Newark’s new anti-racism ordinance aims to tackle the problem on a number of fronts.
It declares all hate groups in Newark to be terrorists and bans them from the city. City workers who commit civil rights violations will be automatically terminated, and workers who witness such acts and do not report them will be fired as well.
There will be an Office of Violence Prevention, funded by 5% of the police budget, or about $12 million, to develop programs to prevent violence within all city departments.
The ordinance will also propose the closure of the 1st Precinct, the building where the 1967 riots began. It will become a trauma center for recovery and healing from acts of violence.
“We are long overdue on a measure such as this, for this country to heal, we must begin to legally challenge the insidious and dehumanizing tenets of white supremacy.”
The ordinance also calls for the creation of a database of hate groups in the United States.
Jared Maples, the director of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security, recently said that white supremacy groups have shown a “dramatic uptick in recruiting” in recent months. Maples says his office has raised its threat alert to “high.”