Guest post by Khali Raymond, author of The Ballad of Sidney Hill 2
Newark, New Jersey. The largest city in New Jersey, with a population about 277,140 people. Only eight miles from Manhattan, it’s a city of culture and diversity. A quote from Becca Fitzpatrick says "Sometimes bad things have to happen before good things can." And for my city, that’s the case. Newark has been through a lot of several phases throughout time, that’s what’s so significant of my hometown; this melting pot of history and yeah, history can be very exciting.
A city divided into five geographic wards from bustling, thriving districts to the quieter sides of the town, there’s something here for everybody. Newark has been through a lot of wear and tear throughout the final half of the 20th century. Following the downfall of the Industrial Revolution, the city went into six days of rioting that changed the face of the city forever.
Known as the "Newark Riots," which happened from July 12 to July 17 in 1967, there were 26 people dead along with hundreds of others injured amongst the destruction. The aftermath of the riots integrated the modern day struggles here in Newark with crime, poverty, and further racial divides; such as white flight. Due to those effects after the riots, the population shot down at a rapid rate.
Most of those residents who fled Newark after the riots contributed to the rising populations in suburban neighborhoods in northern New Jersey. As of 2010, roughly one-third of the city’s population suffers from poverty. If you step into my shoes however, the struggle is clearly evident.
As I walk up Broad and Market, the most bustling streets in the city right in the downtown district, there’s abandoned properties everywhere. Out of the abandoned buildings, only the ground floors are occupied on some buildings for retail, but if you look up–you can feel the pain of Newark that never healed after years of crime and corruption…
The windows are rugged and dark. Facades which once gleamed with confidence and pride now are shuttered, giving off the feel of uneasiness. Or if you go up to Newark Penn Station at night, all of the homeless people come out. It pains me to see those people stand out there in the freezing cold or rushing rain with no home to go to, begging for pennies.
Those homeless people represent the wounds of the city that have never healed. There’s homeless people everywhere, but here in Newark–you can see the tiredness in their eyes. The hunger in their stomachs…there’s no positive energy around this part really…it’s a painful thing to look at.
Sometimes, I may have change to spare them, or not. And if I don’t, I apologize to them because if you just look at them…they’ve been through something, you don’t know what happened to them in order to be homeless. I never try to judge a book by its cover if I’ve never read it. I actually emphasize for those who don’t have, my heart goes out to those who can’t provide for themselves, and those are one of the reasons why I write.
And if you go in other parts of the downtown district of course, efforts to repair something once fallen is seen as well. From the Prudential Center to the newly being built Teacher’s Village, an effort to make a new Newark. So, there aren’t too many negative things about Newark. Three large colleges: Rutgers University, The New Jersey Technical Institute (NJIT), and Essex County College is a contributing effort as well, there’s new faces and efforts to unravel the true potential of a city like Newark.
I write to empower, and sure…my books are fiction and are not really G-rated, but every book I have put out so far includes some sort of struggle that surrounds the issues of poverty, hunger, crime, and corruption.
In 2013, Newark suffered from 113 killings, the highest number since 1990. That’s almost as much as those in the Paris attacks earlier in the month. Paris happens everyday in cities like Newark due to drugs, guns, gang violence, and poverty. Poverty is the scapegoat of it all, because if a man can’t provide for his family, what does he do?
His kid is starving. His wife is thirsty. He can’t sleep, because they’re suffering. There’s a grocery not too far from his house. He has a .45 loaded, so what does he do? He gotta eat, so he holds up the store in order to feed his family. Then, it’s fifty to life after that. We take risks and suffer the consequences of those risks in order to have things we need, so that’s why crime is a great struggle. Like they say– you gotta do the right things for the wrong reasons, or wrong things for the right reasons.
Back to the reason why I write. I write in order to make readers laugh and feel the emotions of the characters. Sure, there’s some points in my work that makes you raise eyebrows. Some things may sound unbelievable, but at the end of the day–there’s one moral; rise above what’s bringing you down.
I want to be the voice for the voiceless, I want to be a positive representation of my city so I can encourage more people who come from similar walks of life to become something great. You can do anything you set your mind to, and bring change to your world. It doesn’t matter if you’re White, Black, Hispanic– hate is something you learn, nobody is born to hate. And yes, this is coming from a young black teenager who lives in Newark, New Jersey. I am Khali Raymond.
I love my family and city more than anything, and with this writing… It provides me an outlet to address problems we have and by doing that, we can solve them. I want to do music and movies as well in the future, just do whatever form of art that can speak a lot of people so we can solve these problems, together. I want to give back to my community, because if it wasn’t for my community, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I AM NEWARK.
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Books by Khali Raymond
The Ballad of Sidney Hill 2 ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon
The Undocumented Struggle ~ View on Bookshelves | View on Amazon