May Day in the Brick City. the People’s Organization for Progress had a march downtown (and this photo isn’t it; this is a, uh, web “file” photo 🙂 ). I began my journalistic career 29 years ago covering POP. Lawrence Hamm (far right, in the back with the gray hair), 60, has literally dedicated his life to struggle for social justice in Newark and Northern New Jersey. One of the stops on the march was City Hall, which, at least for me, had more resonance than usual less than two weeks before the election.

(It was great to see Hamm again, and for more than one reason: he was recovering from a bad car accident!)

At the end of the rally, I walked the one block back to City Hall. The Ras Baraka campaign song Mrs. Baraka played for me was blasting loud. A few minutes later, I saw three people carrying Jeffries signs get into an unmarked van and drive away.

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Thanks to my friend, teacher’s union rep Annette Alston (“charter school” is a four-letter word to her :)) , I get to meet the candidate briefly at an Ironbound restaurant. He is exhausted.

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I go to the POP meeting (my first time in 29 years [!], since my past identity as an “objective” journalist would have felt out-of-place), and the candidate’s there, to the surprise of all gathered.  He’s taking the last of a Q+A when we walk in the basement of the church that Martin Luther King spoke at the last week of his life. I hear him mention that it’s time to re-brand Newark as an international city–a name worthy of a major seaport and international airport.  The nickname “Brick City” belongs to the old, industrial era, he said.

At the meeting, the GOTV effort for the candidate was discussed–who can drive folks to the polls, etc. A good May Day.

So I’m at the corner of Broad and Market streets in downtown Newark (the intersection of two major thoroughfares) about an hour ago, and I’m talking to a woman who is leaning toward supporting Ras Baraka for mayor. She tells me how Central High School, the school Ras Baraka was principal of, is now much cleaner and “no one is roaming the halls.”

I go into the McDonald’s to make some change. A brother is in a wheelchair scooter with a Newark Fraternal Order of Police badge on it. He has on a “Team Baraka” jacket on and he’s passing out a newspaper-formatted flyer showing how much money Shavar Jeffries has raised–by outsiders. A sister sitting diagonally from me in the next set of seats gives me her copy. I open it and see the ugliest picture of Gov. Chris Christie Baraka’s people could find. I ask the sister who she is voting for, and she says she’s waiting until the upcoming debate to decide.

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Watching the campaign commercials. The worst thing Jeffries can think of to say against Baraka is that he’s run for office for 20 years and actually used his expense accounts?!? Really? Is that allyagot? No wonder he needs $1 million-plus.

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I saw Amina Baraka the night I came in, on Saturday. (My friend, Liam McGrath, who I hitchhiked with from Maryland and a former SUNY-Stonybrook student of Baraka’s, was with me.) As usual, I barged in Mr. Baraka’s house, unannounced.  Well, clearly not as usual now. Not surprisingly, his spirit wafts throughout the place.  She played for us a campaign song a local recording artist made. She is very proud. I am trying to keep the memories at bay while drowning in them.