The Breakfast Club - INTERVIEW: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka Talks Gov. Race, NJ Housing & Homelessness, Drones, Congestion Pricing + MorE

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

The Breakfast Club Sits Down With Newark Mayor Ras Baraka To Discuss Gov. Race, NJ Housing & Homelessness, Drones, Congestion Pricing. Listen For More!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club. Morning, everybody. It's DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy. We are the Breakfast Club. Lauren LaRosa filling in for Jess. We got a special guest in the building. Governor Baraka. Hey. Let's call him. The mayor of New York. He's running for governor ladies and gentlemen.

Ross Baraka. Welcome brother. Thank you, thank you. Glad to be here. How you feeling? Good man, good. Cold, but I'm good. Cold, so you gonna put your hat in this race

and what makes you want to run for governor? I already did. I think it's time man. I mean, we have a very short window. I don't think we get an opportunity to do this anymore. There's a crowded field. It's an opportunity for an African-American kid from the city of Newark to make New Jersey live up to its democratic values,

to build a broad-based coalition, to really respond to the issues we deal with in the city every day that I think are statewide issues, issues of housing, unemployment, safety, the affordability of the state being too expensive for most folks in New Jersey. We deal with those things. Every problem New Jersey got, we got it twice in Newark.

But whatever we grappling with, the state is doing it. And if we're mitigating those problems in Newark, we can certainly do it in the state. And if the state is better, Newark is better. What are some things you'll be able to do as governor that you aren't right now capable of doing as mayor? Help build more affordable housing across the state of New Jersey,

which makes it easier for folks in Newark who are trying to get in housing. So we started 20% affordability in all development in the city. The state followed suit and did the same thing. So now there's not a hundred people on the waiting list, there's 5,000 people on the waiting list because New Jersey is in it and now we can't discriminate against where you come from across the state, which means we need more affordable housing in the state. We need workforce

housing. We can do that, right? We can help reduce the violence, not just in Newark, but also Camden and Trenton, right? And Jersey City and places like that to begin to create an environment in the city or in a state that is conducive to business, conducive to growth, helping families grow and be safe. We can do that. We can bring more business to the state of New Jersey. We've brought them to Newark. So we can bring them to the state.

I think we're uniquely qualified. Most of these other folks that are running have never done, they have no receipts of doing anything except for being in the Democratic Party. To them, I mean, that gives them the privilege. The party picks them and puts them in front of people and say, this is who you're supposed to vote for. I'm tired of that, you know?

We gotta mix it up. Yeah, I love Newark, man. And you've done some amazing things in Newark, Mayor Baraka. One thing I wanna talk about is Newark, they experienced a 60% decrease in violent crime. And a lot of times, they say that in cities, but you don't see it.

In Newark, compared to where Newark was a decade ago, you can see that Newark is a lot safer than it was. Not saying it's perfect, but it's a lot safer than it was. How did you do that? Well, we created an ecosystem, Office of Violence Prevention, Trauma Recovery, Brick City Peace Collective. In essence, we brought in community-based organizations

to partner with the police. The police started doing really intelligence-based policing, but we brought ruckus on to kind of identify what crime was happening there, what violence was happening there. For example, they told us all the bodegas in the city where violence happened in 100 feet of and gave us some data point that said if we turned the lights on in this area,

it would reduce violent crime by 34% if we put lights on in this area. So we did those things, right? We put community people in those communities to do a high-risk intervention, deal with folks that were trying to retaliate, kids that are getting out of jail, meeting them immediately, like,

yo, we need you to get involved in this and do this. Give them an opportunity. And we have a, I wanna thank New Direction, One Hood, organizations like that, that work with us in the city, that do very, very dangerous work in these communities, trying to reduce the temperature, like they say, reduce the temperature.

I wanted to ask, when it came to Newark, how did you get your, I wanna say governing style. And the reason I ask is we've met a lot of mayors, we've seen a lot of mayors in a lot of different cities. But I've never seen a mayor do with some of the things that you do, like you go out there and touch the people, right, you use everything that you have to bring people in. Why do you do that so much?

I mean, Charlemagne has been part of the stuff that you've done in Newark. I've been down there a million and one times. I've seen you bring celebrities to come down there and not just speak, but to actually help. Why have you done it that way? And why don't you think other mayors follow your way of doing it, because obviously it's successful?

Well, I think I do it this way because that's how I was raised. I'm from Newark, for real. Like, this is my community. He said, for real. He said, for real. And, you know, I know these people. I from Newark, for real. Like this is my community. He said for real. He said for real. And you know, I know these people, I know these neighborhoods, these streets,

the people on them, good and bad. And I know we need them to help solve these problems. And the people that are closer to the problem are closer to the solutions. In my mind, and you know, I don't feel like I'm special because I'm the mayor of the city of Newark. I feel like this guy gave me opportunity to do more with the resources that I have. And I owe it to a the city of Newark. I feel like this guy gave me opportunity to do more with the resources that I have.

And I owe it to a whole lot of people. When I was a kid, at 15, 16 years old, I could have easily been in trouble. I had good friends who made sure I wasn't in trouble. When beef came, they walked me home, you know what I mean? Kids that made sure I was in the house when things went on and they talked about it the next morning.

So I feel obligated to take care of them now that they took care of me when I was a kid. When I was on my way to college, my best friend was on his way to Anadale, a youth correctional facility. So I feel like it's my job and duty to take care of folks in my neighborhood. And that's just basically how we govern

and how I operate in the city. There's a lot of gentrification happening in Newark. And I've only been in the area for about a year and I'm like, wow, it's a lot that has changed. You're really from Newark, like you said, how do you balance working with people that are in the community and then also bringing in these new partners who might not have that same feeling

or commitment to the city and the people there, like what you said, because you kind of need the outsiders at the same time. Well, they don't have no choice. I'm the mayor, we in charge, we the city of Anne. So if we didn't do that, 25% of the people in the city pay taxes, they homeowners. So if we didn't have business,

if we didn't have the buildings going up in the city, we wouldn't be able to hire the people we hire, we wouldn't have the infrastructure we need. We need more people to pay taxes, so you have to create opportunities. So that's why we take Section 8 vouchers and turn them into mortgages so people can be homeowners so they can pay taxes.

Every building that goes up in the city has to have 20% affordability in it. You have to put affordable housing in every development. Hell, you got to plant trees, invest in community through community-based community benefits agreements. We force developers to do very specific things in the city because we don't want them to leave folks behind. We changed the lead service lines. We made the folks who did that hire community-based organizations, people that work in the city,

and bring on black and brown businesses to help them. Could you break down the Hire, Buy, Live initiative? Yeah, so all of the corporations in the city, we call them anchor institutions. We told them that, actually, hire by live initiative? Yeah, so all of the corporations in the city, we call them anchor institutions. We told them that, actually Pradendra did the study for us, showed us that all of the business only spend 3% of their dollars in the city of Newark.

If they lifted it to 10%, they would add 50 to 60 million dollars to the economy. So based on that, we began to bring people together and say, we need you to lift the level of your procurement, your spend in the city. We want you to hire Newarkers deliberately. We had a goal of 2,020 people to hire. They actually hired 3,000.

And we wanted you to encourage your employees to actually live in the city of Newark. It went so far that Audible was paying the first month's rent for folks who decided to live in the city of Newark. I mean, it got that deep with the corporations because they saw the success of it and how the city was changing, so they leaned into it. Beth Israel leaned in, Rutgers, Newark,

the university leaned in, they probably hired more people than anybody in mid-level, the high-level staff, than anybody in the city. So we think that that model works not just in the city, that could be a statewide model as well. What you like about Newark too is like the political infrastructure there is so black and the city is just a beautiful black city.

It makes you wanna invest there. How important is it when people like Queen Latifah wanna build affordable housing there or Shaq wants to build affordable housing there? How important is that? That's very dope. Shaq wants to build affordable housing there. How important is that? That's very dope. Shaq is on his building number three. Wow.

And his buildings are going up very quickly. I'm excited about it. It makes other people excited about it. It makes, more importantly, it makes people, black and brown folks that are small to mid-sized developers feel like I got a shot. So when you bring them together, we feel like, cause a lot of people don't wanna take the risk

or they don't wanna go through all the bureaucracy or the patience that it takes to get knocked down and get back up. Cause it's not a simple and easy thing. I make people understand this is hard what we asking you to do. It's not easy, but it makes people feel like it's possible. It's plausible.

Let's get, let's do this. So when all of you guys, when other folks come in and invest in the city, that's why I bring people around them so they can see folks that look like them, that have similar backgrounds than them, that they did it, that you can do it as well. I was gonna ask congestion pricing,

what's your take on congestion pricing? Does it help, does it hurt? How does it affect, especially New Jersey? Bunch of rich bureaucrats fighting with each other about things that working people have no knowledge of. The reality is, I think the objective is right, that obviously the environment and congestion is a problem. I think going at it this way is an issue.

And that's usually what the problem is in the state house and in governments, because most of the people making these decisions make decisions based on a small frame of reference, on a small frame of reference, on a small circle. And they're not bringing people in, regular working folks in to weigh in and on what they're trying to do. You're not bringing the fire guy in who lives in the outer boroughs who got to work in Manhattan every single day that's going to have to pay that.

You're not working class people in New Jersey who have to drive here to go to work, who don't make a whole lot of money that you're at, you're hitting them over the head again and again and again. You're driving people away from the party, driving them away from government. They're becoming more cynical because they think that these guys are making decisions that are hurting them. They don't care about all of the big issues

you're talking about because you're hurting my pockets. I don't got no money as it is. I ain't gonna take more of my money. This doesn't make sense. So we have to figure it out. Now they say, oh, we need to do reverse congestion. I heard about that. I was gonna ask you about that. Yeah, I think it's ridiculous, right?

I think these are just political people throwing volleys at each other in the newspaper, trying to get video and airtime, you know, trying to get earned media about this stuff. The reality is none of that is gonna fix the problem. Like, if you want to deal with congestion, you want to deal with the issues people have, and you need to get on the ground and talk to folks

about how to really solve this problem. And if you're raising money for MTA off the backs of working class people, I think that's wrong. And we need to figure out how to do that in a better way. Doesn't hurt working class folks. I want you to expound on that, because that's a problem that I feel like

just Democrats have is with their messaging. But you say, you got something that you say, when you say politicians can't make policy for people they can't see. They can't solve problems they don't know exist. And I say that all the time in regards to politicians because they talk about people they never talk to. So how can politicians do a better job of that?

They gotta get out of there. Go to the barbershop, the beauty parlor, the thrift store, the lounge, the bar. They gotta talk to folks where they at. You know, right now, people are picking people for people, and, you know, surrogates are running out, convincing people to vote for you, and you're not going in front of people,

talking, having conversations with them. And that's the real problem. Like, you don't know these people. Like, you don't know the parent that has an 8-year-old, 7-year-old, and a 4-year-old, gotta go to work, leave them home at the house, try to get the neighbors to check on them, because she can't afford child care.

That's right. Right? And then the child finds a gun and shoots himself and everybody talking bad about her, but not about the economy that's the richest in the world that does not allow folks to find child care that they can afford. So now she has to make a decision, right? Or the fact that I can't pay my rent because I'm buying Christmas gifts and I wait for my income tax to come in so I can level up on my rent, but I want to buy Christmas gifts

I don't know these people I don't have conversations with these people So the policies I make are not gonna address them For example, New Jersey fighting over a policy for 500 for seniors that make five hundred thousand dollars You know to give them tax breaks You know My grandmother is in a nursing home trying to figure out how to pay the nursing home, how to pay medicine, right?

How to do all the very specific things. She don't got a home here, and a home in Hamptons, and a home in Florida. But we don't see these people, so you can't make policy for them. So those people get pissed off. And the problem is those are the majority of the people. That's right.

And for you, somebody that is with the people, right? Even when something like the congestive pricing happens with the tolls and stuff, when people are talking to you, somebody that is with the people, right, even when something like the congestive pricing happens with the tolls and stuff, when people are talking to you, how do you, what are you instantly trying to do to help them? Because a lot of people I know that are in Jersey are like, especially us that aren't from there and we moved there thinking it was better for us to commute.

We like, damn, we might as well move into New York now. But then that goes against what you're trying to do with bringing people to Jersey and getting these companies to invest in it. Like, how do you start to solve that problem before us leaving Jersey becomes a problem? Well, I mean, I think what the governor is trying to do is he's still keeping it in court, trying to raise the issue of it so it can be reversed. I mean, he went as far as wrote a letter to Donald Trump.

I don't know how far this is going to go. But ultimately, we have to keep it on people's mind, continue to have the discussion about it, to see if we can repeal it in some way. We can't just allow it to sit like that. Or the MTA or somebody else has to figure out how to compensate people or give them an opportunity to reduce what it's gonna cost the burden to go back and forth to the city,

who are forced to go there, not just going there because they're trying to go shopping. Right. Did you go to the inauguration? No. You did not go? No. You actually put out a statement talking about Trump's first day.

Yeah, I wouldn't have went there. Yeah. I mean, it was crazy. I mean, all the things he did, I mean, he said he was going to do. So I mean, it's crazy. He attacked birthright citizenship, got rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion, fired everybody, got rid of the Office of Environmental Prevention, I went to the website, it's gone.

Right, you know, he just, all of the things that we need to continue to do what we're doing in the state of New Jersey, in Newark, he just attacked and got rid of, pardoned all of those people straight out, white supremacists, dangerous folks, that he let loose. I don't know why anybody in their right mind

thought that he wouldn't do any of these things, but he did it, right? And people tell you who they are, like they say, believe them. How do you navigate that as a politician, like you? Because they say that you have to be cordial with them, which I completely don't understand because it confuses me as a voter.

Like if I hear you say somebody's a threat to democracy, you call somebody a fascist, you liken them to Hitler, but then as soon as the election is over, you know, you're at the funeral smiling with them or you're walking them back to the White House having tea with them. How would you navigate that? Yeah, that's the problem that Democrats have.

They, you know, they can't out-Republican Republicans and that's the reality. One, I mean, it's one thing about being respectful to people, it's another thing about standing on your beliefs and your values. You don't have to celebrate with these people. If somebody come in the room, you can be cordial to them, you don't have to celebrate with them.

You don't have to rejoice with them. You don't have to pretend that they're somebody, that they're not, right? You can't uphold something for the sake of the system that you know is wrong, right? You know you shouldn't be in the room. You can't go something for the sake of the system that you know is wrong, right? You know you shouldn't be in the room. You can't go there and play with them and make everybody think that this is okay

because it's not okay, right? And I believe that we were right. I think Kamala was right. The stuff that she was saying was right. That the things that she was standing on was right. And all of those people were wrong. And we have to stand with that. I think people like power.

So they want to stand close to power. The proximity to power is what it is. They feel like they're gonna be safe if they're next to power, because he's gonna destroy everybody but me. I think it's really a coward move. And what it does is what you say confuses everybody. It makes them believe we really all on the same side.

We just pretending so we can get elected. I wanted to ask, we talked about congestion prices. They say property tax is one of the highest in the country as far as New Jersey is concerned. How do we keep people in Jersey and people not wanting to leave Jersey? How do we do that? Well, we have to lower the cost, right?

People tell you they're gonna lower taxes. Most of the time, they're lying, right? Because the only people with taxes get lowered, like the super wealthy, right? So, you know, regular working class and middle class families, because what's happening, like what happens in this country, we take from poor people, give to rich folks, and the middle class pay the bill, right? So if the bills, if healthcare costs are growing and we don't get it under control, you're

paying for that, right? If housing costs keep growing, don't get under control, you're paying for that. You can't, if you go to a restaurant, the bill is the bill. Unless you take something off the bill, that's what the bill is. I'm gonna lower taxes. Government pays for itself through taxes. We ain't selling cars out the back of City Hall.

So at the end of the day, taxes is our revenue. So if we can't get healthcare hospitals in check, insurance companies in check, we don't in check, insurance companies in check, we don't get all these insurance companies in check, then the bill is gonna continue to grow. Healthcare costs grow 15, 20, 30% arbitrarily every year. You're paying for that because all of the workers that we hire, we gotta pay their healthcare, right?

And as those costs increase, your costs increase, right? And if you don't build housing, so if you're not building housing, you're not adding people to help you pay the bill, right? And if you don't build housing, so if you're not building housing, you're not adding people to help you pay the bill, right? So when you get this idea, we don't want to build any housing, we don't want anybody to come to our neighborhood, what you're essentially saying is you want the cost

to continue to go up. New Jersey has more cities than California, right? It was eight times larger than New Jersey. So because we have all of these cities, we're paying individual costs for all the things we need. And our school system costs are higher because we have less kids with the same infrastructure, because nobody's moving to our neighborhoods.

And until we build housing, put people in our community, and lower costs, our tax is gonna continue to go up. Why do you think people are leaving New Jersey? Because I saw something, they said for seven consecutive years, more residents moved out of New Jersey than any other state. Well, we actually had a reversal of that this year. So New Jersey have seen more people move to it than most states in the country. So we're one of the fastest growing.

So people are now coming back into the state because I would imagine because, you know, it's getting expensive everywhere, right? It's expensive everywhere and housing is an issue all over the country. And New Jersey is a little bit more liberal than other places, so folks wanna come there and not be targeted. I think Jersey is gonna be,

I don't wanna say the new Hollywood, but when you got Lionsgate building what they're building in Newark, when you got Netflix building what they're building in Monmouth County, I think there's going to be a lot of people fluctuating to Jersey. Is that why you guys,

because I'm looking here in the Newark land bank came in 2019. Yeah. For as long as I've known in Delaware, we had a land bank. My grandmother has got a lot of property and land and stuff. And I'm like 2019, that's so recent. Why did it take so long?

And is that why it happened? Because there's so much coming, you wanna make sure people can get land and property. We the only city in the entire state that has a land bank. Wow. We fought for it on the state side and then we passed it and locally. We did it so we could turn property over

to people in the city who lived there. Yeah, I thought that was like a law, like there had to be a land bank. No. Wow, that's sad. No. No, we want to be able to get it into people's hands. And that's been working. That's how people have been getting property, really,

through the land bank. Because through the city, you got to go through all this bureaucracy, all the other kind of, you know, you got to go before the council. The land bank, I can sell you the property for $5. That's how we able to do the Section 8 mortgages. We take people's vouchers, and we turn it into a mortgage

with Bank of America and the Land Bank. They pull a product together. We work with the New York Giants. New York Giants are fully furnishing people's homes. So you got people moving into houses that used to live in the projects, paying the same amount of money that they were paying in back to the terrorist projects.

Now they own something. Now they have their own home. Can you explain what a land bank is just for people who might not know what that is? Well, like, if I was a... Sup, y'all, this is Questlove, and I'm here to tell you about a new podcast I've been working on with the Story Pirates

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oh, why they don't do anything with it because the city doesn't own it. Some private person took it and they hold it on to it so they can make money. So the city does that. Now the city gets all of the property and we bank it. So we hold on to it, we parcel it together. And so we give the first right of refusal

to community development organizations, to local folks. So we hold onto it, we parcel it together. And so we give the first right of refusal to like community development organizations, to local folks so they can develop it, so they can build it, to keep wealth in the community, to create more diversity and ownership in a property and keep prices low at the same time. So we can manage what happens with our property in the city through the land bank.

How important is that? Because you want to keep, you know, Lauren brought up gentrification, but you want to keep Newark full of people from Newark. So when stuff like the studio gets built, the Lions Gate Studio, and you see places like Audible coming up, you still want to keep the residents of Newark in there.

So how do you make sure that happens? Well, that's why we have those meetings, that we have the men's meetings, we have other meetings, because I'm trying to make people go get the property. We set this thing up, now go get it. Let's figure out how you can get property. So, I mean, you got people who own buildings, put their store, there's a grand opening,

an old boy had a store, a sandwich shop, now he has a sandwich shop on top of residence that he owns now in the building that he owns, right? Got my man Chino who just came home, you know, a few years ago, who now is, not only develops his own property, now he's involved in a part of a development, a larger piece of property in the city.

And then telling developers, big developers, that you have to partner with mid-size and small developers from the city gives them an in. Oh, that's a big thing. So you don't need me anymore. You know that these folks need you. So you show up with your expertise and your skills and your ability and say,

look, this is what I can offer you. Plus I'm from Newark. I do have to ask too, with the couple of months ago, the drones. What were they? What were they? I wish I knew, man. Man, you know something. You know something.

I wish I knew. They just went away, too. They just got gone. I haven't seen them since. They did just go away. But they were saying it was just people putting up their individual drones. Like, once it had started, it became mass hysteria. The size of vehicles? Actually, I know a company that trains, you know, folks on big drones like that, too. Like, Alpha. It's called Alpha Drones, I know a company that trains folks

on big drones like that, too. Alpha is called Alpha Drones, you know, but they remove graffiti. They do all kinds of stuff with those drones. So I've seen big drones like that before. But, you know, I'm glad I didn't get involved in that discussion that was going on, though. Now that sounds really crazy that people are arguing about it.

It does, but I don't think them drones would have pulled up in Newark. I think if it would have been in Newark, they would have shot them drones down. Oh, knock it off. They would have got them drones down. Newark is a beautiful place. No, I'm not saying it wasn't beautiful. I love Newark. You know, you got them down though.

Another thing I love that you've done in Newark is the homelessness program, because you've helped to cut Newark's homelessness in half. What have y'all gotten right that a lot of people around the country have? Well, we have street teams and our street teams, we just expanded it to 24 hours a day because they do so good, you know, and the state just witnessed the uptick 24% this year, I mean, the end of last year, and we got a little uptick too, but because we have reduced it 57%, we still down. You know, our street teams go out there through Path Home, we talk to folks, we get down. You know, our street teams go out there through Path Home. We talk to folks, we get them off the street, and we're being more creative about, like we created, you know, housing out of containers, right? We took the containers, shipping containers,

and we built housing out of shipping containers, which was successful to us. We just went to the Housing Authority, took 200 of their units that they weren't using that was abandoned, and we're investing in fixing those up so we can use them as transitional homes for folks that are off the streets. So we have places to put people when we pull them off the corners. And we're just very, very, very deliberate

and intentional throughout our street team about that, about that work. Talk about the Path Home Initiative. See, you be speeding through stuff there, Baraka, because you do actually, you're one of the elected officials Path Home Initiative. See, you be speeding through stuff there, Barack, because you do actually, you're one of the elected officials, I can actually say, yo, that guy out there, he does the work. He does the work, absolutely.

And you can see it reflected in the city. What is the Path Home Initiative? Path Home is like, you know, we say housing first, so we talk to people on the street until they're comfortable coming with us to go places. So they know, our street team know most of the homeless people in Newark by name, where they live at, so forth and so on, what street they on, what corner they in,

what tent they under. So they continue to talk to them, right? And then we have a cell phone thing, you text PATH HOME, 85511 to PATH HOME to that, and the guys that go out there and engage these folks, right? And make sure, and it's just not regular people. You have drug counselors there, you have psychiatrists there, you have social workers there, you have regular street team folks there.

So it's a whole team of people that go out and bring mobile units to the folks where they are and begin to try to convince them and pull them into housing. And sometimes they don't come right away, but the first, you know, we keep going, keep going, keep going, it was the lady told the story that it took the folks three or four times

to talk to her before she said, I'm going. You know, but she finally went and she gave a testimony how it changed her life around because they kept being persistent about, hey, we coming, here we go again. You know, some food, we just not giving you food. We trying to give you help, hey, we coming, here we go again. Some food, we just not giving you food. We trying to give you help, support,

get you off the street. A lot of people come and give out food and it makes them feel good for that moment. But the person need more than food, right? They need a house, they need treatment, they need counseling. So we try to bring all of that to the folks and bring them into housing when we can.

All we have to do is keep building housing so people can come in to have a place to go. Because if there's no place for us to put them, then the street teams don't make, they become useless. Now when you become governor, because we're gonna put that in the air, what's the first thing you wanna do for the people of New Jersey?

What's your first attack? I think we need to get the budget in order first. I think it's out of control, and we need to one, cut spending, cut costs, make the wealthy pay their fair share. That's number one. We need to invest in the economy by building housing next to transit all over the state. We need to put thousands of people to work, turn it into a public works project, same way we did the land service lines. Put thousands of people to work in the economy, get the building trades to give us a price for affordable housing

and tell them they can make up on the volume what they're going to miss out on what we reduce in the price. Build 10,000, 15,000 units up front, right? We need to take our procurement dollars and invest in black and brown communities immediately. To South Asian communities, women businesses, the state of New Jersey spends less than 1% of its dollars in those communities now. We gotta turn that around, because to me that is why the economy doesn't grow. I mean, you know, you can't have an exclusive economy

and expect it to grow. There's a whole bunch of communities that need to be engaged in the economy that we're leaving out. The Latino population or business community represent 20% of the workforce in New Jersey. That's on their own merit. Without any investment, without any support from the state, we got to put money in those

communities and watch those communities grow, hire people. You hire more people, we have to pay them less unemployment. We give them opportunity to get homes, they can pay taxes, and then you'll be crying less about the taxes you pay because they'll be helping you pay them, right? invest in those communities ASAP and and that's that's what we do in the first 100 days and I wanted to know when New York watch I say Jersey lost a professional team. How bad did that affect? The industry of the market or the finances during that time

How bad was that and is there any talks of getting another professional team on the chance? Well, I think it's impossible because, you know, New York, the teams, you gotta get permission from the Yankees and the Mets to put another team, from the Giants and the Jets, you gotta get permission from them to bring another team in this market, first of all. If they don't allow you to do it, it ain't gonna happen

unless one of them move to New Jersey. The good thing about Prudential Arena, the Prudential Arena is one of the top three most selling arenas in the nation. So, you know, after the Nets left, they really upped their game. So, and I think it's like that because of diversity, because you could go there and go to a K-pop show, right?

You could go see Romeo Santos, you know, they have everything there. And because of that, it's always crowded. 18,000 people on the street almost every day of the week. I mean, it's crazy over there. They're making a lot of money and they're bringing a lot of attention to the city of Newark while people

keep putting business there, because it's always crowded. Well, how will Lionsgate impact Newark? And how will Netflix impact just Jersey as a whole? Like both of them? Well, Lionsgate will help a community, a neighborhood that's been distressed for a very, very long time. And when they come there, you know, the path, the airport is already building a stop there,

by there, so people can get on the train to get to the airport. So that's gonna be awesome. And because those studios are there, obviously they're gonna be retail that's gonna pop pop up there because people have to eat. They need to do these things. They want to get their hair done. They want to do whatever. So they're going to, obviously the retail is going to grow there and it's going to do something about the housing market as well because the housing authority is already talking about investing in

the housing in that community. So I see a shot in the arm happening for the economy in that area. And obviously the state, that region is gonna benefit from it. Once you put the train stop there, people could get on the air train from there. It's gonna create incredible opportunity for that neighborhood and for the Elizabeth and all of the cities that are attached to it

in that region. What about the cannabis industry? Cause you know, we opened up Hatchtoria and Newark myself and Rayquan the chef and Kari Sellers. What about the cannabis industry? Because we opened up Hash Toria and Newark myself and Ray Kwan the chef and Kari Sellers. What about the cannabis industry? I think it's a, I mean, we gotta do better in New Jersey. Let me say that. I just think the bureaucracy is too much

and the cost of cannabis, putting it together in New Jersey is higher than places like Pennsylvania and other places like that, that we have to work out those price, lower that stuff, make it competitive in our state, and cut a lot of the red tape so more of these things can happen faster than is happening now,

and lean into making sure that black and brown and underrepresented communities who were victimized have a bigger portion of what's happening here, that we have to do this deliberately. Like New Jersey, they wanna do the right thing and it's afraid to do it out loud, you know what I mean? So you got a whole bunch of people that if you say, Oh, black people are suffering, they'll raise their hand.

I agree with that. They say, Oh, we should do something about it. They hands don't go up. Absolutely. You know, so that's, that's really what the difference is. So we, we have to lean into like, look, this, we know this is the problem. You agree with it. We need to fix it.

Right. We can't charge this amount of money. There has to be carve outs for certain people in certain communities. And we have to grow it faster than what is happening. I just think it's taking too long. Well come see us at Hashtoria 799, Broad Street in Newark. I need you to have the chief of police just do a little sweep in front of the store though.

Oh yeah. A lot of entrepreneurs be out there, you know what I'm saying? We had a discussion about that last week. Trying to bring them down to black dollars. No they do be, it's very likely. Our customers pull up and they be trying We had a discussion about that. I'm gonna drop a dime on them. But there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there, you know. No, they do be. They, they, it's very lively. You know, our customers pull up and they be trying to get their own sales on. You gonna drop a dime on them?

Let's move down the block, man. You know what Telford did with the people that be outside his store? He dropped Telford bags off so that he can increase their revenue. Maybe you should talk to those brothers and see what they're trying to do and how Hashdoria can help. I do talk to them. They try to get me weed. We own the dispensary. They ain't got to give me nothing. Well, when is election? When can people make I do talk to them, they try to get me weed. I'm like, we own the dispensary, you ain't got to give me nothing.

When is election? When can people make sure they donate to what they need to make sure they support you and your site and everything? Absolutely, RatsforGovernor.com, that's us. June 10th is the primary in New Jersey. The general election is in November, first Tuesday in November, but the primary is June 10th.

You can donate, you can get on the website, volunteer, ask questions, do whatever it is that you need to do, I feel comfortable doing, absolutely. You're not worried about the trickle down from this new administration, because a lot of stuff you trying to do, they ain't really the biggest proponents of it. You know what I mean?

You're not worried about that at all. I mean, I think that we gotta govern the way we govern. We gotta do what we do. Like, that's it. Like, we can't, like, do what we need to do thinking about them. Like, we have to do what we need to do thinking about the people in New Jersey.

If they come up, come over to New Jersey, they gotta deal with us then. We mindin' our own business, building our own state, but if they come over here with some nonsense, then we gotta take care of business. Other than that, we're gonna do what's right for the people of the state.

Is the federal government gonna make what you wanna do in Jersey easier or harder? Probably harder. In some instances, probably harder. I mean, but this guy ran saying he wanted to make the economy easier, he wanted to lower prices, costs, he wanted to do all of these things, put people to work.

We wanna put people to work. We want a lower cost, that's what we want. All that other crazy foolishness that he's talking about is what he really wants. He's not, he hasn't started doing that, right? And I don't think he's ever going to, just like he said, he wanted to invest in the infrastructure the last time he was the president. That never happened, right? All the other stuff happened, but not that. So I think that's a ploy, but we're going to lean in on creating jobs, creating small business, incubating folks, giving people housing, reducing the cost. We're leaning in on that, and we're gonna protect

the immigrants and migrants in our community. We're gonna protect the LGBTQ community in our neighborhood. We're gonna protect the people who from Newark that we know, those are uncles, our nephews, our cousins, our neighbors, the people we hang out with. We're gonna protect them. I mean, we ain't gonna run away from them because now that Trump is the president of the United States, what kind of people would we be then? Like, we hang out with, we gonna protect them. I mean, we ain't gonna run away from them because now that Trump is the president of the United States,

what kind of people would we be then? Like we leave our folks behind because the bully done showed up, now you scared, right? It is what it is. These are our family members and we gotta make sure they good. How insulting is it to be called a DEI mayor as a black mayor?

Well, I'm not insulted by it, you know what I mean? I mean, I think diversity and equity and inclusion is the right thing. I think what they're trying to say is that you're not qualified. And they say that by everything. So what they're really saying is that we're not qualified for anything.

You can't be anything if you're not qualified for anything. That's what they're really saying. I don't think that we should run from the idea of supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion. In fact, the economy needs diversity, equity, and inclusion. There's just not enough white men to support the economy of this country. Just doesn't exist.

So there are a whole bunch of people that keep saying we have a labor shortage because they're talking about the traditional folks who have these jobs that are aging out. And because they're not going into the black community, the brown community, the South Asian community, women, then yeah, people aging out. There's a whole bunch of folks that are part of this country.

You know, American families are different, man. You know, we eat plantainos and, you know, black beans and rice and collard greens and cornbread and, you know, black rice and conch. American families are different. It's not the same concept of what American family is. It's all kind of people that are Americans these days. And we just gotta own up to it and invite these people to participate in our economy.

My last question, because I just wanted to cover some great things that you've done in Newark that I know you would implement if you were governor. Shaping the educational future in Newark, what did you do to help that? Well, the state wasn't controlling our schools for 20 years. You know, when I was a vice principal,

principal, teacher, most of that time, well, all of it was under state control. We took the schools back from the state, when Chris Christie was the governor, by the way, and got the schools back under the city's control since then. We have been trying to help with childhood literacy, maternity, help with maternity care, and giving women access to opportunity for child care and literacy because

we want kids to start school ready to learn. That's really what we've been focusing on. I mean, the school system is not under our control, but we're doing what we can to support what we think will help kids get a better education by preparing them for school before they start. All right. Well, we appreciate you for joining us. Definitely make sure you go out and support Mayor Ross Baraka. He will be the next governor of New Jersey.

We're going to put that in the air. And thank you so much, brother. What's the website again? Yeah, yeah. RAS4Governor, the number four governor. RAS4Governor. All right. It's Ross Baraka.

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