Baraka: 'It's not ok to be a Coward'

PLAINFIELD - Ras Baraka was simmering with passion Saturday afternoon when he cited today's political climate and talked about fear.
"It's OK to be afraid, it's not OK to be a coward," he said.
Continuing, he said:
"The problem with fear is that it makes you make safe decisions, not right decisions."
There was more.
We are in a moral crisis, he said earlier in his address, and it's time to take a stand. Reaching back six decades, Baraka said:
"You either ran with those kids at North Carolina A&T to sit at those lunch counters ... to bring down Jim Crow, or you stayed in your dormitory."
This was both a campaign speech and a rousing call to action. Baraka likes to combine the two.
With the primary about 10 days away, the Newark mayor and gubernatorial candidate seemed a bit more animated than usual. He was on home turf, so to speak.
Baraka spoke to almost 100 people in the backyard of the home of City Councilwoman Julienne Cherry.
Also on hand was Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Mayor Adrian Mapp, both Baraka supporters.
Polls show Mikie Sherrill leading the six-person field, but with so many candidates in the race, it is hard to figure.
Mapp said Baraka has travelled the state, or as he put it, "from north to south and east to west."
Whatever happens elsewhere is out of Mapp's control, but the local mayor said he's sure of one thing.
"Plainfield will show up in a big way" for Baraka.
Baraka's talk about "fear" and "safe decisions" were not throwaway lines.
He has mentioned on the trail that some people think he is "too progressive, too Newark and too black" to win statewide.
So what he needs is for people to push those concerns aside and vote for him.
His campaign is about "Reimagining New Jersey."
And he told the crowd he imagines a state with a single-payer health system and a mass transit system that takes "grandma to the supermarket" and not just one that transports commuters into Manhattan and Philadelphia.
Baraka also sees a state that consolidates towns and school districts to save property taxes. There are 564 municipalities in New Jersey and even more school districts than that.
Baraka was most infamously arrested three weeks ago for demonstrating outside an immigrant detention center in Newark. The charges, however, were quickly dropped.
The mayor said he knows first hand the excesses of the Trump Administration, which is why he wants to be governor. With his arrest in mind, Baraka said:
"If you do not feel discomfort, you are on the wrong side."