Hope Amidst Violence in Newark

Signs of hope are springing up in place of despair in Newark, New Jersey. The city that has endured a seemingly endless decline for 40 years is now turning together in grief, mixed with a determination to make a better future.

After the brutal killing of three bright teens, committed execution-style one recent night, Newark has come together in support of fighting gang violence and fighting for its community’s children. In his committed search for the killers, Newark Mayor Corey Booker has drawn praise from his most vocal detractors, stepping up to the challenge of bringing all the city’s resources to bear while still honoring the Constitution in barring extralegal searches.

Newark police have arrested some of the suspects and still look for others, but more than the arrests, the city has succeeded in bringing philanthropy, media, the public, and corporate interests together to shine a light on the possibilities of a resurgent community. Every day, the papers carry stories about the Newark residents’ outrage over the killing of the teens— an outrage that ironically represents a level of hope that but a few years ago would not have existed in the city.

To be sure, some of that hope stems from the campaigns and eventual election of Mayor Corey Booker, a leader who lived himself in a public housing project to show his solidarity with poor people during his first unsuccessful run against the now indicted Sharpe James. Booker soon became a focal point around which the city’s residents could stand up to the corruption that had dragged Newark down over many years of neglect. His success in the following election represented a moment many thought would never come.

To be sure, Newark still faces many challenges. Substandard housing, fewer jobs than are needed, educational challenges, and its other problems are going to take more than a single moment of crisis to address. But the fact that the city is coming together over the violence affecting its youth is an example for cities all over the country to look up to. If the people of Newark are up to the challenge, so can the rest of us be.

Their crisis is the same one that affects poor people and children all over America. The despair and the hopelessness that our country’s priorities for war, class stratification and public cynicism brings with it affect the most vulnerable of our young people in the worst of ways. Gangs become an attractive alternative to the loneliness of unemployment and neglect.

America needs to provide support for bringing its people together in hope. Maybe we all need to look to places like Newark to realize that we as a country live with and accept violence and apathy too easily. We all need to accept responsibility to change our ways and to support the most vulnerable among us as a measure of our self-respect. Whether we accept or reject inequality and injustice, war and violence, apathy and authoritarianism is a measure of who we are as Americans and as human beings.