Mayor Cory Booker: Nonviolence in Action

[Alice Bosley]

Earlier this year, Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey came to speak about his time in office and the tactics he has used to change Newark from one of America’s ‘worst’ cities to an up-and-coming cultural center. A relaxed Stanford, grad, Booker has spent the last ten-ish years of his life working to enact change on the streets of Newark. I could write forever about how amazing Mayor Booker is, but instead I’ll just give some examples of how, by ‘being the change,’ Mayor Booker has shown us all how nonviolence can be used in practically every situation.

When Cory Booker was in Yale law school, he moved into the projects of Newark and started commuting the 4 hours to Yale every day in order to see the true side of Newark. Since winning office in 2002, his outrageous tactics have continued. With pictures of both Gandhi and King hanging on the wall of his office (he was in Professor Clay Carson’s class at Stanford!), he works to empower the people of Newark to enact change: he has monthly “office hours” where anyone can come in and discuss an issue or initiative with him, he goes out with police in the middle of the night to catch drug dealers and employ the homeless, and he still lives in one of the worst areas of town, in order to live how the people of Newark live. His huge pushes on crime brought a reduction of around 40% in murder in the city. In one very Gandhian situation before he was elected mayor, Booker camped out in front of a drug lord’s building, fasting and praying for 10 days, in order to draw attention to the lack of police protection for the tenants of the building against drug dealers, who were also living in the buildings.

This man, who truly lives a life of nonviolence and change, has brought that same ideal into the politics of Newark, and indeed beyond. His call for change, much like Obama’s, is a call that has been sweeping the country. In the words of Booker, “I know we can do this… I have no right to believe otherwise, because human history is a testimony to it—that we can change things. The question is, can we muster the collective will? King said it more eloquently: The problems today are not the vitriolic words and the evil actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of good people.” Booker takes King’s words to heart, and shows through dynamic leadership that King’s legacy still exists in the United States today.

[Gina Bianchini]

I second that, Arielle.

[Arielle Miller Levitan]

I knew him at Stanford and he is a truly magnetic person. If anyone can turn around a city like Newark he can. He has an uncanny ability to make people feel important and heard, and perhaps that's alot of what the residents of Newark need to build it back up to a the thriving center of commerce that it once was.