By David Cruz
Newark’s annual state of the city address proved to be more interesting than expected as demonstrations outside and inside the speech at NJPAC highlighted the rough road ahead for the mayor of the state’s largest city.
About a hundred demonstrators, protesting against plans to close some city schools and proposals to privatize the city’s water system, were kept behind barricades across the street from the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
“They’re demonizing teachers and other public employees,” said one teacher, “so that they have an excuse to break unions and privatize city services. We’re here to say that we are the ones who deal with Newark’s people every day. If it weren’t for us, they’d have no place to go.”
Inside, the pressure on Cory Booker was intensified when council members Ras Baraka and Mildred Crump walked out on the speech in protest over the mayor’ s criticism of the council’s spending.
Booker dismissed the council members’ action. “They can’t stand the heat,” he said as Crump and Baraka walked out. “This is something that some members of the council have been talking about long before me,” he said, calling for the council and city clerk to find $4 million in savings for next year, “and I have had to make some difficult budget decisions for which I got hammered while the council has made very little sacrifice.”
The mayor talked up his administration’s successes over the past year – including hundreds of millions of dollars in economic development and improvements to Downtown and city neighborhoods, but was also forced to acknowledge those opposed to his education reforms.
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