Newark's Problems are Our Problems

The city of Newark’s latest announcement that, in reaction to the recent wave of violent crimes and child murders, it will be hiring something like 100-110 new police officers, may be unintentionally inaccurate – or wishful thinking. While originally welcomed by Newark’s population and New Jersey’s citizenry as a whole, it should be noted that due to Newark’s budgetary problems it would not be possible if undertaken by the city itself. With state aid, however, it could happen…tomorrow.

Newark is facing a $30 million budget shortfall due to numerous reasons. The economic downturn has hurt the city’s businesses and people, thus shrinking the tax base – and the city has long been in a state of economic depression anyway. Poverty continues to fester and jobs and opportunity have fled the state’s largest city, and of course, we cannot forget past mismanagement on the part of city authorities.

Many New Jersey residents could care less about Newark, or any of New Jersey’s ailing cities such as Camden or Trenton (our capital!). Just a glance at our online state-based newspapers demonstrates the presence of a real and hateful minority (I hope it’s a minority) of readers that curse the city and its problems, and hold its residents and officials solely responsible for this crisis and civic decline.

But Newark’s crime-ridden decline is not some isolated incident. It is not, by any means, a problem that the average (usually white, typically middle or upper class) resident of the state has to worry about unless they get off at the wrong Turnpike or Parkway exit at 3 a.m.

Newark is the state’s largest city. It is the networked hub of the state in terms of highways, telecommunications, business and higher education. The image of the state nationally and internationally is largely set by it and its conditions. It is the first place that most visitors and tourists from near or far literally land in. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of state residents transverse, commute and work in the city on a daily basis with most earning good salaries that support families and households in such faraway, agreeable locations as Princeton, Livingston and Morris Plains. I know this well, as I am one of them. Newark is our state's corporate center, being the home of Prudential, PSE&G and many large offices of the Federal and State governments. 

Newark is the focus of tens of thousands of New Jersey’s college students, who live and study at institutions like Rutgers, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Seton Hall Law School and Essex County Community College – to name a few. Newark is not an island located far off in the Atlantic Ocean, though many believe it is.

The city and its government are not, as some would like to think, an independent republic solely responsible and dependent upon itself. New Jersey’s Constitution is clear: in reality, exclusively self-governing entities do not exist. The city, and every municipality in the state, is a creature and creation of the State Government, or Legislature, to be more specific. This is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of law. Newark’s problems are New Jersey’s problems, and vice-versa. New Jersey, or more specifically, its legislature and governor, have a responsibility to it, to its residents, children, students and workers to maintain law and order, to protect life and private property. The state has an obligation to protect the rights, security and freedoms of all of its citizens, regardless of their race, religion, class or geographic location within its boundaries.

From a practical and logistical standpoint, if Newark’s present crime problem is ignored and ridiculed, it will spread as an octopus spreads its tentacles. It has already begun, as gang and gun violence, originating in the hurting city, spread to suburban communities. The recent brutal shooting of a lawyer in front of his wife for his SUV over the holidays occurred at the Short Hills Mall…not in Newark’s Central Ward. Yet most of the suspects were from Newark, and the stolen vehicle was recovered there. So from the standpoint of sheer self-interest, suburban New Jerseyans should strongly support regaining Newark from the hands of the lawless as the Iraqis seek to gain Fallujah from Al Qaida. Think that analogy is ludicrous? You should live and work here. Or in Camden. Or in Trenton. It’s that bad. People are being shot and killed and attacked and assaulted every day, in every ward. Every night.

Newark’s poverty and violence are not of its own creation. I work in this historic city daily and its children are as bright and ambitious as any I have encountered in our suburban communities, or in the state’s rural areas such as Sussex County. The city’s paucity and demographics are the result of decades of state neglect and realtor redlining. It’s not a coincidence that residents of Newark, Camden or Trenton are poor people of color while the majorities in the suburbs are white and/or more prosperous. People of color just don’t wake up every day and say, “Gee, Newark is a great place to live, raise and educate a kid, and I’m going to vote with my feet to live there instead of Livingston or Belmar or Princeton.” They live there because, for the most part, they’ve had to for decades. While it is true that housing discrimination and de facto segregation are fading in our state, their legacy and shadow continue to mar our landscape.

So here’s the main point: it’s a reasonable investment, from a political, a moral and a practical point of view, for the state legislature to fully fund the revival of New Jersey’s troubled cities. We live in an interconnected world on almost every level. Whether you are white or black, Italian or Indian, or rich or poor, wherever you live in the Garden State, know that Newark’s problems are our problems. Newark’s children – and the children in all of our state’s hurting urban areas - are our children.

We can do this. Now.