Cory Booker in United, by Cory Booker

On Crime: Prison construction draws resources from other priorities

• The federal incarceration rate has increased 800% and state incarceration rates have increased 500% since 1980.
• Our nation is now the undisputed incarceration capital of the world. America has roughly 5% of the globe's population but about 25%--one out of every four--of the imprisoned people on the planet.
• Roughly 1/3 of all adult Americans have an arrest record.

In the years between 1990 and 2005, a new prison opened EVERY TEN DAYS. The astonishing rate of construction draws precious public resources away from other priorities. At the same time, America--which once had the top-ranked infrastructure, from roads to bridges to airports, seaports, and electrical grids--has slipped to 12th place.

On Technology: Prison construction draws resources from other priorities

On Principles & Values: Raised in only black family in segregated neighborhood

For the houses that my parents did like, they would be told that the homes had already been sold. So the Fair Housing Council decided to begin to send out white "test couples" to see if indeed the homes were sold or off the market. They weren't.

[Their lawyer], having been part of sting operations like this before, informed the real estate agent that he was in violation of NJ state law and his real estate license was at risk. The Bookers, he explained, would be purchasing the home. We moved into Harrington Park and became four raisins in a tub of sweet vanilla ice cream.

On Principles & Values: After law school, worked with non-profits for city kids

Yet in my first year of law school, my bright vision for the future suddenly went dark. My experiences working with kids, engaging with nonprofits, and serving in cities had sparked a powerful drive to dedicate myself to working in these areas.

I couldn't articulate exactly what I intended to do about them. I was ambition without focus; I had passion to make a difference but no plan for how to do so.

On Welfare & Poverty: Newark got disproportionate share of dumps & jails

New Jersey was happy to place in Newark a state prison, a county jail, waste disposal sites, sewage treatment facilities, halfway houses, drug treatment centers. A grossly disproportionate share of public and low- income housing, and other necessary public goods that wouldn't be located in surrounding suburban towns. Despite this, Newark still boasted New Jersey's finest cultural institutions, including the state's largest public library and museum. It was the state's largest college town and it was home to massive job generators such as Newark Liberty International Airport.

There was a tenacious resolve in Newark to show the world a truth that would upset shallow assertions that Newark was dead. There was a vast communal will to demonstrate that this once great city would rise again.

On Crime: 1960s cities had mostly white cops & mostly black majority

Overt racism pervaded the city in the 1960s. Though blacks and Latinos accounted for the majority of the population, they had almost no meaningful political representation. What's more, mostly white officers policed predominantly black sections of the city, like the Central Ward. There were widespread reports of police brutality, and tensions built up around the all- too- common experiences of black youth who were stopped and harassed by the police.

On Civil Rights: Blacks more likely to be suspended in school & jailed later

On Government Reform: Seek common ground to achieve transformative change

On Government Reform: Declined lavish perks as Newark City Councilor

I'd been elected to get things done, and the biggest issue for my constituents wasn't City Council compensation of expense accounts--which I didn't have a shot at changing anyway. People hadn't elected me to point out what was wrong with my colleagues. They'd elected me to find ways to work with them and to get something accomplished.

On Drugs: Staged sit-in at urban housing to disrupt drug trade

My response was to explain to her over and over again that I didn't know what to do. "We elected you, Cory. If you can't help, then why did we elect you?"

On Principles & Values: Father raised in 1930s colored funeral home

My father taught me early in my life that attitude is a conscious choice; it is a currency available even to those with no access to money. If the world punches you in the gut, that doesn't define you; it's what you do next that speaks your truth. My father's truth was relentless positivity.

On Civil Rights: Creative civil rights activism revealed rampant injustice

Our housing policy in this country, from the local level to the federal level, was exactly what the civil rights movement was fighting against: segregation, discrimination, the erecting of walls between people. We designed housing policy so as to obscure our ability to see each other, to prevent ourselves from having to connect with others and confront the truth about what they were enduring. We allowed injustice to grow strong and persist in a way that is utterly contrary to our country's core values, that insults our best conceptions of humanity.

On Welfare & Poverty: Post-WWII policy of redlining forced racially-biased housing

HUD polices were put in place that directed the building of densely clustered low-income and public housing into urban spaces. Newark's nickname, "Brick City," is derived from the federal policy to pack low-income housing into Newark and not diffusely throughout the state of New Jersey, where the impact of poverty on families would have been mitigated.

On Welfare & Poverty: Post-WWII policy of redlining forced racially-biased housing

HUD polices were put in place that directed the building of densely clustered low-income and public housing into urban spaces. Newark's nickname, "Brick City," is derived from the federal policy to pack low-income housing into Newark and not diffusely throughout the state of New Jersey, where the impact of poverty on families would have been mitigated.

On Crime: Anti-recidivism funds much scanter than prison funds

If you go to prison for a nonviolent crime, you will return to society as part of a growing group of second-class citizens--often denied basic citizenship rights such as being able to vote or serve on a jury. If you have a felony conviction, your face often overwhelming obstacles to getting a job, obtaining housing.

Over the years, our initiatives helped keep thousands of Newarkers from recidivating--and they cost a fraction of what taxpayers would have spent rearresting, retrying, and reimprisoning these people. The irony remains that money for efforts to put and keep people in jail and prison is far easier to come by than the scant funds we cobbled together to run these fledgling programs. I always had the feeling that although we were making an important difference, we were not fixing the system.

On Environment: Vegetarian since 1992; vegan since 2014

Within a couple of months I was astounded by the results. Active as I was, when I went vegetarian my body felt supercharged. I felt energy like I hadn't ever had before. My sleep improved, my recovery after workouts improved, and I felt lighter, stronger and more capable. I never looked back. 22 years later, after more reading, study and self-examination, I decided to try another experiment for the same reasons: from the day after Election Day 2014 until the end of that year, I would try being a vegan. It, too, would become an experiment that would stick.

On Families & Children: Society struggles without paid family leave

Where people have no paid family leave, or vacation days, a child's illness is so much more than the minor stress and inconvenience my mother endured when I got sick. There is the added stress of how to pay a doctor or a co-pay, how to make rent if you miss a day's work to stay home with your child, how to cope with not being there when your son, hospitalized for asthma, calls for his mother.

On Crime: Police doesn't solve problem; they just attend to symptoms

In Newark, a meeting took place at the FBI's Newark field office. As they rolled through the data on violent crime in and around the city, I said to the then special agent in charge, Les Weiser, "How do we solve this problem?"

Agent Weiser looked at me. "Mayor," he said, "we DON'T solve this problem. We just attend to the symptoms of the problem." I knew that by "we" he wasn't just talking about the FBI; he was talking about law enforcement.

On Gun Control: $1,000 reward for tip on illegal weapons

On Crime: Reduced crime by helping prisoners coming home

On Crime: Theory of "broken windows" doesn't drive down crime

Decades after these practices were documented, judicially upheld and implemented across our nation, the DOJ alleged that our use of stop-and-frisk and quality-of-life summonses were not helping us drive down crime and that these tactics actually undermined residents' quality of life.

On Crime: Poor & minorities bear the brunt of policing practices

On Crime: Mass incarceration has failed

I am also growing more hopeful about issues of race and the criminal justice system. We can't achieve our ideals of safety and security in our country without confronting the persistent realities of race in our criminal justice system. When it comes to policing, the attention being paid to videos of minorities being treated badly by police is good--if we learn from them.

On Drugs: Give addicts treatment instead of long sentences

We are also coming to realize how essential it is to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline--the ridiculous policies that have criminalized kids instead of nurturing them, helping them, & healing them. There is a growing body of research that shows we can lower crime rates by better dealing with childhood trauma and investing in policies such as Nurse-Family Partnerships, where at-risk mothers get home nurse visits that are proven to reduce the cost to taxpayers of everything from kids' emergency room visits to teens' encounters with the police.

On Drugs: Drug war isn't waged in privileged communities

The war on drugs has turned out to be a war on PEOPLE--and far too often a war on people of color and the poor. Marijuana use, for example, is roughly equal among blacks and whites, yet blacks are 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for possession than whites.

Further, there is no difference between blacks and whites in dealing drugs. In fact, some studies show that whites are more likely than blacks to sell drugs, even though blacks are far more likely to be arrested for it.

On Environment: Passaic River poisoned because it was cheaper for business

In 1983 the EPA confirmed what was already know - that the extreme levels of contaminants at the Diamond Alkali plant and in the lower Passaic River posed a grave threat to human life. The EPA added the site to its National Priorities List of Superfund sites around the country, making it eligible for taxpayer-funded cleanup.

This was my environmental awakening [about externalizing pollution costs].

On Environment: Dumping pollutants into rivers externalizes costs

The destruction of the Passaic River is an example of the perversion of the free market. In theory, goods & services are to be priced according to the actual costs of production with an addition of incremental cost for profit. What actually happened in Newark and communities around the country--and continues to happen today--is that key costs of production were shifted onto society while the profits were kept by the enterprise. With their costs externalized, the enterprise's profits increase. In the case of the Passaic River, and in the cases of so many other national treasures, these externalized costs are paid for over and over again by one generation after another.

On Crime: Parks and green spaces are associated with safer communities

Activists and leaders educated me on the [environmental] benefits trees provide, and soon we set out to find every way possible to plant more of them. But when my staff told me that tree planting could actually help in our efforts to reduce crime, at first I didn't believe them. So they provided the data: evidence from studies that there may in fact be a causal link between more trees and less crime and violence. In fact, beyond trees on the street, parks and green spaces all were associated with safer communities.

On Environment: Trees reduce erosion & increase property values