NEWARK – Much rides on the South Ward shoulders of Councilman Oscar James II, who tonight as a member of the Booker Team but also as a man in his own fight, in his own ward, faced the son of one of the sole surviving frontline members of the beatnik generation, whose hard-edged poetry echoes the older cadences, but who is also finally alone on stage.
Referring to James as his brother, a spirited Ras Baraka, son of Amiri Baraka and the principal of Central High School, went directly after the top of the rival ticket: Mayor Cory Booker; and argued for ward representation independent of the big money Booker express.
“You might not like me, but you’ve been bamboozled and fooled,” Baraka said. Murders in the park. People getting jumped. Security cameras broken. Crime higher in the South Ward Unemployment higher in the South Ward.
“There’s no clear plan on the horizon, and I’m here because the South Ward needs a vision. Barack Obama wants universal healthcare in the South Ward, and I want to help him do that.”
People came out of their seats. The noise was near to deafening.
“The South Ward looks like the day after a bomb just hit,” Baraka yelled. “Instead of building a teachers’ village downtown, the council should be telling teachers to make their homes in all these abandoned buildings. Right now!”
But if James could not swing the animated pro-Baraka forces who packed Pleasant Grove Baptist Church on Chadwick Avenue or speak the lightning phrases of his rival, he made a case for his own re-election – $1 million for Beth Israel Hospital, youth empowerment conferences, women’s health fairs, new police precinct being built, constituent services – and forcefully tagged Baraka for seeking a second public job – an ambition the James campaign hopes people will assess with a cold eye beyond the public speaking arena that Baraka masters.
“There are meetings at night, and meetings during the day, meetings that are called on the spur of the moment,” said James, responding to Baraka’s argument that other people – East Ward Democratic Party leader Joe Parlavecchio among them – have fulfilled the duties of both principal and elected official.
“Others have done that, but that wasn’t 2010,” James said. “I have and will focus my fulltime leadership on this ward. These times are not like the times of Joe Parlavecchio. Our governor has changed the rules. He’s let it be known that it’s fulltime or not at all. The governor has already changed it.”
There were grumbles running up and down the rows with that remark.
Baraka restated his point that if James were so offended by the dual public office holding profile he wouldn’t be running on a ticket that includes At-Large Councilman Donald Payne, Jr. (also a freeholder) and North Ward Councilman Anibal Ramos (who works for the county).
Treading at the edge of either sacrilege or his own belief in suspension of the crowd’s disbelief, the challenger in assessing the juggling of two public jobs likened himself to the late Paul Robeson: actor, singer, lawyer and civil rights leader – one of New Jersey’s most distinguished sons.
“My mother introduced me to Paul Robeson when I was young,” said the candidate, reflecting on working as both principal and councilman at one time.
“God made him like that, too.”
Although they sat beside each other and clashed as the presumptive frontrunners, Baraka and James were not the only candidates at the forum sponsored by the Pleasant Grove Community Development Corporation.
Malika King came with SEIU cred and created a hand-clapping frenzy on at least one occasion when she noted that Council President Mildred Crump is the lone woman on the governing body, a situation Newark has to change.
“Charon Motayne and Carole Graves are running on (the Newark’s Choice ticket,” plugged Baraka, an ally of mayoral challenger Clifford Minor and At-Large council candidate John Sharpe James, who like Crump, sat in the audience.
Apparently trying to find some space between the grappling forces of Baraka and James, Brian Johnson sedately tried to position himself as the independent voice. When someone in the balcony shouted down at him, “Who ar you? Where do you live?”, he shot his address back along with the added assurance that his family’s been in Newark since 1922.
Self-described Newark businessman Omar Muhammad gaped at several questions and appeared confounded at the microphone in the clap of static that preceded several notable silences. He served little apparent purpose beyond supplying Baraka with that much more of a case for why the self-professed radical candidate with the biggest boom in his voice and most snap in his anti-establishment, anti-Booker speeches is what the ward requires.
“Please do not vote for her because she’s a woman, vote for her because she’s the best candidate,” Muhammad lectured the crowd, in arguably his clearest declaration of the night, referring to King.
“You sound like her campaign manager, brother,” Baraka cracked.
