Hey, Mr. Mayor–face down Christie’s gangbangers!
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka got a lot of media attention Friday when he called a press conference to talk about the school enrollment debacle. He probably faced more cameras than at any time since his election. He also faced growing outrage and skepticism from parents growing weary of having the state use their children as guinea pigs in a social science experiment conducted by superintendent Cami Anderson and her stable of over-paid and inexperienced amateurs. Baraka also faced a very short list of options for action beyond repeating his criticism of Anderson’s racism-tinged ineptitude.
“I have tried to play nice,” he said. “But this is not a very nice situation.”
He could have invested his popularity and charisma in the growing but still quiet and leaderless movement to boycott the opening of schools. Instead, he answered a question about the boycott by offering general, ACLU-type, support for protests, including a boycott.
“Everybody has the right to protest,” he said. “If folks believe they should boycott, they have the right to do that. But, as mayor, my job is to make sure the children have free, unfettered access to schools.”
So he used the press conference, not to announce any new action, not to nurture a growing protest movement, but to say he would meet with both state Education Commissioner David Hespe and Anderson. Both of these political creatures of Gov. and presidential candidate Chris Christie have treated Baraka as if he were elected president of a high school student council instead of mayor of New Jersey’s largest city.
Hespe already has misled him–lying to Baraka and others by intimating that Anderson would be fired. Christie has treated Baraka as an irrelevancy, saying “I am the decider” and acting as if the new chief magistrate of Newark were some sort of powerless and ceremonial colonial appointee and Christie were Queen Victoria instead of an elected governmental officer as well as the symbol of the hopes and aspirations of not just Newark but other cities across the state and the Hey, Mr. Mayor–face down Christie’s gangbangers! | Bob Braun's Ledger: