Coping With Newark

Moving away from the Jersey shore to Bloomfield, I had to come to terms with the stigmas of north Jersey I'd heard and expected, but never experienced. It began when I was apartment hunting: I wanted cheap, and the cheapest apartments I was finding online were in places like Livingston, and Newark. My cheap side screamed an immediate "yes" to the option, but my friends begged otherwise. Their reasoning? The same that (I felt) were always super-inflated to the point of cartoonish and unreal: the violence.

It turns out Newark is just that violent, according to the AP, which claims this past March was Newark's first full month without homicides since May of 1966. Ten murders had occurred in Newark within the first quarter of 2010, a semi-accomplishment as this same figure could be applied to the first quarter of 2009 as well. Last year, there were an estimated total of 77 homicides in Newark.

After my move to the region, I had heard insane things. My coworkers at a small diner in West Orange claimed that the worst thing to be, walking down the streets of Newark, was white and female. I heard elsewhere that Livingston was so ruthless its policing was done by state troopers. North Jersey was surely shaking me up.

Yet one day, there I was, making a swift journey to North Newark, a more suburban section of the city. I parked my car on a residential street, and took a walk around the block. A mixture of small restaurants, laundromats and closed businesses made a pattern as I walked on the cracked, littered sidewalk. Noise filtered through every open storefront, car, and group of people I'd pass. From what I could sense, the area was predominantly Hispanic, an ethnicity which, according to the 2000 US Census, makes up about 29.4% of Newark's population. The majority of Newark is black, making up about 53.6% of its inhabitants.

Hassan Muslim, who grew up in the city, has a family in North Newark today. Although he lives in a private, closed off area of his neighborhood, he doesn't let his son out. "It's violent, especially in certain parts. North Newark. East Ward. It's all gangs and drugs."

According to Hassan, Newark's violence of the 60's was not that bad, but the 1990's, and especially into the 2000's, is when it got worse. In certain areas, gangs congregate and pose the most problems. They hide down blocks, hanging discretely. Making a wrong turn towards them is always a risk.

"Schools are not great either," Hassan says. "Teachers are not doing their jobs. Houses on foreclosure." One positive thing he does like about Newark is its transportation, which is complex and has a lot of buses.

The violence of Newark eventually took hold of my imaginative mind. From what so many people were saying, the accounts could only be true. And they were: the violence-free month of March was a brief victory for Newark, as the murder of a 26 year old man on April 8th broke the 37-day record. He was from Bloomfield.

The day I ventured out to North Newark, however, was sunny and warm. On the corner a Hispanic woman was selling ices and buying one made me feel more well acquainted with Newark. The neighborhood was at least alive, with children and mothers, people hanging by their cars. It amazed me that such a violent city has more active life all around it than the safest of suburban towns, which only makes me believe the violence can't always be the swelling identity of Newark.

Aerial Photo of Newark, Looking Northward. Photo Courtesy of skylineproject.org