Regime Change: Cory Booker, Philanthrocapitalism, and The New Civil Rights Movement of Our Day, 1996-2006

• In Event: 1140 - Blacks and African Americans

Abstract

This paper examines the rise of Cory Booker in the late 1990s and 2000s and his eventual defeat of Sharpe James to become Mayor of Newark, New Jersey in 2006. Drawing on black urban regime and social structure of accumulation theories, I theorize Booker’s election as a qualitative change in the Newark’s black urban regime, to one more in line with the needs of ascendant, globalized sectors of capital intent on commodifying public education. James and other old black urban regime elements had energetically pursued pro-corporate policies, including the mass demolition of public housing, public-subsidies and regulatory changes to spur downtown development, and aggressive policing, to make their city as favorable investment environment as possible. Nonetheless, some of the practices used by James and other older elements of Newark’s black urban regime, such as accommodations to, and alliances with, teacher unions, were now seen as obstacles to opening up the emerging education market. Informed by a Marxist version of social movement theory, I conceptualize Booker’s political rise as a “movement from above”, with class power mobilized through an alliance of philanthrocapitalism’s foundations and a new generation of the black professional managerial class whose fortunes are tied to privatization. The central legitimating ideology employed by this movement, one intent on privatizing public education, was a pro-market, anti-racist one. While the previous Keynesian-era, black professional managerial class saw their material interests tied to an expansion on the state, the new crop’s fortunes, conversely are with neoliberal rollback of the public sector. Data for this paper is based on four years of ethnographic research on the battle over public schools in Newark, New Jersey.

Author

• John D. Arena, College of Staten Island