Last week, I did our first cut of analysis after the Village of Camden’s Mayoral Forum (full video), then Jared Hunter followed with his thoughts. This week, we’ve reversed the order. You can find all the video broken down by question here.
Monday’s public forum for the city council candidates at the Camden Village was exactly what I had hoped to see in a real public forum. For those of you who haven’t been to the Village yet you’ll come to find it an energy hub of inspiration and motivation for a city that may sometimes to seem to lack both outside. As a plug, the Village meets every Monday from 7:00 pm to 9:00 at 321 Market Street as community center for local concerns, issues, presentations, and everything else that might benefit the city.
I showed up late again Monday night as I was running from a class across campus but was still able to catch a good slate of questions that the council candidates answered. [One of the most pressing and hot-button issues in this city I’ve come to realize very much falls on education and the public school systems – I’ll get into that in another post though.] There are a few points that I want to acknowledge from what I watched Monday night. There were five candidates on stage last night – three of those candidates (Tracey Cooper-Hall, Namibia El, and Quinzelle Bethea) represented the Lamboy mayoral ticket and two others (April Saul and Falio Leyba) were representing themselves independent of a unified ticket. This of course is not to say that the latter two candidates were not as forceful – they did receive the lowest two votes counts of 15 (Saul) and 11 (Lejta) but this is not indicative of anything other than those who were in the room and voted last night.
An interesting question that came up toward the end of the forum was directed towards the Lamboy ticket candidates. Understanding that April 3rd was the deadline to register their ticket through the city clerk’s office, a member of the audience asked the candidates how long before April 3rd was the ticket already unified; I think this is indicative of a few things. My last post spoke about the mayoral forum and what the council candidates should learn from what occurred at that forum and one of the points I made was that the community is always leery of public officials or those claiming to become public officials in the name of real representation. This question was essentially asking “How do we know that when we vote for your ticket that we’re still voting for one ideology, one unified representation – how can we be sure that even though we’re voting for all four of you, it will only feel like we’re voting for one?”
This was such an interesting revelation to me! I had always seen in my years of politics almost full-fledged support from the community for one candidate; and when the community made up its mind it rarely, if ever, questioned the candidates that they supported. Yet here, in this hot and tightly-packed room on a random April night in South Jersey, all of my understandings of local politics had been sidelined to make room for a question that I never would have expected. And I think this is indicative of just how deep Camden’s political scars run. And aside from the vague answer one of the ticket candidates gave, after that question was asked I paid attention to the interactions the candidates had with one another on stage – and to be honest I am not very interested in the truth behind that question myself. I don’t want to take up too much space with just analyzing this one question but it is something that folks should keep in mind before their vote fully settles and rests into one candidate or one ticket.
On a grander scale though, what I saw last night, as I said earlier, was one of those real life moments where a group of huddled masses have decided to place all fear and risk aside in order to push farther toward a greater good. I saw one of the thousands of places all over this country, even right now, where politics actually takes place. From the questions that shocked me to the responses that were expected, there was something different about this time being in the room and watching politics unfold before my very eyes. I still had pieces of preconceived notions about politics from being so involved in local politics for years walking into that room but now I honestly feel like I need to recalibrate, but I’m recalibrating toward a more accurate read of how politics happens.
Politics doesn’t happen in the well-lit arenas of flashing cameras and over the roars of engaged audiences. And after Monday night, I can say that it doesn’t even happen in those medium-sized council chambers with a few chairs and some air conditioning. No – politics, real politics takes place in those squished up rooms on a poorly lit street full of people making the heat rise to your neck. Where the rotating fans that spin once or twice a minute attempt to cool off the frustrated mothers holding their newborn child who is wondering the condition of the schools she will send her daughter to in a few years. Where the trodden floors squeak and support the boots that been hustling the streets and pounding the pavement for years and decades to put sincere representatives in office to address the poor social conditions of their neighborhoods.
While I was not extremely impressed by the rhetoric and responses to the questions presented at last night’s forum, just being in the room supplemented that doubt with inspiration and motivation. To see how ordinary and unimpressive people can come together and just by being in a room and talking things can happen and things can get done. Last night, in a hot and tiny little corner room in South Jersey – in Camden, I saw real politics for the first time, and I couldn’t be more excited about what that means for me and future generations.
Jared Hunter is a current student at Rutgers-Camden pursuing his Masters in Public Administration in the community development track. His research focus includes disparities between marginalized communities and local governments as well as community development centers and anchor institutions.
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