Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka and Mayor Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, Mississippi, along with numerous other black educators, activists, and community leaders, gathered at NJIT today (Tuesday December 1) to announce that the Third National Black Political Convention will be held in the city of Newark in the spring of 2022.
Mayor Baraka, whose father the late activist and poet Amiri Baraka organized the original Black Political convention back in 1972, says the goal is to create an agenda for fundamental change in the lives of Black people across the country.
“Collectively I think we want to be able to at least come out with a bare minimum agenda, with some basic things that we say we need today. Not depending on who runs for what or who’s a part of what or who’s involved in what, these are things we agree upon collectively, there’s ten things four of things we can't agree on but six of them we agree on, and these six things we agree on no matter where we are in the country these six things are going to be on the table.”
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba of Jackson, Mississippi.
“If we’re going to take the spirit of Amiri Baraka, if we’re going to take the spirit of Chokwe Lumumba, all of these great heros and sheros that we have spoken about today, then we have to be prepared to take that conversation to the next level and it can't simply be, in the words of sister Ruha Benjamin, we can't simply dismantle the world that we don’t want to live in, we have to be the most active participants in building the one we do want to live in.”
The event’s theme will be “Many Roads, One Destiny: Unity Without Uniformity.” from Thursday, April 28, 2022 to Sunday, May 1, 2022.
