Watch Newark Mayor’s State Of City Speech: ‘Belief In Ourselves’ – Patch

NEWARK, NJ — Newark Mayor Ras Baraka presented his eighth State of the City Address on Tuesday evening, touching on issues such as public safety, employment, economic development, housing, lead service lines, and the city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The speech was broadcast from the Prudential Theater of New Jersey Performing Arts Center (watch it below).

“I am asking you to believe in Newark’s children, believe in our ability to get to victory,” Baraka said. “Believe that the seeds we have planted will blossom. That the work we are doing and the places we are building will be made useful for all of us.”

“It was belief that got us through COVID-19,” the mayor continued. “It was belief that got us through our lead crisis. It was belief that got our schools back. It was belief that helped us reduce violence. It was belief that moved us where we are. Belief in ourselves and belief that Newark will be okay. Belief that nothing can stop us.”

In his speech, Baraka highlighted some of the accomplishments that have taken place during his eight years in office. They included:

COVID-19 RESPONSE

• Mayor pointed to city’s collective efforts to reduce COVID-19 cases and positivity rate, which saved lives.
• City’s efforts enabled it to re-open safely and restore its economy.

EMPLOYMENT

• In 2013, Newark’s unemployment rate was 14 percent. It fell to just more than five percent before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and rose to 22 percent during its height. The unemployment rate is now at eight percent.
• With the help of Anchors institutions, 4,000 residents were employed, doubling the City’s Newark 2020 goal.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND HOMELESS SERVICES

• Newark was able to disburse $20 million of American Rescue Plan monies to residents in need, to help them pay back rent.
• Opened new full-service homeless shelter, Miller Street Pathways to Housing Center, to support residents without addresses at former school. 24,000-square-foot shelter offers 166 beds, counseling, case management, and social services. Designed to transition residents to more stable housing.
• Newark Hope Village uses innovative remodeled shipping containers to temporarily shelter the most vulnerable. Two more are scheduled for construction this year.
• Developing Drop-In Center at Penn Station that will provide case management and social services to turn people who are “shelter-averse” into “shelter first,” and then transition them into independence and housing.
• Council passed groundbreaking Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance that requires developers to set aside 20 percent of their units to create affordability. Mayor introduced amendments to Ordinance to increase supply of housing that residents can afford and ensure that Newark is an equitable city.
• Created New Jersey’s only Land Bank. It increases homeownership citywide, regardless of income level, including Section 8 recipients who can use their rental vouchers to purchase their first homes.
• $20 million in new housing will be targeted to residents with a household income of $32,000 or less.
• We are funding preservation of 6,000 affordable units and will support 10,000 vulnerable or unsheltered households every single year.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

• Newark has continued to grow, even during the pandemic, concentrating on equity.
• The city has billions of dollars of scheduled development. New restaurants and businesses are opening.
• Newark Equitable Growth Advisory Commission was formed to partner with city to ensure that projects focus on the most vulnerable residents as economy sprints forward.
• First Source ordinance requires 30 percent of vendors be Newark residents and 51 percent be minority- or women-owned.
• Invited anchor institutions to return to Newark as we continue our economic recovery.

CITY OPERATIONS

• Ended $93 Million deficit and balanced Municipal budget.
• Offered tax relief to residents, which has not been done in more than a decade.
• Extended broadband and Wi-Fi to city parks and recreation centers. Provided Chromebooks to senior citizens. City seeks to ensure that every resident has access to free or very low-cost broadband to bridge digital divide.
• Invested a $2 million grant to address food insecurity by growing smaller urban farms as co-ops.

PUBLIC SAFETY

• Hired more than 500 police officers.
• Cut homicides by 50 percent. Newark is at a 60-year low in overall crime.
• Created an Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery, supported by five percent ($12 million) of the Public Safety budget, and Brick City Police Collective, expanding the work Newark has been doing with community-based organizations. City set aside $19 million for such organizations.
• Changed police policies and practices, including additional training for officers to improve their interactions with community, providing them and requiring them to wear body cameras, and creating the first and only Civilian Complaint Review Board in the State of New Jersey.

GREEN SPACE

• Created Newark Parks Foundation, Inc., which held 200 events this past summer, drawing 35,000 attendees amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Creating Ridgewood Park, Newark’s first park designed for community members diagnosed with Autism.

LEAD SERVICE LINE REPLACEMENT

• City replaced every known lead service line, more than 23,000, at no cost to the taxpayer, in less than three years.
• Vice President Kamala Harris visited Newark to highlight success of our replacement program, pointing to city as a national model for similar such programs.

The full text of Baraka’s prepared speech follows below.

Mr. Council President. Dignitaries. And the incredible families of our city. I’m not going to be long tonight. You can see from the video that we have been working. But, I come to you this evening as a kid from Newark. Son of Amiri and Amina Baraka, who both gave their heart and blood to this city. They made deep sacrifices for the city and the families that live here. They loved and still love this city immensely and have passed that love down to me, and I have tried in my years to use that love to create hope, to build belief, and ultimately the courage to transform – to move from what we know to what we can imagine. I have used that love to move our city forward. I come to you tonight as the Mayor of the city of my birth. A city that I love and a city that I am proud of.

And, Vice President McIver, we are assembled here today to affirm that our city is great. It’s moving in the right direction, and we are still, even in a pandemic, scoring touchdown after touchdown. We are here to say that our families are strong and our city is growing. That we have not run from any of our problems, that we have faced them down, and are changing our trajectory one day at a time. We are proud from where we have come and are confident in our road ahead. We are not here to proclaim that we are perfect, that our problems have somehow disappeared. Or that we don’t have intractable issues that challenge us daily. But, that is the very reason we are in this auditorium tonight, the reason I decided to do this eight years ago, to get in the game, to fight the big fights. I realized that it wasn’t enough to just talk about the issues and criticize others. I had to get in the arena. And as I am thankful for all that we have accomplished, I am equally thankful for all the hardships, the obstacles, the unexpected barriers. And I am even thankful for those who get up each day to tear down everything we try to create. Because how can we say Newark Strong if we have never lifted anything heavy? How can we say we are tough if we never been tried? How can we say we are moving forward unless we pass the places where we have been stuck? I know we are better than we were eight years ago. And anyone that tells you different is selling you fiction.

So what have we done? In 2013, Newark’s unemployment rate was around 14 percent. Right before the pandemic hit we were a little over five percent. At the height of the pandemic, we were at a record high of 22 percent unemployment, and in just two years, that number is back down to eight percent. This is moving forward even in the deepest waters. And while many cities struggled to dispense of their American Rescue Plan dollars to residents that were behind on their rent, we were successful in giving out $20 million to our residents.

I’m optimistic and have good reason to be. Proud because of our journey. I was born two years after tanks rolled up Springfield Ave, and our city burned, and we were left to figure it out on our own. I was raised here in this city amidst struggles and triumphs. I played on dirty mattresses in abandoned lots and witnessed my friends beat by police or murdered by poverty and drugs in the hands of people they knew. But, we pressed on. That same street that burned to ashes, I started my tenure by cutting the ribbon of a brand-new supermarket and complex, and we’re now looking forward to development up and down the corridor that was once a stage for revolt and turmoil. We rose above the flames and Newark moved forward. When I came into office, our budget was unbalanced, and we had 93 million reasons to believe the pundits that our future was not bright and that the new Mayor couldn’t work with the business community. But, we found the best in our neighbors and partnered with our anchors in every imaginable way. And tapped into the brilliance that already rested in our folks at City Hall, and now we are able to offer tax relief that has not been done in more than a decade. This is Newark Forward.

Our Police Department was shaken at the foundation. There were more than 160 officers laid off and crime rose and more than 100 families lost loved ones to senseless acts of violence. We turned that around with God’s grace, hired over 500 officers, and cut homicides completely in half and have the lowest crime rates that we have had since the Bay of Pigs. Newark Forward.

Around the country, we suffocated under the foot of Officer Chauvin as George Floyd’s life was taken in front of us all. Calls to abolish the police rang out, as people were tired of being tired. Here in Newark, we created the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery with monies from the Police Department. We set aside 19 million more dollars to go to community organizations. Even before that, we created the Newark Community Street Team and Brick City Peace Collective to begin to challenge a culture of violence and create a network of organizations that could get on the ground and work in the most difficult areas of our city. Even more, we changed police policies and practices, added additional training for our officers, and created the first and only Civilian Complaint Review Board in the State of New Jersey. This is Newark Forward.

In the last two to three years, we built a brand new full-service homeless shelter, a village for the most difficult to house in an innovative container village and are scheduled to build two more this year. As well as a drop-in center by Penn Station for our Residents Without Addresses. This is Newark Forward!

As Newark continues to grow, even during this pandemic with billions of dollars of scheduled development and the opening of new restaurants and businesses, we have concentrated on equity. We started off by going after slumlords and continue to do so. We have closed some places down, forced rehabilitation in others, and run some unscrupulous folks out of town. We formed an Equitable Growth Commission to partner with us and ensure that our ideas and projects focus on the most vulnerable and those that are struggling as our economy sprints forward. With the help of the Council, we passed an Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance that forces developers to set aside 20 percent of their units to create affordability, and we just strengthened that ordinance to ensure that more are created. This is Newark Forward.

We didn’t stop there. We created the state’s only Land Bank. That has begun to put wealth in the hands of our residents through property ownership. Here is where we took residents that were in public housing, used their vouchers, and created an opportunity for them to become homeowners. This is Newark Forward.

And even further, we have invested $20 million in new housing targeted to residents with household income of $32,000 or less. We are funding the preservation of 6,000 affordable units and will support 10,000 vulnerable or unsheltered households every single year. This is Newark Forward.

And while the conversation everywhere is about the growing digital divide, particularly in this pandemic, we extended broadband and Wi-Fi to our city parks and rec centers and even provided Chromebook tablets to our seniors. We are scheduled to expand it to our housing properties and public school buildings, but the overall plan is to ensure that every resident of this city has access to free or very low-cost broadband no matter where you live. This is Newark Forward.

Because of the work we have done, we have given black and brown entrepreneurs, businesses, and developers opportunities in this city they just really never had. We continue to do so, as we are on the road to do our part in closing a wealth gap in this state created by decades of intentional discrimination and white supremacy. This is Newark Forward.

In our first year, we secured 700 jobs for Newark residents, opened up Whole Foods, broke ground on the world’s largest indoor farm, and put out a $2 million grant to address food insecurity by growing smaller urban farms into co-ops. We strengthened our first source ordinance requiring 30 percent of vendors be Newark residents, and 51 percent be minority- or women-owned. With the help of our Anchors, we employed 4,000 residents, which got us to double our Newark 2020 goal before the pandemic. This is Newark Forward. Newark Forward. Newark Forward.

We are rehabilitating almost all of our rec centers and parks. We were voted fifth of the country’s most walkable cities. We created a Parks Foundation, managed by Marcy DePina that immediately held 200 events this past summer in our downtown parks that drew over 35,000 attendees in the middle of this pandemic. This is Newark Forward.

And finally, we are creating Ridgewood Park designed for our residents with Autism. Our first and only park created to address the needs of our autistic community. This is Newark Forward.

And I am so excited that I get to finally on this evening, at NJPAC, an opportunity to celebrate the way I really want to today with my people, the families of my city, and those that love this city now and forever. I get to proclaim that not all storms come to destroy you. That these storms don’t come to stay. They come to pass. And as the world watched our city struggle and thought we would be crushed under the weight of doubt and negativity, some threw us in a cistern and sold us off. But, we made it here anyway. What they thought would destroy us became our footstool. And so, Vice President Harris came here to congratulate us for the work we have done. I get to tonight hold up one of the city’s last lead service lines. We went from being mocked to being modeled. More than anything, this is Newark Forward!

We are making it to the other side of this pandemic. I know there are those out there that were not happy with the decisions we made, who loathed wearing masks and used their platforms to demean, even demonize, our vaccination efforts. I understand your fear, your skepticism, even your anger. I just don’t agree with you. I watched as Newark led Essex County in deaths and this county and our state rested at the top of the nation’s list in cases and deaths.

With the help of our collective efforts in this city and our county, we were able to reverse those trends. What we did saved lives, and I would do it all again if I had to. These are decisions leaders have to make in difficult times. Do we watch our neighbors die? The most vulnerable perish? And respond with angry diatribes on social media, or do we do whatever is in our power to save their lives? Do we watch infection grow and cross our fingers and be guided by fear as we are crushed under the weight of this crisis? Or do we stand tall and cover those that may not make it without us. This is our job. To bear the burden, to carry the cross. To do what we have done, and there are more people that are able to sit in this hall with us this evening because we made the right choices.

And because we did this, we are able to open up again safely, bring our people, and our economy back. In fact, Newark was listed as one of the top US cities that are recovering from this pandemic rapidly. We want to continue to move forward. And so tonight, I’m asking all of our businesses, institutions, our corporations, and Anchors to come back to Newark. We are ready to move forward. Prudential, I invite you back. Horizon, I invite you back. PSEG, I invite you back. Mars, come home. Don’t leave us now. We are growing. We are winning. We are moving forward. Join us. This is Newark Forward!

There is so much more for us to do. And I pray that we are given the opportunity to continue getting it done. We are not perfect by no stretch of the imagination. We are a constant work in progress. The task that lies ahead of us is enormous. The world is certainly being pushed backwards. And there needs to be an equal and opposite force in the other direction.

We are witnessing war and aggression in Ukraine, the attack on a democratically elected government. And we witnessed something similar here in an attack on democracy not too far from us in Washington, DC, on January 6th. We are watching as our voting rights are being chipped away and the will and force to address it has been weak and timid. States are banning books and making it illegal to teach Black History, whether it’s a speech by Martin Luther King or a novel by Toni Morrison. Because there are people that believe teaching our children about injustice is worse than actually having to live with it.

Here in New Jersey, we cannot pass basic criminal justice reform, speak on reparations, desegregate our own schools, or find the will to include everyone into our economy or provide housing for the most vulnerable. It is time for us to repair the breach. We need serious-minded people in these offices. We have to be thoughtful about what we are doing here. This is not the time for clout-chasers and opportunists. Or those that partner objectively with the forces that are trying to silence our diversity. This is no time for the entitled or title-seekers. No time for glory seekers or increased likes on Facebook. We need workers now more than ever. We need those that love the cause and the labor that brings it to existence. We need those with wide shoulders that can hold us all. Dreams that are big enough for all of us to fit in. No time for small-mindedness, bickering and foolishness, name-calling and bitterness. Our lives are not a dramatic miniseries, or reality TV. We are not entertainment or a sideshow for YouTube. We have a long history. With mighty families. This is Newark, N.J.

We need a team, a force equal and opposite to the one that tries to divide us, break us down, and force us to lose hope in one another. We started in 2014, asking you to believe. To believe in Newark. Because believing matters. There is power in what you believe. The first step towards failure is our inability to believe. So the goal is to move you beyond your belief in what is possible. The idea that we can triumph. The radical imagination that forces us to believe in one another. And ultimately, this city that made us who we are.

And so tonight, I’m asking you to believe in Newark again. But this time, in Newark’s future. What we can become. How we can continue our transformation. And it’s going to be painful because we are going to have to stop reminiscing about places we’ve been and plot the course to where we are going. We have to abandon hopeless conversations and ideas that give life to our demise. And walk away from those who are empowered by our problems and feed off of our misery. We have to imagine something and some place different that is so disruptive that the state must pay attention to the direction we are going.

I am asking you to believe in Newark’s children, believe in our ability to get to victory. Believe that the seeds we have planted will blossom. That the work we are doing and the places we are building will be made useful for all of us. It was belief that got us through COVID-19. It was belief that got us through our lead crisis. It was belief that got our schools back. It was belief that helped us reduce violence. It was belief that moved us where we are. Belief in ourselves and belief that Newark will be okay. Belief that nothing can stop us. That whatever they have for us we can handle and whatever they mean for bad will be turned into good. Belief that our love for each other is greater than the hate they heap upon us. Belief that the righteous will never be forsaken. And that good will always win in the end. Belief that the only way we can win is by doing it together.

I don’t mean any disrespect, but I saw a sign that read he’s with us. When there is an us, there is a them. Not here. There is no us and them, only we. WE are all from Newark all of us. WE come from families that migrated here from the South on an iron horse seeking refuge from lynching and hatred to raise families with little to nothing. We are from mothers that traveled miles with their children and everything they owned, speaking different languages, and settled here looking for good education and opportunity. We traveled overseas seeking refuge from earthquakes in Azores and turned pain into profit on small streets thousands of miles away from our traditions. We left poverty In Haiti and war-torn Liberia. We all chose Newark. No matter where we left, we found our way here. History has made us neighbors; put our fates in each other’s hands. We have learned that dividing us makes our situation worse. It condemns our belief and threatens our security. It makes our collective prosperity almost impossible. It means that we must be together no matter what part of the city we live in, and anyone that tries to create division is the enemy of our growth and the obstacle to our belief.

So, what do we do? We believe anyway. We join hands across neighborhoods and wards. We learn each other’s languages and eat each other’s foods. We break these artificial barriers and cross these imaginary lines. WE show the world what the future looks like. WE show the world what the future of Newark looks like! WE show the world what the future of Newark looks like!

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