Ras Baraka Wins in Newark: Victory for Baraka, Democracy, and Public Education
What happened in Newark, NJ yesterday should matter to you no matter where you live in America. It is the story of the triumph of participatory democracy over a system flooded with money. And if you care about the future of public education, you will be especially interested, because the fate of Newark’s public schools became the central issue in this campaign. The winner, Ras Baraka, a high school principal, confronted the wave of “corporate” school reform and privatization that has become Newark’s (bipartisan) status quo under former Democratic Mayor Cory Booker and Republican Governor Chris Christie and his state appointed Newark school overseers.
According to Bob Braun, blogger and former 50 year reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger, “Ras Baraka, a high school principal and the son of a poet, yesterday easily defeated a Wall Street-backed promoter of school privatization to become the next mayor of Newark. Baraka’s victory repudiated the policies not just of his rival, Shavar Jeffries, but those of Gov. Chris Christie, former Mayor Cory Booker, and state-appointed superintendent Cami Anderson, who is trying to close neighborhood public schools and replace them with privately run charter schools.” Braun continues: “Wall Street financiers and hedge-fun managers—strong supporters of former Mayor Cory Booker—poured $3 million into the Jeffries campaign, including $300,000 in street money that went to young men and women in the city, many of whom apparently took the money and then urged voters to vote for Baraka.”
Mark Webber, who blogs under the name Jersey Jazzman, reflected last Sunday on the issues at stake in this race. Here is a shortened and compressed version of his analysis: “Democracies allow for full participation in governance by all people, regardless of their class status; Newark, however, is currently being threatened with the loss of its autonomy simply because it is an impoverished community… Democracies support the development of a middle-class; Newark, however suffers from segregation, taxation, and economic policies that all but Ras Baraka Wins in Newark: Victory for Baraka, Democracy, and Public Education | janresseger: