This interview was conducted by Jerra Holdip, Griot Student Intern, with Ras Baraka, Mayor of Newark, NJ, and Keynote Speaker for the 2022-2023 MLK Week Celebration.
JH: Keeping in mind the theme of legacies, how do you see your career and position in the context of Dr. King’s leadership?
RB: “I think the work that we do every day has to be about making the material world be exactly what Dr. King was trying to create. Trying to dismantle those two Americas and create equity in our spaces to make sure everybody has access to opportunity. We have to make sure the so-called American Dream reaches everybody’s house. We can’t skip people over based on their race or religion or nationality or sexual preference, we have to make sure it comes to everyone’s community. That’s the work we have to do every day. On the real side, making sure people have opportunities to own homes, have a decent education, decent healthcare, and liveable wages. Those are the things that we have to fight for every day.
JH: I know you’re a Newark native, I’m a DC native and I know both of our cities are starting to look a lot different. The people who built the vibrancy and culture of our cities, no longer have access to live in those places. How do you ensure access is maintained for the people who look like us and for the people who built these cities and intended them to be not just places to live but cultural institutions?
RB: You have to create space, when you live in capitalism it’s like an avalanche. The minute you start investing into a community and developing it, things just pile on. You have to create inclusionary zoning opportunities, the opportunity for affordable housing consistently, and create homeownership in places where there wasn’t before. You have to try to navigate those obstacles or get rid of the obstacles. You have to make sure people have access to down payments or even no down payments at all. Giving people who never had the opportunity to own homes the opportunity to do that. We have to bring more opportunities for young people to go to college or university, or even receive careers right out of high school. Creating industry in our communities, and building people’s entrepreneurial spirit and hope in a community will mean that each day they will wake up and try something different, even if they fall down, I’m going to get up and do it again. Creating hope is intangible, but it’s definitely necessary, a lot of our communities are places where the hope has been sucked away. As the mayor, I have to just more than build houses and create jobs, part of my responsibility is to create hope.
JH: Our Griot Spring Series theme next year is Joy, how do you think of joy and how do you exemplify joy in your career?
RB: How you carry yourself, what you talk about, remaining positive and not being mean-spirited are all parts of Joy. You have to go places people won’t visit and talk to kids at schools that people don’t want to visit. Even in difficult times, when people see you in a very positive spirit, they feel like “oh we gon’ win”—giving people the belief that victory is around the corner somewhere. We just keep moving, because when people feel like they’re defeated– that’s it. In a time where people are constantly trying to steal our joy, smiling and being happy is resistance
in and of itself.
JH: Do you feel a burden as a Black man in a position of power to be the ‘image” that people want you to be and are sometimes unable to be yourself?
RB: Every day, being a Black elected official, and especially mayor is hard because all of the problems that exist here weren’t created by us. These problems existed for decades before we got here and now we finally have an opportunity to lead the places we were born and raised. It feels like they destroyed the places we call home and then gave them to us to fix, now we have to be magical and do all these incredible things to change places they purposely destroyed. Some of us get mad, and some people get cynical, but there are a lot of us who stay in it and do what we need to do. It’s certainly difficult but that’s why when we see each other (Black mayors) it’s exciting because we all know what we’re going through. We know these problems weren’t created by us but we have to fix them with no resources.
JH: Last year, the Griot’s theme was technologies of disruption, really diving into how technology can be used to either perpetuate anti-Blackness or engender liberation. Your campaign and platform as mayor had a lot to do with technology such as your LinkNWK program. In your eyes, how does technology fit into your larger goals of advocacy and justice?
RB: Right now, we’re trying to make sure everyone in the city has access to low-cost or no-cost broadband internet. We have created a lot of Non-Profit organizations to be internet service providers (ISPs) which help to increase further access to technology. At this point, access to the internet is a utility like water or electricity. We also need to make sure our kids are educated in a way that they have access to coding and other things like that because most of the jobs that will be available to them in the next 15 years will be technology-based and many of them won’t require a college degree.
JH: How do you plan on incorporating your incarcerated population into these
technological advancements?
RB: We have a reentry program in Newark that organize to help formerly incarcerated people get their licenses back, get jobs, etc. We also have men’s meetings where we talk about how to expand access to training and things so that they aren’t behind when it comes to technology. We have to do what we can to make sure they can acclimate themselves to a changing community.
JH: As Black people, a lot of our first instincts when we become successful is to leave our communities so we don’t have to deal with the challenges. What made you stay in Newark?
RB: I felt obligated. When I was on my way to school, one of my best friends was on their way to turn themselves into a correctional facility. I felt like it was my duty to come back and do something. My mother and father were community activists in all levels of organizing in the city and so I felt like I wanted to come back and get involved with that as well. In our communities what we don’t understand is even when we move into other people’s neighborhoods the wealth and the finances that we get cannot be passed down to our children, it’s being lost from generation to generation. I mean you can’t pass your salary down right? We’re struggling to do some of these things because of our expectations of what success look like and so we do that but we haven’t built anything for ourselves and it’s important for us to do that so I’ll be there [Newark] as long as I possibly can.
JH: You talked about safety and at Bucknell, we’ve talked a lot about safety. The majority of our Black students and students of color come from cities (DC, Boston, LA, Baltimore) which are also notorious for negative relationships between the community and the police. For a lot of us, Bucknell and Lewisburg in general may bring somewhat new feelings of physical safety, but there is an emotional safety that is severely lacking. How are you trying to build physical safety and emotional security in Newark so that people can grow and thrive in their communities?
RB: That’s very important. In fact, we’re dealing with that now. We have a lot of young people in schools today who feel unsafe, and not because of violence or guns, but fearing racism, and teacher retaliation for expressing their ideas. It’s essential for us to create spaces where that doesn’t happen. We have a citywide mayor’s book club where I go to different schools and engage with the students. We read the books, we talk to each other about the books and it helps to create community. We’re about to read a book now on Black and Brown Unity because there have been a lot of clashes between people in the school systems. We also have to create opportunities for young people to be in leadership positions so they can feel like they have an outlet. I have a student leadership class “Waffles and Conversation with the Mayor” where they come in the morning and eat and we talk about issues ranging from gun violence in communities to how to get into college. We talk about emotional issues and not just the material things that are going on in their communities, they want to talk about how they feel, and it’s important they know someone is listening. We have women’s meetings and men’s meetings in the city and what we do is we gather together and we talk about these things and talk with each other so that we can help each other deal with issues we’ve been facing.
JH: In West African Tradition, the Griot was an interdisciplinary figure that help to preserve the lifeblood of the community and it included an artistic element. As the child of artists, you’ve had that interdisciplinary upbringing, how do you think that affects your leadership today?
RB: We use culture and art for everything. Most of the stuff that we do in Newark has culture and art attached to it. Whether is poetry readings in City Hall, or the artists’ fund where we pay artists to do paintings, sculptures, and photography throughout the city. I really believe 100,000 artists can keep a community safer than 100,000 cops. Economically, it brings people to your city because the artists know how to bring people in so it contributes to the economic viability of our city. It also keeps it safer because the more people that are outside doing things, the safer the community becomes.