2022 National Black Political Convention Finds a Home at NJIT
New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark will host a National Black Political Convention in the summer of 2022 – 50 years after the first took place in Gary, Indiana.
Organizers of the four-day event, which will take place Aug. 4-7, include Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Jackson, Miss. Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and James Mtume, a veteran music producer and musician who played with Miles Davis.
A key organizer of the original convention, which featured political, religious and civil rights leaders, was Baraka’s father, Amiri. So, for the mayor, the 2022 convention has an added personal significance. The Newark leader was among a half-dozen people who shared their expectations for it during a briefing at NJIT that included Lumumba and NJIT President Joel S. Bloom.
As planned, the convention will bring together Blacks from a broad range of perspectives who will develop and ratify a national agenda comprised of many points. At the same time, they’ll embrace their differences. Indeed, the theme of the convention is, “many roads, one destiny: unity without uniformity.”
“We are not a monolithic people. We have diversity of thought and experience,” explained Lumumba. “And that should not be limiting to us. But it should be able to expand our capacity.”
Baraka added that the event will be critical for “our movement forward as a people” and “to create a new Black agenda that reflects our current primary needs and goals.”
Baraka credited NJIT for stepping up to host the convention, which he attributed to Bloom’s “willingness to always partner with us in the city, partner with our community to do things that benefit our families.”
That partnership is long-standing and broad, encompassing everything from academic programs that are designed to inspire Newark high school students to attend college to administrative directives to use Newark businesses and hire Newark residents. Bloom himself noted Baraka’s challenge to double the number of city residents who attend NJIT in four years. Three years in, “we’re at 75 percent of doubling that enrollment,” Bloom said, with 30 to 40 residents enrolling each semester.
“We are one of the most diverse public polytechnics in the country,” the president added. “Students leave here with three and four job offers. Students leave here with six-figure job offers. Six figures.”
Students – at both the college and high school level – will be encouraged to participate in the next year’s convention, according to Baraka. For more details, please go to https://www.nbpc2022.com/.