Kevin is part of a PANEL "The New City: Urbanization and the Arts," a collaborative panel discussion,

Noelle Lorraine Williams, All Things Considered… Please Stay (detail), 2011, West African tourist masks, vinyl, Japanese glass beads, feathers, wood.

MARCH 23, 4-7PM, 2011: ''THE NEWARK SCHOOL'' PANEL

"The New City: Urbanization and the Arts," a collaborative panel discussion, award ceremony, and reception of City Without Walls (cWOW) and William Paterson University takes place March 23, 2011, 4-7pm at the Ben Shahn Center, 300 Pompton Road, Wayne, NJ 07470. Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker will receive an award for his leadership in the arts and education. The panel celebrates "The Cross-Cultural Arts Festival: Africa and the African Diaspora" and "The Newark School: A Multi-Site Exhibition,” and is moderated by Dr. Clement A. Price. Free and open to the public. More information: (973) 720-2000 or www.cwow.org.

Panelists include: Dr. Clement A. Price (Rutgers University), Moderator, Dr. Alejandro Anreus (Co-Curator, “The Newark School”), Petrushka Bazin (Co-Curator, “The Newark School”), James Andrew Brown (artist), Victor Davson (Executive Director, Aljira), Kevin Blythe Sampson (artist), Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims (invited) (Curator, Museum of Arts and Design), and Noelle Lorraine Williams (artist).

More information about "The Newark School: A Multi-Site Exhibition” can be found here.

Kevin Review of Brick City," the award-winning documentary set in Newark

I watched the Documentary on Newark Last night. Besides the pride that I felt in seeing my town on television.

link to star ledger review

This show had it moments, I wasn’t too sure about Cory Booker (I voted for him of course), but this Documentary showed a side of him that I really liked. He came across as a caring, highly intelligent, and most of all human, the mayor is funny, that is a great asset. The mayor also looks like some one that you would have fun hanging with. The best scenes where of the inside look at how local government works, it changed my view of the politics of Newark. Beyond that, it turned into a soup opera, and lost me after 15 minutes or so.
 I could tell that outsiders did this film; they didn’t have any feel for Newark at all, and chose to fall into that old trick of showing poor people as if they are some weird kind of spirit animals. I am not interested in a bunch of young people struggling with the law as they seemed to like to center upon. And why for God sakes is the face of Newark always, Gang Bangers. Why cant they show some of the many good folks (not calling their subjects bad folks), I mean there are tons of stories here in Newark., Of people places and things, Where were the Latinos in Newark,…………..Brazilians, Whites and others that stayed here and held up the city, along with African Americans. Why are these documentaries always,so one sided and so shallow. And what about the artist……. they should have followed Jerry Gant around for a few days and saw the people that are really the backbone of Newark. Tried to figure out why so many of us stay here.
And, if they were going to talk about the gangs then really do it. Why are we always defined by gangs and crime, they never talk about the good folks held hostage by the violence.
Maybe Newark’s “I am gonna get mine spirit” cant be properly displayed on film, or maybe before they do a big project like this they really need to see Newark.

Kevin says: Nero Fiddles while Newark New Jersey Burns

Nero fiddles while Rome burns, Newark is turning into a city of God

But who is Nero

Over the course of the past few days the whispering campaign has started

The layoff of police officers in Newark, has started the gossips and fear mongers

Tongue wagging.

I was talking to a friend who owns a alarm shop, and he said that he is getting more and more business

He told me that this city thugs…………. have begun testing the response time of the Newark police department

They have been pushing doors hard enough to set off the alarm

Then standing in the background they try to see how long it takes for the Police

To show up

This is a tech used though out the ages

But law enforcement responds with patrol techs that include

Being systematically unsystematic.

Therefore, they had better watch their asses

Having said that

Their they are

Teasing

Testing,

Tasting

At least

This is the gossip

I have had several people advise me

Not to walk around at night like

I used too

I hear rumors of three deaths a day,

Shooting, shooting

Of course this didn’t start with the police layoffs

The mood was set months ago by

No jobs, no programs no care

Whose fault is it?

Not the Cops,

Not the Mayors

not The governor

Rodney’s             …..

Lord knows it not the President Obama

Its not about fault, anyway

Its about bad economic times and a inner city

Impact well beyond the rest of the country

Anyway

I have felt the chill in the air….. long before it got cold

The have seen

The look of uncertainty on the faces of the working poor

For over a year

The violence of inaction

On the faces of business folks

Sitting idly by while no customers come in

To purchase or to order

I have seen it in the faces of family and friends

A despair

A desperation and longing

 

for  some happy days

Or ………………..just some good days

I refused to believe that a few laid off cops

Caused this up surge in crime

It’s the holidays

Christmas is a brutal time for any city

A formative time for crime

A constant cause of stomach aches for me

Depression for others

And most of all a time of robberies

I didn’t believe that laying off some cops

Would change a city this fast

But it has

It’s a pr war and the city is losing

Once people stop feeling safe,

Ok once people start feeling even less safe

Its lost already

More people retreat t inside and less eyes on watching

On the outside

I have a advantage

People don’t pay attention to old people like me

Unless they look closely

And see my dead eyed stare

As they figure out that I am too not only old

Too mean to play with

Anyway

While

Walking to the bus stop today

I walk to ferry street by the way

Today their were more people on the street

It was crowded on the street and barren in the stores

As I was walking

Some thing told me…………………. to turn my head

And just as I did

Two young guys riding double on a bike

All dressed in black

Whizzed past me

I mean Evel Knievel fast

As they did

They extended their arms and as they got near a street vender

A stall set up by the curb selling winter wears

Glove and hat s scarps and more

Where was I

Mean both of these guys flying past on this bike

Snatched a arm full of gloves, hats and belts

They didn’t slow down,

They didn’t hesitate

They didn’t miss a beat

The storeowner ran out of the coffer shop, located no more

Than ten feet away

But it happened so fast

Their was nothing to do………..but sigh

I mean it was like……………..watching one of those Japanese movies

Where assassins riding on motorcycles, Spray machine gun fire at their subject

And keep on trucking

It happened too fast to react

The shop owner and me, just looked at each other,

As we bent down to pick up and clean up the carnage

Nothing was said

Two old men looking at each other

Silently

I felt like we were both veterans of Normandy

Not a word was said

It didn’t have to be

I continued on and got on the number one bus

Which is lately has been coming much slower

The bus was crowded

The traffic was horrible

But it was warm

Suddenly the whole bus turned their heads to the left

I looked just out side my window

And saw that their was a crowd of kids fighting

Now I am talking about a Portuguese kid fighting a Latino kid

I mean these kids were no more than 10 years old, with a group of about 15 kids watching

The girls were the loudest egging the boys one

Well those two boys squared off and hooked the shit out of each other

My fellow occupants of the bus looked on quietly, reverently

No one said a word,

Except for one old black woman……………………who said

“That’s a damn shame”

We looked on as the kids  fled running in a pack, and almost knocking over

A group of Old Portuguese ladies walking gingerly further down on Ferry Street

Man I thought that in their minds

This must be a land that time should have forgot

Onward bus, every where I looked

People were walking just a little slower

I got to school and was glad for the respite

Then I remembered the police lay off

And thought to myself that some thing is going on bigger than

Just that

This must be happening on a lot of corners in America

It isn’t just a Newark problem

But a national problem

And it started to snow a bit

And I said to myself

This might help

Folks don’t like the cold

Technorati Tags: kevin blythe sampson,city of newark,newark new jersey,ferry st,ironbond,crime,newark police,layoffs,cory booker,obama

Check out the Mural on News 12 New jersey. The Mural by Kevin Blythe Sampson and Crew “The Cut” Hawkins St. Newark, City Murals,

Cory Booker Is 41 Years Old

I. Cory Booker has become cliche: Newark's Savior-in-Progress. An image that's been marching in place for the better part of a decade.
See for yourself. C-SPAN's newly opened video archive has a call-in segment with Booker from July 2000, when the self-described "neophyte in politics" was only two years into his first and only term as a ward councilman. The camera pans to a Time article titled, "The Savior of Newark?" while callers, Republicans and Democrats alike, praise his refreshing take on urban governance. The footage might as well have been shot last week -- the perception of Booker hasn't changed one bit in ten years, despite his spending nearly half of that time at the top of the city's political totem pole. And while the media has taken note of the significant progress he's made, the title 'Savior of Newark?' still has that question mark behind it.
It's been the subject of just about every magazine profile and TV spotlight on the guy, to the point where his story is considered 'told' until he grabs for the next rung up the political ladder (or somehow falls off of it). How could someone with 'FUTURE' written all over him have an image that's so suspended in time?
Earlier that C-SPAN year, in February 2000, New York magazine predicted that Booker, "an anti-machine city councilman... will probably be mayor of Newark in a year's time, and may well run for a higher office by the time he is 40." (Could they have meant that higher office with the constitutional requirement of 35 years of age?) Well, Booker turned 41 years old today. Yes, he is still Newark's struggling savior, though he is no longer its anti-machine councilman, the David to its Goliath. In fact, if anyone runs the machine these days, it's probably him.
People outside Newark do not look at Cory Booker this way. Perhaps it takes the proper Jersey eye, because when it comes down to it, all the magazines and news shows overlook a key characteristic in explaining who Cory Booker is: a politician from New Jersey... maybe not the fat-knuckled kind we're used to, but a New Jersey pol nonetheless.
To watch Booker as he campaigns for reelection on May 11 is to observe him in the context that he has made himself seem unnatural in -- Jersey politics. Specifically, urban Jersey politics. This month is not about the national ambitions, the editorial boards or charity circuit cruisers; it's about the people he depends on for votes. Newark is not a wealthy city. It's not even a city that caters to the wealthy. It is poor to lower middle class, mostly black, some Latino, a little Italian and a smattering of others. Booker is their mayor. They are the people who put him in office back in 2006. They are the people who have kept him there so far. They are the people who will decide how much clout he carries into a second term. As about two hundred years of American history have shown, keeping them happy -- maintaining political harmony in the cityscape -- requires nothing less than a political machine.
The iconic machine mayor is Richard J. Daley, the master of the political ward club. After the remote cartoon that now constitutes the image of Boss Tweed, Daley's name is probably the most synonymous with the urban political machine, the most tangible idea of what to expect of the person who runs it. For a small-shouldered, pudgy man, he was incredibly nimble in acquiring and keeping power from the early 1950s all the way to his death in '76. Like Booker, Daley was a teetotaling study in self-discipline, a workaholic who saw no problem too small for his personal attention. As you could guess, the two have their differences, but they are interwoven every time someone in the Booker administration hands out his or her business card. Written on its back is a mission statement that pledges, in part, to "set a national standard for urban transformation." See, whether he aspired to or not, Daley defined urban governance in his age. He set the standard from which these bold Newarkers hope to transform.
Tweed, Daley -- the political machine is an Irish import, inherited by the blacks after white flight from the cities. We're talking about a system that is almost as old as the nation itself. When the American Revolution ended, the Continental army officers and gentry tried to keep the British social hierarchy intact by establishing exclusive clubs, the most notable being the Society of the Cincinnati, named after the humble Roman dictator-democrat that Washington was most often compared to. Cincinnatus was a farmer who also happened to be a great military strategist, and when Rome was under siege, the Senate suspended democratic rule and gave him the absolute power necessary to subdue their enemies. Once the war was won, Cincinnatus did not cling to authority as most men might; he restored the republic and returned to his plow. It was a humility in triumph and dedication to principle not seen again until Annapolis, where Washington resigned his commission to Congress in 1783. When Jefferson asked Houdon to carve the giant American general from marble, the French sculptor sailed across the ocean only to pose Washington as an echo of his Roman forebear. Cincinnatus became the emblem of the selfless leader, the ideal the Founders aspired to.
But when the poor and ethnic minorities looked at the new American aristocracy, they didn't see Cincinnatuses; they saw a burgeoning tyranny of silk, robed in the cloth of democracy. The foot soldiers of the Revolution had to consolidate their power in numbers, form their own clubs. One in Manhattan took the name of a legendary native warrior, and from that group arose Tammany Hall. Founded three weeks after the adoption of the Constitution, it was clannish and orderly, functioning like a village back in Ireland, except it got bigger and wealthier, wealthier and bigger. Similar organizations sprouted in cities throughout the country -- cities like Newark. But Tammany remained the euphemism of machine politics... remains the euphemism to this very day.
The idea of Tammany has reigned for so long because the institution is stronger than any one man. Tammany's mascot is the tiger, and an appropriate one at that. Sometimes the big cat can be lulled to sleep, only to awaken and eat you alive. Every so often, someone comes along who knows how to ride it. And if you can tame a tiger, why in the hell would you kill it? It's a Cincinnatus conundrum. The only way the machine can ever be dismantled is if the person who is at the top -- the boss -- takes it apart, piece by piece, brick by brick and returns it to the people. But a Cincinnatus of the machine has never come.
The cities' politics have waited for their revolutionary figure. One who's not a multimillionaire who can buy his seat at the table. ("Without the party," Daley said, "only the rich would be elected to office.") Guys like Rudy Giuliani don't count. Even a Muppet can take Manhattan. Give us a leader who can save a Detroit, a Cleveland, a Newark. Someone who is not a flash in the pan of personal dynamism and can leave a lasting political infrastructure to govern when he's gone. That field's been barren ever since Daley won his first mayoral primary on Washington's Birthday, 1955.
Could it be Booker, that young councilman, the 'Savior of Newark?' who becomes the leader that redeems the city from the machine politics that have caused it so much corruption, so much strife? Isn't that what the cliche is all about? Whether the mayor who yearns to "set a national standard for urban transformation" is capable of redefining the urban political model, too?
Sadly, as the nation failed to notice that Booker aged these past ten years, it also failed to notice his transition, his slow acquiescence and submission to some of the old ways of politics in America's big cities. Cory Cincinnatus is still at the core of the Newark mayor's governing philosophy, but a Boss Booker has stepped in on the political side more than he would like to admit. As he runs for his first reelection, now is the time to look at Cory Booker, Jersey Politician.

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