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Name: United
Rating: 4.6 (12 reviews)
Author: Cory Booker

Cory Booker

Thoughts on finding common ground and advancing the common good

4.6 (12 ratings)

25 mins

Topics

Memoirs

Table of Contents

United
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What’s in it for me? Get to know the hard-earned wisdom of one of America’s most impressive and ambitious politicians.

Some of you may have heard about Cory Booker as just a one-time Democratic candidate in the 2020 race. But Cory Booker’s life and career in politics are far from typical. Whether Booker was turning down high-paying job offers to work for a non-profit in a rough area of New Jersey, camping in the courtyard of an apartment complex until tenants’ complaints were taken seriously by the mayor, or driving around and personally helping drug dealers find legal, safe work, Booker has always put himself on the front line of fighting for justice.

From his time as councilman, mayor, and state senator of New Jersey, Booker has gained valuable insights into how government functions (or doesn’t) at all levels. He’s also developed a simple and powerful life philosophy, rooted in values he was taught as a child and solidified through his experiences.

Booker believes that in the United States, a nation that is continually dividing itself into an increasing number of hateful camps, the only way forward is to see across our differences and become united as a people. It’s only once we have established common ground that we can work toward the common good.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

why housing should be treated as a human right;
how America stopped having the best infrastructure; and
what the “conspiracy of love” is.

Understanding that we’re all connected is the first step toward finding common ground.

New Jersey state senator Cory Booker had spent his whole life identifying as a black American man. That’s why he was so surprised to learn about his mixed heritage.

As is the case when most of us delve into our backgrounds, research into Booker’s family tree revealed a complex web of genetics. He’s the descendant of slaves and slave owners, of Native Americans and of a white man who fought in the Creek War of 1836, pushing Native Americans from their land. In other words, his ancestors quite literally fought each other.

Using DNA results, Booker found and met a white man to whom he never would have guessed he was related, but with whom he actually shared a great-grandfather. The day Booker shook this man’s hand, something his parents had told him in childhood really clicked: Making the world a better place begins with setting aside whatever differences we may think divide us. To find common ground, we have to understand that we’re all connected.

Booker’s parents, Carolyn and Cary, made sure to teach their sons this lesson – because without the help of a Jewish lawyer named Arthur Lesemann, the whole family’s lives would have turned out very differently.

What happened was that when Booker’s parents first moved to New Jersey, they were continually barred from purchasing a home in the all-white neighborhood they wanted to live in, even though this was technically illegal. The Bookers would view a house, make an offer, and then be told it had been sold or taken off the market.

Luckily, Arthur Lesemann, inspired by the historic march on Selma, had begun volunteering at the Fair Housing Council. Lesemann believed that we all share a common destiny. With his legal help, the Bookers successfully conducted a sting operation. They sent a white couple to a house the Bookers had tried to purchase. When the white couple put in an offer and it was accepted, Arthur and Cary confronted the real estate agent. They had evidence that he was in violation of New Jersey state law, which put his real estate license at risk. The next day, the house was theirs.

As a child, Cory Booker was frequently reminded that many of the opportunities he benefited from were the result of people working across their differences to make the world a better place. It’s a lesson he never forgot.

We are responsible for more than just ourselves.

When Booker graduated with a law degree from Yale, he had the perfect resumé, and could have had his pick of jobs at high-paying law firms. But getting rich wasn’t a worthwhile pursuit to Booker, so he traded in his Ivy League lifestyle to become a public servant, living in one of the roughest neighborhoods of Newark, New Jersey.

Since childhood, Booker had been taught to strive for personal excellence and to value personal responsibility. He lived out these values, relentlessly pursuing and achieving his ambitious goals, motivated by something his father called “the conspiracy of love.”

Crime has a negative ripple effect.

One of the first things Booker learned in public service was that when a crime is committed, its consequences are felt by far more people than just the perpetrator and victim. Crime has an impact on the whole community, future generations, and society at large.

Take Natasha Laurel, a hardworking single mom whom Booker met when she served his table at an IHOP pancake house in Newark. Natasha was just barely able to make ends meet by working an afternoon shift as well as a late-night shift at the IHOP, which was open twenty-four hours a day. This schedule allowed her to work while her children were in school, go home to feed them and put them to bed, and go back out for another shift.

The criminal justice system is one of America’s most dire problems.

In his last year of law school, Booker made a trip to Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate New York. It changed his life forever. Sure, he’d read about problems with the criminal justice system, but witnessing just how bleak the conditions were and talking with men who desperately wanted to get back on track but were stuck there made a big impression.

Unfortunately, the numbers paint a grim picture. Since 1980, the federal incarceration rate has increased eight hundred percent, and the state incarceration rate has increased five hundred percent. Even though the United States has only five percent of the world’s population, twenty-five percent of all the imprisoned people on the planet are imprisoned in the US.

Early in his career, Booker’s understanding of human rights expanded to include more categories, like housing.

Newark’s nickname of “brick city” has a dark history. Low-income housing blocks, like Brick Towers, where Booker lived after law school, were the result of a government effort to push all low-income housing into one area. The goal? Concentrate all of the poverty and crime in central Newark, so that more affluent, white communities could feel safe in suburbia.

How did this happen? Well, after World War Two, a whole raft of racially focused housing policies was passed. Not only was low-income housing concentrated, but the transfer of property to blacks was banned, and real-estate agents were encouraged to steer minorities away from white zones.

The greatest common ground we share is the literal ground we stand upon: our planet.

When it comes to a common destiny, nowhere is our dependence on and responsibility to one another more obvious than with our planet.

The idea that all humans are communally responsible for our land goes back a long way. In AD 530, the Roman emperor Justinian made stewardship of the planet a written law. He codified something called the Corpus Juris Civilis, which claimed that nature is part of the public trust, and that we’re all both entitled to it, and responsible for it. This idea has also been a part of American ideals, through patriotic songs like “This Land is Your Land,” and “God Bless America.”

Collective action is often more creative and powerful than individual action.

For most of his life, Booker was a go-it-alone kind of guy. After all, everything he set his mind to, he was able to accomplish. But, as Booker quickly learned in his first years in Newark, sometimes working in a group actually brings about more profound change.

Soon after being elected a Newark councilman, Booker received a call from an old friend who couldn’t get any help from the mayor or police with continued violence in her apartment complex. Determined to help her, Booker rallied together his staff and proposed a radical strategy: they would pitch a tent in the courtyard of the apartment complex and stay in it, as a way to raise awareness and, they hoped, force the mayor’s hand.

We all pay the price for allowing injustice to exist.

America may be the land of the free, but it certainly isn't the land of the just. Whether Booker was falling asleep listening to gunshots or just trying to order pancakes at IHOP, he was constantly witnessing ways in which the government was letting its citizens down.

Remember Natasha, the single mother and IHOP waitress? Natasha is just one of a huge number of service workers who are food insecure. That means that the same people who are serving food to customers all day often don’t have stable access to food for themselves and their families. How is this possible?

Big changes come about through small actions.

Booker’s no idealist with his head stuck in the clouds. He knows there’s an almost impossible amount that needs to be done if we want to change our society for the better. But every day he wakes up and keeps going, because if there’s one lesson he’s learned, it’s that the most important thing to do is just to do something.

Remember the tent Booker and his staff pitched in his old friend’s apartment complex? Before Booker settled on that strategy, he had spent the morning disheartened and frustrated, feeling as though there were no way to help her. In the few months he’d been a councilman, everything he’d tried to do had been blocked. He felt as though nothing he could say or do would bring about change.

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What is United about?

United (2016) is the inspirational story of state senator Cory Booker’s lifetime spent fighting for the common good. From Ivy League classrooms to the roughest neighborhoods in Newark, New Jersey, Booker examines the big issues America faces up close. These blinks explore the depth and impact of these problems, and call on each one of us to work together in finding common ground.

Best quote from United

Actions, small and large, radiate out into eternity. What we do or fail to do – to one another, for one another, or with one another – leaves a lasting imprint beyond what we can imagine.

—Cory Booker

Who should read United?

Anyone interested in US-American politics
People who are passionate about criminal justice reform
Everyone from New Jersey

About the Author

Cory Booker is a New Jersey state senator and was a Democratic candidate for the 2020 presidential race. Booker is a graduate of Stanford and a Rhodes Scholar, and holds a law degree from Yale. Before being elected to the state senate, he served as a councilman for and then mayor of Newark. According to the Wall Street Journal, Booker is just the twenty-first person to move directly from being a mayor to being a senator.

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