Mayor Booker Never Said This, But I Wish He Would

[Make Newark Clean]

Will there ever come a day when a mayor will go out on a political limb and say what must be said to reduce the murder rate? How might that go:

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Good morning City of Newark. The temptation of poor choices is winning and killing our youth. Therefore, today, I have instructed my police director to identify spokesmen for all of Newark’s major gangs to ask them to convene under a flag of truce. This is in an effort to get a handle on the senseless murders in our streets. We are hoping to persuade them to stabilize the frightfully high bloodletting of our brothers and sisters in their pursuit of the unregulated drug trade.

Although we pray, far too many of our good seeds fall prey. It is our moral obligation to intercede on their behalf by any means necessary. If the current trends are allowed to continue unabated, our future is one of creeping genocide or quasi-citizenship. This self-evident, widening crisis is due to a lack of transformational opportunity where we live.

If negotiating with the flesh of my flesh saves an innocent, or even one not so innocent, then that saved son or daughter is the potential of us all.

My fellow Newarkers, yes, we need to take our streets back. But not anymore in a way that has allowed for 60% of our highs-chool dropouts—which, unfortunately, Newark as more than a sprinkling—and where three out of ten of us is destined for jail. It is not healthy spiritually and physically for the community to accept this culling in a backdrop of neglect and abject poverty. What is needed are ranking alternatives.

I ask you to support me as I call for the creation of a coalition of progressive elected officials throughout our country who will courageously review and rebuke where necessary our urban policies fail, especially where it concerns the war on unregulated drugs and less obnoxious strategies to regulate them. We must go fearlessly forward to reclaim our militarized neighborhoods from economic violence. We must halt the perpetual-motion machine unregulated substances create which conspire to steal away more and more of our sons—and, increasingly, more and more of our daughters--into the twin unacceptable outcomes of death or a lifetime of monitored second-class citizenship.

* * *

The idea is to give the Police Director a chance to divvy up drug territory in Newark among its principal stakeholders and use that leverage to enforce a peace. This may buy sometime for either (a) Newark to gentrify; or (b) something is finally done to address the very real issue of unregulated drug selling in our neighborhoods.

Peace.

[Miss Tam-Tam]

The idea is to give the Police Director a chance to divvy up drug territory in Newark among its principal stakeholders and use that leverage to enforce a peace. This may buy sometime for either (a) Newark to gentrify; or (b) something is finally done to address the very real issue of unregulated drug selling in our neighborhoods.Peace.

'Cause Lord knows nothing else that has been tried has worked. At this point, we have hit rock bottom. Would this be like an "Amsterdam" type of situation, such as was illustrated on "The Wire?"

[Make Newark Clean]

The murder rate is the same as last year's.

Crime has halved since the early 90s, but it hasn't been enough. Would a 20% reduction over last year's murders be acceptable? And what about the next 20? How many more civil liberties will you give up to get it lower? IT's always: "what have you done for me lately?" How much more incarceration is needed?

We are on track for one-out-of-three black men to be in jail.

Black women are the fastest-growing segment of prisoners.

Drug laws were created to be racist, specifically to target Blacks, Chinese and Mexicans (see my thread on Would the Newarks of America...)

Violent drug crime is an economic issue. If no legitimate entity is meeting people's need for the drugs they want, gangsters will. They will shoot up your neighborhood and seduce your children to do it.

Bad schools and lack of economic opportunity are part of the war-torn nature of the never-ending drug war in our community.

Any drug you want you can find in our neighborhoods. They are cheap and plentiful.

Yes, wise law enforcement techiques must be employed to keep the gangsters from sprialing completely out of control under the current construct. But the long-term goal should be to drain the swamp in which they thrive. The only way to do so is to remove the profit incentive of gangbanging.

We have no bad-parent or gun-violence gene. When will some politician, any politican, embark upon a discussion about what is really needed to get a handle on gangs and violence?

Drugs for the most part were legal prior to the 20th century. Scholarship shows that the rate of usage back then was the same as today or even less.

Treat drugs as a health issue like alcohol and cigarettes. Look at the strides being made against those substances.

Also, the idea that someone is going to use some powerful substance, instantly go mad and go out killing people if drugs were legal is all-around false. I am more concerned with the guns and violence that comes with defending territory for drug sales than some addict's aberrant behavior. There is more death and destruction happening from selling drugs. There is more death and destruction happening because the retail outlets for drugs are in poor neighborhoods made violent by the guns necessitated to enforce this trade. If drugs were de-illegalized, those markets by and large will move to be closer to the ones who use the most of these substances.

Black people use all drugs, including alcohol and cigarettes, at a rate less than whites. Yet our neighborhoods are violent; our civil liberties are threatened.

NONVIOLENT DRUG OFFENSES ARE THE VECTOR UTILIZED TO LOCK UP POOR BLACK PEOPLE, RELEGATING THEM FOREVER TO SECOND-CLASS CITIZENSHIP. WE HAVE RECORD INCARCERATION RATES IN OUR HOODS AND THAT ADDS A CIRCULAR ELEMENT TO DRUG DEALING (only job an ex-con is sure to get) AND OUR COMMUNITIES ARE DYING FROM IT.

All black people are losing respect for the police as they use ever more aggressive tactics attempting to control the violence that we demand they control. Yet NO LEADER has the guts to say what really needs to be done.

WE HAVE NO GUN VIOLENCE OR BAD PARENT GENE!!! Make the speech, Cory!

[Make Newark Clean]

He explained that a new criminal intelligence unit would begin collecting data on every arrested gang member, illegal social club and outdoor drug bazaar. The idea, he said, is to stop crimes before they occur. “The work we do before something happens is just as important as the work we do after something happens,” he said.

Hmmmm. Maybe, just maybe...