'History will judge us': Ras Baraka won't be intimidated [View all]
Ed Pilkington
Mon 9 Jun 2025 07.00 EDT
It took about two minutes for Ras Baraka to be propelled from being a relatively obscure New Jersey politician into a nationwide avatar. The transformation happened on 9 May when he was trying to inspect Delaney Hall, a privately run federal immigration detention center that he accuses of violating safety protocols, when he was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
Video footage of those fateful minutes show burly Ice agents dressed in militarised fatigues dragging the mayor into the compound. Baraka, who was accompanying three congressmembers, has his hands yanked behind his back and is handcuffed.
He vainly urges his captors to go easy on him with a plea that, in hindsight, now sounds deeply ironic. “I’m not resisting,” he says, over and over.
Since the arrest Baraka, 55, has rapidly emerged on the national stage as someone who resists, a lot. The son of a revolutionary poet, and a poet in his own right, he was a high school principal before becoming councilmember then mayor of one of America’s less glamorous cities: Newark ...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/ras-baraka-newark-mayor-ice
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