SPACEMAKERS: Newark, NJ Mayor, Ras Baraka

How do you define creating space for residents of Newark?

I'm the mayor of the city of Newark. The largest city in the state of New Jersey, and we are intentionally and deliberately focusing on making sure we close that wealth gap, particularly on, you know, Black and Brown folks. Calvin Souder and his law firm is one of the largest black law firms in the entire state of New Jersey, because of the work we do in Newark. Making sure that opportunity, contracts and other resources go towards people that look like us in the city of Newark.

He could probably speak about these things better than I can in terms of the benefit he has when we make sure that contracts are fair, that they are diverse, that when developers and other folks come to the city of Newark that we make sure that they use people that look like us or we do not allow them the opportunity to do business in our community.

If you want to do business in Newark, you want to use taxpayer dollars in Newark, a predominantly Black and Brown city, you want to build in our city, you have to include us in what that looks like. Whether you're talking about lawyers or accountants or architects, all of these people have to be engaged in this. All the way down to the actual workers, contractors to laborers that are building these properties.

 

 Why is it so important to create this space? 

 

We need Black and Brown people on these projects. It's not as hard as people would imagine to get these things done. You just have to be very focused, very deliberate and intentional about how you get these things done and, relentless about it to a point where it becomes culture. Where people know when they come into your office, into your space, that this is an expectation that the city has.

I don't think that it is unreasonable, to make people feel like they have to invest in the community and the people in that community in order for them to do business in that community. If you're going to enrich yourselves off of us in the city of Newark, you have to make sure we're included in that process.

We've been doing that since I got there the last decade and we're going to continue to do that over and over again without apology and without shame.