In the United States, Black people in New Jersey face incredible disparities in wealth, criminal justice, educational opportunity, housing, healthcare, and many other areas. While the state of New Jersey has many strong organizations that advance racial justice causes (including New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, the NAACP, Salvation for Social Justice, and the Black Issues Convention, to name a few), these organizations are 501(c)(3) organizations that do not specifically engage in electoral politics.
The state, therefore, does not have many political organizations that consolidate the political assets of the Black community and its allies including community influencers to endorse and rally votes for candidates; campaign volunteers to hold events, phone bank, door knock, and pull out the vote; donors and dollars to provide the financing needed to support successful campaigns. In the absence of a political infrastructure dedicated to racial justice, candidates committed to that cause either must accept the compromises imposed upon them by machine politics or seek individually to build an independent political organization (which is necessarily personal) to win elections.
This state of affairs, simply put, is too anemic to generate the policy change that people of color deserve in a state with the kind of racial inequities that New Jerseyans face. We will be running issue-advocacy and independent expenditure campaigns in order to support racial justice initiatives that provide equitable opportunity for all New Jerseyans.
