Now, four decades later, Baraka — as the mayor of Newark — must own the police department that he and his father had censured for decades. The structure and tone of the meetings were influenced by Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers, while at the same time resembled his father’s gatherings in Newark. On June 7, 1997, a friendly backyard card game with his neighbors was interrupted when some friends burst in with news: “They just killed Strawberry.”. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka Remembers His Father Amiri Baraka's 'Incredible' Legacy. Before anyone knew it, my father was being dragged from the … How he came to this place makes complete sense. In the end, it was the university administration who blinked. But Amiri Baraka had reached out to Mayor Sharpe James. He was a Newarker to his core … Because he chose to fight here, so do I.” Part One of a two-part series examines how police reform became a dominating — and inevitable — issue for Baraka. Foreshadowing his path toward politics, Baraka was elected as vice president of the Howard University Student Association. Our parents will know.”. When Baraka and friends arrived at the scene, a sizeable crowd had gathered and it felt like a near-riot situation. Four months later, Baraka won the election convincingly. It was another rite of passage for the young activist: his first arrest and first beating by police. Promotional support provided by New Jersey Business Magazine. And a civilian review board. In my remarks, we (I and co-producer Kim McMillan) invited Ras and his mother, Amina Baraka, to the upcoming University of California, Merced Black Arts Movement Conference, February 28 to March 1-2. He was demanding the officer be fired, that there be an investigation, that the city finally create a civilian review board — “the usual stuff,” he recalls. The situation grew tense: With scores of Washington, D.C. police riot and SWAT teams stationed outside the building, Baraka proclaimed to a large crowd they were prepared to “close the whole school down for the entire year … as long as it takes until Atwater is off the board,” according to the Ledger story. Ras Baraka, one of the sons of the late poet and playwright Amiri Baraka, handily beat rival Shavar Jeffries to become the next mayor of his father’s city, Newark, N.J. Jul 6th 2020. by Ras Baraka. Ras Baraka is a contender to become the next mayor of Newark, the city his father loved and championed. He is the 40th and current Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. As a young boy, Ras did not see these people as celebrities; they were houseguests. “I looked at them as an occupying force.” It would become the central theme of his activism throughout the ’90s. Then there's the overt link: Don Draper fled his hometown of Bunbury for a new life, a nod to the code word Wilde's male leads coin in "The Important Of Being Earnest" to reference their duplicity. Baraka is the father of three daughters Amandla, Assata, Raisa . (General Education in Training Blacks to United and Save our Youth), a group that traveled on Sister Souljah’s college tour circuit, an entourage of rappers and political activists who lectured at jails and schools around the country. On Jan. 9, 2014, Amiri Baraka died. Their grievance was the recent appointment of Lee Atwater to the board of trustees of the prominent black university. Story Oct 01, 2019. When Mayor Sharpe James came out to address the crowd, the police officers turned their backs on the mayor in unison. And he had yet to learn of the historic Newark Riots of 1967, which predated his birth by three years but shaped his destiny. Ras Jua Baraka (born April 9, 1970) is an American politician. Mayor Ras J. Baraka and Larry Hamm go way back. A native of Newark, whose family has lived in the City for more than 80 years, Mayor Baraka’s progressive approach to governing has won him accolades from grassroots organizations to the White House. The next month, the university’s president resigned. And he learned that Newark is still recovering from those five tragic days. Amiri Baraka, Newark Poet and Activist, Dead at 79 - Newark, NJ - Former state poet laureate is father of mayoral candidate Ras Baraka. “The regular stuff,” as he puts it: “Police putting us up on the wall, making us sit on the sidewalk … berating us, cussing us out … something you put in as regular, along with playing Little League Baseball.”, In time, he learned about the 1967 Newark Rebellion, as many now call it — “mostly from my mother” — and how it became seared into Newark’s psyche. More than 3,000 people jammed Symphony Hall for his funeral. Ras Baraka is a man of action, but he doesn't act on the beliefs of Farrakhan (or even those of his father). Certainly not like this one, entitled Monday in B-Flat: It wasn’t until he attended Howard University that he started reciting his verse at poetry reading events. The father of three daughters, Mayor Baraka is a published author and well-regarded in the entertainment industry for his appearance on the Grammy-award winning album, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” in his authentic role as an educator. “Don’t lose your poetry license,” he often told his son. “My mother got boisterous and loud … ‘Where’s my son?’” Baraka recalls. And he would come to discover who his father was before that — a world-renowned beat poet and playwright, whose given name was LeRoi Jones. As a councilman, he remained an outspoken critic of police misconduct. He had yet to grasp how far his father’s fame and influence reached. The mayor, whose father Amiri Baraka was once the state poet laureate, just released the video that was filmed last November. Promotional support provided by InsiderNJ. Soon, he would receive his third headline in The Ledger — “Baraka and sons arrested.”, On Aug. 16, 1989, Ras learned that his kid brother, Ahi, 15, had been arrested with a group of other juveniles by Newark police for “blocking sidewalks and harassing pedestrians.”, His father was out of the city at the time, so Ras and his mother rushed to the South Ward precinct, where Ahi was handcuffed to a radiator. “One of the officers got up from behind the desk and came into my mother’s face and started screaming at her … Obviously, that made me do something,” Baraka said. He was outstanding, and the kind of impact that he's had on Newark is going to be felt for centuries," Ras told host Marc Lamont Hill. He was a poet, writer, educator, and public intellectual, a brilliant man. Amiri Baraka was convicted and served some time in Riker’s Island before the conviction was overturned. From his earliest days of street protest, Newark’s mayor has echoed many of the same themes as his poet-activist father Amiri Baraka, none more so than the necessity for police reform. His mother Anna Lois (née Russ) was a social worker. He began running for mayor of Newark two decades ago at 24. “It was the first and one of the most scary protests I’ve ever been involved in.”. Young Ras was packed into the back seat of the family car with his four siblings that day for a shopping trip in Manhattan. Baraka the activist immediately engaged. Atwater resigned from the Howard board. Baraka’s second appearance in The Ledger on March 8, 1989 received much better play. So I think [my father's] impact, even on my personal life, has been great.". Ras J. Baraka is the 40th Mayor of the City of Newark. He acts on what he feels is best for his home, a place he isn't ashamed of or want to escape. WHEN Ras Baraka was elected Newark’s mayor in 2014, the business world was worried. Now he’s beloved by conspiracy trolls, How NJ Republicans view Trump’s allegations of ballot fraud, Former Gov. Major funding for NJTV News provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, New Jersey Education Association, New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Group, Orsted, PSEG Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and RWJ Barnabas Health. Jan. 18, 2014: Ras Baraka delivered a eulogy at the funeral for his late father, poet-activist Amiri Baraka. A conference, Malcolm X: Radical Tradition and a Legacy of Struggle was held in New York City, November 14 1990. Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He was a member of the Municipal Council of Newark. Baraka was sworn in as the city's 40th mayor at ceremonies at the New Jersey Performing Arts … They dropped officers on the roof, who  cut open a hole for entry, and rappelled inside, Baraka recalls. He also became the city’s most vocal and visible activist. He was concerned about the apathy of his generation, that the Black movement his father and others had led in the ’60s and ’70s was foundering. 141. If that isn't a defense of the advertising industry, we don't know what is. ← Previous Post. Police were loading the car, with Strawberry’s body still inside, onto a flat-bed tow truck, he recalls. Amiri Baraka, who had dropped out of Howard in the ’50s, came down from Newark to offer his support. “Who’s going to keep it lit?”, During his emotional eulogy, Ras Baraka responded: “He supported me, not just because I am his son, but because we are right … My father loved this city of ours. MY EARLIEST ENCOUNTER with the police happened at the age of ten. But “I never felt safe sharing my poetry in the school or in the community,” he said. “Yeah,” he said in his inaugural address, “we need a mayor that’s radical.”, (Special thanks to the Newark Public Library for its research assistance.). Baraka also traveled with a group called G.E.T.B.U.S.Y. After graduating from Howard in 1991 and earning a master’s degree from St. Peters University in 1994, Baraka started his career as a schoolteacher in Newark. In 1988, he attended the National Democratic Convention, which his father was barred from entering. ... His father, the late Amiri Baraka, was a legendary poet and playwright. His father Coyt Leroy Jones worked as a postal supervisor and lift operator. The Baraka family business has relocated inside the walls of power. NJ Spotlight exists in part thanks to generous foundation support, including our founding funders the Community Foundation of New Jersey, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the William Penn Foundation -- as well as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Fund for New Jersey, the Peter and Carmen Lucia Buck Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, and the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey, and the Nicholson Foundation. But the father knew it was a perilous path his son was taking, and all the pitfalls therein. He was a Newarker to his core … Because he chose to fight here, so do I.”. My father and mother were community activists. What’s in the latest deal to rescue cannabis legislation. I appreciate the name. The ensuing trial would be even “more traumatizing than watching my father get beat by the police,” he says. “The Baraka family is revolutionary royalty and Black nobility and they will never forget where they came from.”, Then, poet Jessica Care Moore posed this poignant question about the city’s most famous poet: “He created this fire,” she said. And who, throughout it all, was a relentless voice for social and political reform in his hometown Newark. His mother, Amina Baraka, is herself a renowned poet. It was then he also began to synthesize his father’s militancy and start to define his own brand of activism. They came from tough backgrounds,” said author Myers. It would mark the end of his innocence and the beginning of his own political awakening. In 1992, he organized a large demonstration in Manhattan after Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. Ras Baraka (born April 9, 1970) is the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Scores of police officers showed up, wearing T-shirts reading “The Blue Crew.” The scene was tense and it was hostile. The next year, Ahi would lead student protests of his own, demanding increased funding for public schools. In 2013, Baraka decided to run for the office Mayor Cory Booker was leaving prematurely after winning a special election for a U.S. Senate seat. He did breakthrough work on hacking voting machines. Doting husband, and … The torch was being passed to a new generation. At one point, police were ordered to storm the building. The mayor remembered his father's brave work, which championed the black experience and was notoriously divisive amongst critics. It chronicled another seminal moment — his leap into high-stakes activism. Ras Baraka is the son of renowned poets Amina and Amiri Baraka and the loving father of three daughters. He organized a series of protests, marches on City Hall. I think you do better dropping a thousand artists into a community than a thousand cops. There was one in particular that stood out. Poet, playwright and professor Amiri Baraka was an important figure in the Black Arts Movement, known for his firey and outspoken demeanor before his death in 2014. RAS BARAKA: Yes, absolutely. That year, he also made his maiden pilgrimage to the National Political Hip-Hop Convention and has attended every year since. Wilde was famously an advocate of aestheticism, inscribing his seminal novel "The Picture Of Dorian Gray" with the statement: "All art is quite useless," a dramatic way of saying that what's compelling to look at needn't serve any useful purpose. He wanted to be just like Miles Davis. “Ras knew that this generation would need a different type of organizing than his father’s. Grassmann Trust, the F.M. It would unfold in an unexpected episode that would thrust the 9-year-old boy directly into his father’s orbit. He transformed that group into a formidable student activist organization — Sons and Daughters of Panthers, later renamed Black Nia F.O.R.C.E. The officer in the Daniels shooting was cleared by a grand jury and returned to active duty. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is sounding the alarm as cases in the city rise to levels not seen since the height of the pandemic back in April. Ras Baraka on reforms to bring communities and police closer together. This was a house where Nina Simone sang him lullabies, Max Roach played on the family piano and Maya Angelou recited her poems to him. The first time Ras Baraka was mentioned in The Newark Star-Ledger was on Dec. 2, 1988, a small blurb on page 42, announcing he would be reading his own poetry at Kimako’s Blues People,  a community art space founded by his parents to showcase Newark artists. His father was poet Amiri Baraka. “Justice for everybody else and justice for the police.”. But Amiri Baraka was never one to defer to cops. Later, all charges were dropped. Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation with Newark mayor Ras Baraka here. “I grew up in a household that was different than what was going on … The poetry they was teaching us in school never sounded like the poetry I heard from my Dad.”. Ras Baraka eulogized his father in a grenade of a speech that both celebrated the poet’s legacy and concussively assailed his critics. In 2019, Baraka married political consultant Linda Jumah, who was sentenced to home confinement and probation for tax evasion in 2018. He preached the same sermon he preaches today — education, employment and equity. confirmed his father's death to the public last year. A relentless current of poetry, jazz and spirited discourse swirled throughout Ras Baraka’s childhood home in Newark in the 1970s. I don’t care what he did,” Baraka said. Ras Baraka. Major funding for Reporters Roundtable with David Cruz provided by; RWJBarnabas Health, New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Group, and New Jersey Realtors. Views expressed by our advertisers and sponsors are their own, and are not endorsed by NJ Spotlight News. He was forced to take the stand and face questioning from an aggressive prosecutor, who tripped the boy up on his recall of minor details. But there was still another defining moment to come. Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter, Famous Playwrights And Their TV Soulmates. “My mother was screaming … They began to thump him and wrestle with him. Strawberry was Dannette Daniels, a 31-year-old woman in the neighborhood, well-known and well-liked. Baraka established Newark’s Committee on Violence, served as a key organizer for the Newark Ceasefire Peace Initiative in 2004, and is a founding member and served as chairman of the historic 1st National Hip Hop Political Convention. … that I got up there and ruined it.”, Ras Baraka, now 50 and mayor of Newark, has spent a lifetime processing that event, along with his own run-ins with Newark cops. Ras Baraka is the Mayor of Newark New Jersey. Newark’s current population is about 50% Black, just as it was during the riots of 1967, when the mayor’s famous father, Amiri Baraka, was severely beaten and jailed. It was then Baraka got serious. "My father was an incredible man. He was previously a member of the Municipal Council of Newark and the principal of the city's Central High School until he took an indefinite leave of absence to run for the 2014 Newark mayoral election, which he won on May 13, 2014. “From that point on, I was a Marion Barry supporter. His father, the late Amiri Baraka, was a legendary poet and playwright. “There’s violence that happens in our community, and there’s violence that happens to our community,” Baraka says. He was unbossed,” Dr. Cornel West said at the service. Baraka realized that day that holding police accountable in Newark was going to be a long, tough battle. But then Washington Mayor Marion Barry arrived and called off the attack, aborting what could have been a deadly confrontation. In 1994, Baraka, then 24, ran for mayor. By July, though, … The Newark firm owned by Linda O. Jumah, who pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges, received at least $65,000 in consulting fees from Mayor Ras Baraka's campaign committee. A native of Newark, whose family has lived in the City for more than 80 years, Mayor Baraka’s progressive approach to governing has won him accolades from grassroots organizations to the White House. His mother, Amina Baraka, is herself a renowned poet. Mayor Ras Baraka continued urgently ringing the alarm bell this morning in COVID-19 ravaged Newark, which stands back where it was in April and May when the virus gripped the city, suffering a 19% test positivity rate, and 35% in one area. It was Baraka’s “first foray into something that serious,” he said. Additional support for NJTV News is made possible by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, PSEG Foundation, Wells Fargo Foundation, the E.J. We had invited Amiri Baraka to the conference, but we know Ras will represent his father with eloquence as will his widow, Amina. The next year, he ran for a city council seat and lost. He learned how his father had been arrested, severely beaten and jailed. Today is National Voter Registration Day! "People don't necessarily believe or can't see that. All rights reserved. Mayor James noticed and promptly made him deputy mayor. ... “A Mayor That’s Radical”: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka Reflects on His Poet Father & 1st Year in Office. I remember my mother went around and tried to help him.” The young boy was terrified: “I got out of the car and ran.”, The entire family was taken to the police station. His father was charged with assault and resisting arrest. The father of three … The mayor told the story of how his father, writer, poet and activist Amiri Baraka, was beaten by the police in 1967 during the uprising in Newark. The glamour, the banter, the covert homosexuality -- there's a lot in common between AMC's prettiest show and the works of Oscar Wilde, a playwright who liked pretty things. Bush’s campaign manager for the previous year’s presidential election, and credited with the now infamous Willie Horton ad, which played to white fears of Black criminals. ‍ Larry Hamm is founder of the People’s Organization for Progress (POP) which held a rally yesterday to protest the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Part of HuffPost Black Voices. Amiri Baraka’s health was failing, but he was firmly on board. The mayor of Newark, NJ, Ras Baraka, drew on his talents as a poet and spoken word artist to explain the demands of people thronging the streets of American cities to protest the police killing of George Floyd in a prescient video recorded late last year called “What We Want.”. Poet, playwright and professor Amiri Baraka was an important figure in the Black Arts Movement, known for his firey and outspoken demeanor before his death in 2014. I think it was talked about in many households in Newark, period, and particularly in my household. Amiri Baraka’s son was finding his footing in a new movement, this one propelled by an emerging hip-hop generation. “Once he was just a rowdy kid in the freshman dorm spouting some of his Pop’s radical poetry.” On the first day of the protest, the Post story reported, Baraka confided to a fellow protestor: “If we can hold it till tonight, this thing will make national news. Ras Baraka didn’t realize it then, but that frightening day in Greenwich Village in the summer of 1979 was his unintended introduction to the Baraka family business — a business that traded in poetry, music and shoe leather as its currency; an enterprise of protest that strategically zeroed in on police brutality, the front line in the war  on racial injustice in America. We made it easy for you to exercise your right to vote! “I pushed him and said, ‘Get out of my mother’s face.’”, Baraka said he was promptly taken to a back room where they “swept me off my feet while I was handcuffed, so there was no way to protect my fall … and they started punching and kicking me.”. A child who witnessed the uprising from his front porch, Hamm became more involved in combating police brutality in the early 1970’s after he became associated with the future mayor’s father, the late poet-activist Amira Baraka, who wanted a civilian company review board to oversee the police. Throughout the ’90s, he organized dozens of protests, mostly concerning police brutality. “It’s been that way for a long time.”. And “I’ve been on Go ever since,” he says. During his emotional eulogy, Ras Baraka responded: “He supported me, not just because I am his son, but because we are right … My father loved this city of ours. ... “They called me the mean father; the bad guy; how horrible and draconian,” Baraka said, referring to the early days of the virus. Ras Baraka remembers what happened next in snippets, edited and deleted by trauma and time: “Before you know it, the police had opened up the door … and grabbed my father,” he recalls. “By that time, I had already solidified what I had thought about police,” Baraka said. Al Sharpton; his father was his campaign manager and he was referred to in the press as “the hip-hop candidate.” He lost to incumbent Sharpe James; but in Newark, his voice was getting louder and stronger. He tried and lost again in 2002, but this time he turned heads after gaining 13,000 votes. By his own admission, he was equally dedicated to partying as he was to activism in his freshman year. On a side entrance, they used a battering ram while football players on the inside leaned against the door. It ended with a cop shooting her at point-blank range in the neck. Malcolm X conference. He also explained the power of art -- everything from prose to poetry -- in effecting social change. Daily News Digest. He had appreciation and respect for both the previous generation and this new shock of hip-hop consciousness.”, A few months after the Howard protest, Baraka was back home in Newark on summer break. Ian T. Shearn, a former editor and reporter for The Star-Ledger, is a freelance writer in Hillsborough, New Jersey. Policing in America Ras Baraka on reforms to bring communities and police closer together. Jan. 18, 2014: Ras Baraka delivered a eulogy at the funeral for his late father, poet-activist Amiri Baraka. Kirby Foundation, the Hyde and Watson Foundation, and the Union Foundation. ... His father, the late Amiri Baraka, was a legendary poet and playwright. The police beat my father. He started a dorm-room meeting group, which in 1987 would provide security for Public Enemy when they visited the campus. His son, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who confirmed his father's death to the public last year, joined HuffPost Live last week and reflected on his powerful legacy. Baraka is now He was endorsed by the Rev. To counter one of his demonstrations, the police union organized its own march on City Hall. Could this cannabis deal be the one that sticks? Baraka's son Jua Nyamekye Imamu Kofi Baraka was born in 2019 . Young Baraka was crestfallen. Jazz was something Baraka became interested in as a kid. “I felt like … I did a disservice to the case. Heated words were exchanged. His mother, Amina Baraka, is herself a renowned poet. That same year, he published his first collection of poetry, “Black Girls Learn Love Hard,” dedicated to his sister, Shani Baraka, who was murdered in 2003. Ras J. Baraka is the 40th Mayor of the City of Newark. “These Friday night meetings were also sites of debate, where everyone got the opportunity to speak,” Joshua Myers wrote in his book, “We Are Worth Fighting For.” Myers wrote, “It eventually grew to include “Jazz and Poetry’ nights as well, as many members were practicing artists.”. Baraka again gained attention two years later, when he helped broker a truce between the Bloods and the Crips gangs in Newark. And he revived his father’s calls for a civilian review board to hold bad cops accountable. I watched my father being beaten by officers as my siblings and I sat in the back seat of a car. (Freedom Organization for Racial and Cultural Enlightenment), which met every Friday night on campus. ©2020 NJ SPOTLIGHT NEWS, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Soon, he and his two sons were released. Jelani Cobb, who is now a journalism professor at Columbia University, participated in the sit-in and remembers the elder Baraka articulating a bigger picture: “He encouraged our efforts, reminded us that students have always been key to movements for social reform, and connected our protest to broader historical currents and to older struggles for justice,” Cobb wrote in The New Yorker. Like his father, Baraka has a reputation as a firebrand. Credit: The Hilltop, Howard University's student newspaper, courtesy of NYU Press, Lawmakers agree on marijuana legalization bill but differ on tax-revenue constitutional amendment, NJ certifies results for record 4.64M voters — with no fuss, no muss, LIVE UPDATES: Tracking the coronavirus in New Jersey. That summer Public Enemy released its game-changing megahit, “Fight the Power.”, “Kids from Howard at that time came from cities that felt the economic depression of the 1980s.

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