Podcast: Senator Cory Booker: Making Our Future This Election
Democracy in Color Podcast: Episode 14 | Season Finale
For our season finale, host Aimee Allison sits down with New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and Steve Phillips, author of New York Times bestseller Brown Is the New White and founder of Democracy in Color. A week before this historic election, they discuss how Democrats can win big up and down the ballot, our opportunity to fix the criminal justice system, and what we can do to heal the racial divide.
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7:43 On Whether We Should Be Worried About This Election
CB: Well, you should be worried. In politics parlance, when you’re running for office, the quote you often hear from politicians is, “There’s only two ways to run: unopposed or afraid.” There’s so much at stake right here in this election that we should be concerned that there’s a chance that Secretary Clinton will not win. And if she doesn’t, for people who are concerned about social justice, you’re going to see people being deported from this country, who know the election’s going to make a difference whether they stay or go, and they know no other country but the United States. This is going to make a difference between whether people know liberty or freedom. The future of criminal justice reform holds in the balance. This is going to make a difference between whether the millions of senior citizens who live below the poverty line because they only have these meager social security checks that don’t meet the basic needs, whether that issue has a chance of being addressed or not. This is a consequential election, not to mention the outcome of the Supreme Court for the next generation, as well as the United States Senate. So I want people to be concerned. As in “Ella’s Song,” made famous by Sweet Honey in the Rock, we who believe in freedom cannot rest. And if you’re resting on this one, then in my opinion, you’re contributing to that which you fear, which is Donald Trump winning this election.
10:55 On the Current Status of the Republican Party
SP: They’re totally fractured but what’s fascinating is what will emerge. There was a tweet going around about how there had been a Democratic poll focus group last year testing Jeb Bush’s messages and how they were resonating with African Americans and with Latinos. Democrats have not had to compete for the votes of people of color and that is going to be a likely scenario heading towards 2020. So, this doesn’t end November 8th. I think we forced the apocalypse by defeating Trump, but what remains to be seen is whether the Democrats are going to fully embrace Black Lives Matter and immigration reform.
CB: What’s going to happen after this election is Donald Trump is going to come and go and the Republican Party is going to be positioned better than the Democratic Party to control the House, the Senate and the White House. And what do I mean by that? Remember, there is a measurable Obama effect when he is on the ballot.
12:40 On the Future of the Democratic Party
SP: The question is, are the Democrats going to invest in a big way in actually building up the institutions, the organizations, the leaders, and the communities of color? This is a challenge. I’m actually somewhat concerned, heading into the final days of the campaign, that they’re still just doing television ads and they’re not really putting millions of dollars into organizing people, person-to-person, to get them out to the polls. That’s the fight that the Democrats have to have.
CB: I want to add an exclamation point to what he’s already saying because we have the numbers to win even more states than we usually win. The question is, will we change our tactics to recognize the demographic changes and the need to invest in field and grassroots organizing? Right now, as I look at the totality of how we’re spending our money, it’s still casting this broad net that’s not as efficient and effective.
SP: This is where we’re going to be weighing in November 9th. There needs to be a struggle in the Democratic Party around fully investing and embracing the New American Majority, people of color and progressive Whites, and not spending all this money on TV ads, targeting the White swing voters. We’re putting out a declaration around what the Democratic party should be as a part of our Democracy in Color campaign. We’re going to rally people around the country and we’re going to try to put pressure on the party to fully commit. That’s the next struggle we have to engage in.
16:30 What Should We Do About Trump Supporters?
CB: My very first campaign, 1988, I’m knocking on lots of doors. My staff kept getting on me, saying, “Cory, you knock on these doors and you get one person who says they don’t like you and they’re not going to vote for you and you spend half an hour trying to convince that person that you’re a nice guy and they should support you. Meanwhile, that stopped you from knocking on another ten doors of people who would probably support you if you could just identify them.” They said, “Stop wasting your time trying to persuade someone who’s already against you.” In this election, I’m not worried about the Trump supporters, I’m worried about our folks staying home.
18:40 Post-Trump Tape: The Sexual Harassment of Women
SP: I think it’s possible that there’s something happening in the culture in terms of a corner being turned around being able to talk about these issues, being able to have them be front and center. Even in the progressive movement, one of my friends was at a progressive conference and somebody was putting their hands on her there. The door has been opened for us to have that conversation now. I think my own awareness has been raised in that I didn’t realize the extent of this problem.
20:11 The Need for an Honest Conversation on Race
CB: I’m hoping we can start dealing with race issues by talking about racial realities. Florida is a swing state. One out of five African Americans in Florida can’t vote because of felony disenfranchisement because Blacks are about four times as likely to be arrested for drug use than not. This has a direct connection to overt, bigoted, racist policies. After Reconstruction, legislators were asking themselves, “How are we going to stop Blacks from populating the state legislatures with other African Americans? Well, we could criminalize them and pass laws that dictate that if you get tripped up in a Black Code, you’re going to lose your voting rights.” That’s a direct legacy to the racial divides in our country. We need to have an honest conversation. It’s hard to heal something if you don’t diagnose it.
24:26 Addressing Racial Bias in Criminal Justice System
CB: I take very seriously the patriotic routines that come up in our society. We all pledge an oath that we’ll be a nation of liberty and nation for all. It is a stunning reality, for a guy who grew up in a majority-White, affluent neighborhood for half of my life, and half of my life I’ve lived in the inner-city of Newark, New Jersey. I see clearly the different ways the justice systems are applied, dramatically so. Nobody was stopping and frisking us when we were walking home from parties at Stanford. There were no big FBI investigations to find out who was selling drugs but I imagine the three of us [while attending college] saw a lot of drug sales and the like that was there. As Bryan Stevenson says, “We have a nation that treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than poor and innocent.”
30:00 Maintaining Voter Turnout Among the New American Majority
CB: I’ve seen the reality of the election in 2008, when everybody in Newark came out to vote and there were lines around the polling place. The next year, in the 2009 election, everybody didn’t come out to vote. If only a fraction of the Obama turnout from the year before had cast a vote, we wouldn’t have a Republican governor in New Jersey right now. It really was the dramatic drop in the voter turnout of people of color and progressive Whites that led to Chris Christie becoming governor. He cut funding streams to cities, the earned income tax credit, funding to Planned Parenthood, and the like. That is, to me, a testament to the fact that we have reservoirs of strength. If only we could figure out a way to keep people active.
SP: Van Jones talks about how “We all showed up and then we all went home!” From 2008 to 2010, the Republican turnout dropped 7 million votes and the Democratic turnout dropped 26 million votes. That’s when we lost the House of Representatives. But people, such as our friends Chuck Schumer and David ____, who actually concluded that we lost the House because the voters “turned against the President and the Congress because of health care [reform].” That is, actually, not mathematically correct. The point is, how do we build a movement? People struggled, sacrificed, and died to get the right to vote. We elected a Black president. We’re likely to elect a woman president. We’re likely to have strong social justice allies such as Maya Harris in significant positions in the White House. We have to advance our thinking and strategies from the level of the 60's. How do we get real power? Not depending on or hoping Secretary Clinton will do the right thing. How do we work in concert to build power for the movement?
34:08 Continuously Engaging and Connecting with the People
CB: I love Alice Walker’s book, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, in which she says the Black revolutionary is always concerned with the least glamorous things: raising kids’ reading levels, filling out food stamps forms, because folk gotta eat, revolution or not. She says the real Black revolutionary artist is always close enough to the people to be there for them when they need them. That authentic connection with folks helps to keep faith, just to know you’re fighting. I learned that from Newark leaders, through some mistakes I made as mayor. Even if you can’t do anything, let them know what your fight is! That helps to prevent the breeding of cynicism and frustration. I hear a lot of frustration from Black churches and community groups who feel that folks only show up when it’s election time. That’s a bad feeling for people to have, that they are only being catered to when we need their vote. That’s why [Steve Phillips’] approach of investing in our base and creating grassroots connectivity is so important.
SP: The Democrats spend hundreds of millions of dollars, billions in election years, every year, on TV commercials, trying to change the mind of White swing voters. You could hire thousands of staff people across the country to let voters know what the fights are. It’s not happening right now but this is the fight I intend to wage when we launch our Democracy in Color declaration as the opening salvo of this struggle.
38:36 Food Justice and Health of African American Communities
CB: Ron Finley, the Guerrilla Gardener from South Central Los Angeles says, “In South Central LA, we got drive-bys and drive-thrus and the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys!” Food policy is so broken and the people who are suffering the most are poor folks. I’ve been plant-based for two years now but I’ve been vegetarian since 1992. African American men, especially, have the lowest life expectancy of any gender-race combination. It is dramatic how far below we are and so much of it is because we are eating ourselves to death.
