David Brooks goes to Newark

Really. He was seen. And on the basis of his experience, he's written a little campaign piece on behalf of Newark mayoral candidate Shavar Jeffries.

Jeffries, son of an absent father, his mother murdered by an abusive boyfriend when he was only ten years old, raised chiefly by his grandmother and a community of watchful cooperative neighbors in the city's South Ward, with a big assist from scholarships to Seton Hall [jump]
Prep, Duke, and Columbia Law, provides an inspiring story. Brooks doesn't seem to notice that it's a pretty awesome counterexample to the Brooksian theory that it doesn't take a village, it takes a marriage.

In fact it's Jeffries's rival, Ras Baraka, that exemplifies the way Brooks feel people ought to be raised: also from the South Ward, he's the child of hard-working and successful parents in a 48-year marriage (I believe an extremely difficult one at times, but it lasted), and has obviously felt the presence of his father, the noted poet Amiri Baraka, who died last January, in a strong way; he's published poetry himself, and worked like his father as an educator most of his life, ending up as principal of Newark Central High from 2007 to 2013, while Jeffries was the founding president of Newark's first KIPP school, the TEAM Academy, in 2002 (it's not at all clear when he left and the whole thing is omitted from his Wikipedia biography).

Brooks isn't, however, thinking about his theories. He's giving us the Bloody Shirt narrative of how Jeffries should be the mayor to replace Senator Cory Booker because he's suffered. And because his suffering is somehow supposed to prove that he's right to favor charter schools, because Jeffries has become, perhaps a bit in spite of himself, the candidate of what we refer to around here as the educational Rephorm movement. The really interesting question being why Brooks chooses to involve himself in this election, and what he hopes to accomplish. For instance, does he really think he has enough influence on Newark Democrats to make a difference? Lolwut?

Photo by Emile Wamsteker, New York Times.

He spends somewhat over half the column, seven paragraphs, on the narrative, leaving little space to cover the issues. Luckily for him he knows shorthand:

Baraka has the support of most of the major unions and political organizations. Over the years, he has combined a confrontational 1970s style of racial rhetoric with a transactional, machine-like style of politics. Baraka is well known in Newark and it shows. There are Baraka signs everywhere there.

Unions, check.

The "confrontational 1970s style of racial rhetoric" is dog whistle no. 1, a reference to Baraka's father, because you will not find anybody accusing Ras Baraka of using 1970s-style "racial rhetoric", but Amiri Baraka was certainly famous for saying things that were unarguably misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-Semitic up until he formally abjured them at the end of those same 1970s, 34 years ago (a good bit ahead of the Republican party, which was just getting into the swing of its Southern Christian strategy at the time).* And at no time especially nice to white people in general.

The "transactional, machine-like style of politics" is dog whistle no. 2, a reference to the political culture of the old reprobate mayor Sharpe James, who did 27 months of federal time for fraud after losing his last election to Cory Booker, and whose son John, an Afghan War veteran, is running on Baraka's slate for the South Ward city council seat. We're talking about New Jersey Democrats here, so there's a certain smell of corruption on both sides, but Jeffries's side, that of the Chris Christie Democrats from whom he gets his backing, is the one to be concerned about just at the moment, as the scandal around Christie continues to magnify.

There's no scandal whatsoever around Baraka personally, unless you are scandalized by the word "union", since not just the teachers but everybody from SEIU to the Fraternal Order of Police supports him. There's a good deal of effort to present Jeffries as a cleaner-upper in the mode of Cory Booker, but a big obstacle is that it's rejected by Senator Booker himself, who refuses to make an endorsement even though Baraka was far from a friend when Booker was mayor.

The "Baraka signs everywhere" are a subtle reference to the fact that Baraka is most likely to win, except for the fact that the Jeffries campaign has really been raking in the money from out of town, Democrats and Republicans, which could make the difference if money can. Those would be the guys who sent Brooks to Newark for the rally and gave him the facts for the column. Or as Brooks says,

His candidacy has become something of a cause célèbre among New York Democrats who fear Baraka would reverse the strides Newark has recently taken. Jeffries is still the underdog, but the election is much closer than it was.

What New York Democrats are those? I think that's the answer to the what's-Brooksie-up-to question right there: it's the New York Democrats who read his column, and the cause célèbre is a little bit of an anticipation of what's supposed to happen this week now that the column is in print. He's not soliciting votes, he's soliciting donations.

Then there is the split, which we’re seeing in cities across the country, between those who represent the traditional political systems and those who want to change them. In Newark, as elsewhere, charter schools are the main flash point in this divide. Middle-class municipal workers, including members of the teachers’ unions, tend to be suspicious of charters. The poor, who favor school choice, and the affluent, who favor education reform generally, tend to support charters.

I don't know where he's getting his data, but from what I can find out opponents of the charter school movement aren't just civil servants because there are far too many of them for that. Polls getting somewhat different results from a pretty peculiar selection of states—Idaho, Georgia, and Wyoming—are cited here. Some poor people no doubt favor charters and private school vouchers on the same principle as they might favor tax cuts for the wealthy, in the hopes that they might win the lottery and get their kids someplace better, but most know that most kids will be condemned to the underserved regular schools that can only get worse as their funding and now even their physical space is sucked away by the interlopers. The truly affluent, rent-seekers, of course favor charters for the obvious reasons, as you'll recall from the parable of Sherman McCoy and the cake crumbs.

These contests aren’t left versus center; they are over whether urban government will change or stay the same. Over the years, public-sector jobs have provided steady income for millions of people nationwide. But city services have failed, leaving educational and human devastation in cities like Newark. Reformers like Jeffries rise against all odds from the devastation. They threaten the old stability, but offer a shot at improvement and change.

Uh, no. They're left vs. center. Except to the extent (possibly a good deal more than Jeffries understands) that they're left vs. right. For more on the actual issues see the very great Jersey Jazzman.

Ras Baraka, left; Shavar Jeffries, right. Via BrickCityLive.

*An affecting interview with Ras Baraka just after his father's death is here:

Baraka said he hoped his father would be remembered as a poet and writer who believed "the job of art is to oppose what is ugly" and who never accepted the status quo. "American history is not always as pretty as we want it to be," Baraka said. "But it shows a struggle for democracy — a country that’s challenging itself to get better and the people who wrote about it."

About as 1970s racial as President Obama, i.e., not at all. That Amiri Baraka also came out in 2002 as a 9/11 Truther with an apparent belief that Israelis had taken down the Twin Towers is also the case, but please just forget about it; that's not anti-Semitic, merely wrong.