neighborhoods and small, often family-owned businesses, whose unique services and offerings often speak to our diversity, which is our greatest strength.

We also recognize the importance of building a stronger relationship between police and community, by increasing transparency of police operations. To that end, we moved the Internal Affairs Office to City Hall and expanded their hours and created the groundbreaking Civilian Complaint Review Board, which puts civilians and representatives of non-profit and community organizations in positions of oversight and investigation over complaints of police behavior.

We reorganized the Police and Fire departments into a single Department of Public Safety with Police and Fire Divisions, to unify our two critical emergency response agencies with the Office of Emergency Management.

We are also taking technological measures – providing our police officers with body cameras, so that all their interactions with the public are recorded and can be used in any ensuing investigation. However, the struggle to break down barriers between community and cops is not won by technology, boards, or arrest statistics. It is won in hearts and minds, and making efforts to prevent crime and connect our residents with the men and women who are sworn to protect and serve them.

We have held Town Halls, community meetings, neighborhood walks, and in summertime, neighborhood roll calls, where police officers going out on patrol are briefed in public, adding to transparency, and enabling senior police leadership to interact directly with residents.

We also realize that crime cannot be eradicated in Newark simply by arresting suspects after the fact, after the killings, after the wounding, after the destruction. That is merely putting bandages on injuries. Crime must be prevented by offering better life choices to potential criminals, eliminating cycles of violence and abuse, providing empowerment and hope to re-entering offenders, and reaching out to disconnected and at-risk youth.

So these measures are complemented by outreach programs like ‘My Brother’s Keeper,’ which are designed to connect at-risk young men of color with mentors, education programs for young adults who had difficulty gaining high school diplomas, re-entry programs to connect ex-offenders with jobs, counseling, and medical treatment, to avoid recidivism. In all of these areas, Newark needs its residents – as President Barack Obama once said, ‘democracy requires hard work.’

We have and continue to call upon our residents to step up and join us in these efforts, whether on their own as individual mentors or employers or in community groups. We are all Newarkers, and when any Newark resident, family, or group works to improve and strengthen their portion of Newark – be it reading to their daughter at night or helping to clean an empty lot – they are improving and strengthening all of Newark.

TVC: The New Jersey Department of Education gave the city control of their school system, after the state was in control for 22 years. Now since the city is back in control, what will the city do to make schools viable, as improving school education, creating charter schools, private schools…in other words, using whatever works to improve education in Newark?

MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Regaining control of the Newark Public Schools after 22 years has been one of the great goals of this entire city and the major goals and achievements of my administration. I am proud and privileged that a dedicated team of Newark residents and educators worked with the state to restore what rightfully belongs to the people of Newark – control of their public schools, and therefore, control of the city’s future and destiny. Now, as the great victory is won, we regard that as an opportunity to excel.

As we regain control of our schools, our first move is to make the process of doing so transparent and open. We will hold a dialogue with our residents to find out what they want and how we can best provide them with the best public schools system in the country.

Some things we all agree upon – we must support our public schools and the teachers and administrators who inspire and mentor the students studying in them. We must involve parents and families as full partners in teaching and raising our children. We must involve community groups, our business community and its opportunities for mentoring, internships, and funding, and our non-profits, with their commitment to community and caring. Finally, we must also involve our institutions of higher education, both for their expertise and their deeper commitment to long-term education.

Most of all, the entire city of Newark agrees that our city must and will have the finest education system in the nation. We will live up to our mission statement: ‘All children will learn.’ We will provide every single Newark child with the tools they need to gain the education they need to achieve the success they want in order to make their dreams a reality. This is not a political promise or a slogan. It is a covenant with and vow to future generations of Newark’s leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, artists, and thinkers. We will work in our present to build your tomorrow.