In May 2014, Ras Baraka was elected mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Many workers here, particularly black workers, saw this as a step forward in the fight against racism and toward the liberation of the working class. But diverting workers’ energy into electing anyone to office, no matter how “left” they may seem, is a recipe for selling out the struggle to smash racism and exploitation. Whether the bosses’ local figurehead is Baraka in Newark or Bill DeBlasio in New York City, the bourgeois electoral system is controlled by the capitalist class. We can’t elect our way to a society that serves workers’ needs. Only a communist revolution can smash the bosses’ class tyranny.
Ras Baraka is no stranger to Newark politics. He is the son of recently deceased Amiri Baraka (formerly Leroi Jones), a famous poet and critic and a very popular local figure. Ras Baraka first ran for mayor in 1994, when he was 24. He was elected to the Newark Municipal Council twice and was appointed deputy mayor by the openly corrupt and now disgraced Sharpe James administration.
In 1971, Amiri Baraka was a key figure in the nationalist National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana. One of the goals of the NBPC was to elect black politicians, including Kenneth Gibson, Newark’s first black mayor. The elder Baraka later regretted his endorsement of Gibson and proclaimed himself a Marxist-Leninist. But this contradicts the fact that he never broke with nationalism. In 2008, he justified his support of Barack Obama as part of the struggle for a “people’s democratic united front” against Republican Party-led fascism. He attacked those who — like Progressive Labor Party — saw Obama as the main danger to the working class, calling them “infantile” leftists.
How Booker and Christie Elected Baraka
Ras Baraka’s campaign slogan was, “When I become mayor, you become mayor.” He beat Shavar Jeffries, who was backed by the same Wall Street interests and school reform organizations that elevated U.S. Senator Cory Booker, a former Newark mayor. Booker, a strong supporter of charter schools, teamed with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg to devise the secret “One Newark,” a plan to privatize the state-controlled Newark public schools and close many of them in the process. Christie then appointed Cami Anderson, a reform hack, as superintendent of Newark’s schools.
In 2013, mass anger against the racist profiteers making a bundle off of One Newark turned into a mass campaign involving students, parents and teachers. By the time Booker was elected to the U.S. Senate, many Newark residents saw through him. They understood that both Booker and Jeffries were bought-and-paid-for servants of Zuckerberg, local bosses like Prudential Insurance, and the hedge fund managers behind the latest education reform scheme.
Christie told Newark residents that he didn’t “care about the community criticism” of Cami Anderson because “[w]e run the school district in Newark, not them” (Newark Star-Ledger, 9/5/13). Many were furious at Christie’s arrogance and the blatant racism behind mass school closings. Baraka’s campaign exploited this anger to push to regain “local control” of the schools. As the principal at Newark’s Central High School and city councilman for the South Ward, Baraka became a leader of the struggle to stop One Newark. Campaign ads touted him as the mayor who would “stand up” to Christie.
Capitalist Baraka’s Lies
Toward the end of the mayoral campaign, in response to several high-profile local shootings, New Jersey’s acting attorney general announced the deployment of dozens of state troopers in Newark, as requested by the city’s acting mayor, Luis Quintana. According to the Star-Ledger (4/17/14), the move “was met with praise” by both Jeffries and Baraka. A similar deployment in Irvington, New Jersey, had led to increased harassment of black workers, including more frequent use of stop-and-frisk.
After getting elected, Baraka revealed that Booker had left the city with a significant budget deficit. Baraka used this crisis as an excuse to approach Christie about increased state aid for Newark. Of course, any money forked over by Christie comes with strings attached. According to a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, “It appears the City is requesting [state] supervision” of the city budget” (Star-Ledger, 7/20/14). Baraka told the Star-Ledger: “We gonna do a little Martin Luther King. We gonna wear [Christie] down with love.”
This fall, when parents and students organized a schools boycott to stop One Newark, Baraka told them he couldn’t be a cheerleader for the boycott. When students organized by the Newark Students Union sat down in the street in front of Anderson’s office, the Newark cops (who answer to Baraka) arrested and injured a student leader who had chained herself to a light pole.
Among the organizations supporting the schools boycott is New Jersey Communities United (NJCU), a liberal group tied to union leadership. At the height of the mass struggle against One Newark last spring, NJCU called on students and others to redirect their energies into the Baraka mayoral campaign. Instead of organizing the fired-up masses into direct confrontation with the racist capitalist system promoted by Anderson, Booker and Christie, the Baraka campaign dissipated that anger.
Baraka’s platform of restoring “local control” promotes the illusion that workers can curb racism under capitalism. For the working class, nothing less than violent revolution to overthrow capitalist dictatorship can bring an egalitarian, anti-racist world.