- 6 months ago
Yes Girl podcast interview with Cory Booker
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00:00Senator Cory Booker is here.
00:02Yes.
00:03I am so grateful to be sitting with you both.
00:05Thank you, thank you.
00:06Especially a little Cory Cory connection here.
00:07A little Cory Cory, yes.
00:08A little Jersey connection here.
00:09There's a lot of connections.
00:10This is a triangle.
00:11I want to stay here.
00:12Okay.
00:13Before we get started, can we please convince this other Cory why a Jersey is everything?
00:17Where do you live in New York?
00:18I live in Brooklyn.
00:19She comes for Jersey.
00:20I live four blocks from where Biggie Smalls grew up.
00:22Listen, I respect Brooklyn.
00:24Okay.
00:25But they snuck into my city and they stole my nets.
00:27Yeah, that's right.
00:28That's true.
00:29That's valid.
00:30That's valid.
00:31And they snuck in at night and took my team.
00:32Wow.
00:33And so I feel some kind of way.
00:34Even though the best, my favorite vegan comfort food diner.
00:39Do you guys, are you guys both vegans?
00:41Not at all.
00:42No.
00:43Not even close?
00:44No.
00:45I'm leaving here going to Cochon.
00:48Oh, really?
00:49Well, go to Champ's Diner in Brooklyn.
00:51Okay.
00:52And I'm telling you right now, you won't even miss it.
00:54And the thing is, you know, there's a great guy, if you ever have time for a TED Talk,
00:57Ron Finley.
00:58Uh-huh.
00:59He's called the Gorilla Gardener from South Central L.A.
01:00Okay.
01:01And does all this, expanding access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
01:04And he goes, in L.A., we got drive-bys and drive-throughs.
01:07And the drive-throughs are killing more people than drive-bys.
01:10And because we, especially in the African-American community, lower life expectancy, higher rates
01:14of heart disease, diabetes.
01:15It's a problem.
01:16And a lot of things is because of the food we eat.
01:18So we've got to all try to make sure we're living our best lives, which is often at the
01:21end of your fork, what you're putting there.
01:23That's much easier.
01:24You know what?
01:25Okay, I'm not going to go to Cochon.
01:26Now we feel bad.
01:27I'm going to plant a salad in New Orleans.
01:29I'm not telling you what to eat.
01:30I never tell people to eat.
01:31It's a very personal thing, what you put in your body.
01:33So I'm just saying, live your best life on your plate as well as in other ways.
01:38And speaking of you live your best life, you're from New Jersey, and we'll just have to leave
01:41it at that.
01:42You know, you rub Jersey hard.
01:43You cut me, I bleed Jersey.
01:45Same.
01:46Yes.
01:47And you know, these New Yorkers don't understand.
01:48That's important.
01:49They disrespect.
01:50Because Charlie is my co-host, she has given me some iconic people.
01:55Can I tell you what I tell her about Jersey?
01:57Who do we have to thank for Jersey?
01:58Winnie Houston?
01:59Michael B. Jordan.
02:00Yes.
02:01Lauren Hill.
02:02Newark.
02:03Lauren Hill.
02:04Newark.
02:05She went to my high school.
02:06Brick City.
02:07Right.
02:08Let me give you even better than that.
02:09Because we can go through all of these.
02:10The Count.
02:11The Count Basie.
02:12The Queen.
02:13Queen Latifah.
02:14The chairman of the board.
02:15The boss.
02:16We give our people real names, but I want to go even deeper than that.
02:18Okay.
02:19We have united this country.
02:20The engine that crossed the first across the country, Transcontinental of New Jersey.
02:25Let's go deeper than that.
02:26Summarine.
02:27New Jersey.
02:28AMFM.
02:29New Jersey.
02:30Movie Theater.
02:31New Jersey.
02:32Light bulb.
02:33I'm never going to stop.
02:34Invented in New Jersey.
02:35When you go out at night on the town, you wear some patent leather.
02:38New Jersey.
02:39Wait.
02:40Yes.
02:41Electric guitar.
02:42New Jersey.
02:43I could go on and on and on.
02:44Okay.
02:45Including my favorite candy for a long time before I became a vegan was M&M's invented in
02:49Newark.
02:50Yes.
02:51I did not know.
02:52I live in M&M's.
02:53Yes.
02:54Okay.
02:55I'm a convert.
02:56I'm a convert.
02:57I'll accept New Jersey now.
02:58First brewery in the United States of America was in Hoboken, New Jersey.
03:01So we are the beer, origin of beer in this country.
03:04Okay.
03:07I just want to make it real.
03:08I get it now.
03:09I definitely get it now.
03:10Well, obviously we know the legacy you're living in New Jersey, clearly.
03:13But what do you want your overall legacy to be as a man, particularly a black man?
03:18Well, I want to say my overall legacy is as a person.
03:21Okay.
03:22Because, look, I know that we have so much more power.
03:26The most common way people give up their power is not realizing they have it in the
03:29first place.
03:30Yeah.
03:31And I think our history is a testimony to what happens when people manifest their power
03:36by joining with other people.
03:38The best of who we are, in fact, I always tell people the gardens of our democracy have
03:41never been free of hatred, bigotry, demagoguery.
03:46But to find this country is how we've always responded to that.
03:50And so my hope is that in this period where a lot of people are fearing that the forces
03:54tearing us apart are stronger than the forces holding us together, that I can be a part
03:57of that generation of Americans that calls us to come together and manifest the power that
04:02is made apparent when people come together and work together and achieve justice together.
04:06And so I just worry right now we're at a point in our country where the tribalism, the
04:10hatred is too high.
04:12And I'd like for my legacy to be one of those folks that helps healing, reconciling, and
04:16helps to bring people together for the cause of justice.
04:19Community.
04:20Yes.
04:21Speaking of that though, there are a lot of, what do you say to black women who are feeling
04:25a bit jaded about politics right now?
04:28Like you said, the tribalism on the cusp of the 2020 election.
04:31I mean, what do you have to say to us?
04:34Well, first of all, black women are the highest percent voters.
04:37They go out and vote at rates that we don't see in any other demographic.
04:40We do.
04:41And my hope is, as a guy who spent his entire career working in black and brown communities.
04:46I live in an, in fact, I'm the only senator, only person in this presidential race that lives
04:51in a black and brown city.
04:53And I live in a neighborhood below the poverty line.
04:55And I've lived there since I came out of law school and started as a tenants rights organizer.
04:59And as a guy who used to watch national politicians rise and all of this, I just want our communities
05:04to be a lot more demanding and holding people accountable.
05:10Because Democrats can't get elected without African American communities.
05:13And often we see people who get elected that don't put our agendas, the agenda of those
05:18places that are looked over and cast aside.
05:21And so I hope that in this president, as a presidential candidate, I like the question
05:25most of like, not what you're going to do for me, because people are really good at telling
05:28you what they're going to do and what you want to hear.
05:30Say, okay, you've been in politics for five, 10, 20 years.
05:33What have you done already for communities like ours?
05:37And that's something that I hope that we, people ask those questions.
05:42And there's not an issue in this campaign as a guy who was a former mayor that we in our
05:46city haven't, from access to healthcare to all the way to dealing with gun violence, we've
05:51been, I have a record for struggling with these issues and often doing things that created
05:56national models for change.
05:59Thank you, Cory.
06:00That's a great answer.
06:01What do you feel, so you were talking about your choice, you were living in Newark.
06:04You still live in Newark?
06:05Yeah, I do.
06:06Your choice to live in, I hate to say underdeveloped area, because Newark is not
06:09underdeveloped, but I feel like, what do we say, urban area?
06:12Like, how do you feel like that, your choice to live there inspires others and really brings
06:18attention to urban development?
06:19Well, look, I feel like my parents, my mom raised me, this incredible black woman who,
06:25both my mom and my dad, who grew up in a very different America than I did.
06:29They, my mom was doing sit-ins and civil rights activists.
06:33And then they raised my brother and I to understand that the privileges we had were bought and paid
06:38for by the sacrifice and struggle of others.
06:40And they wanted me to be a part of the struggle.
06:42And so when I finished law school, I said, let me find a place, knowing that my rights were fought for, let me go and be a
06:47lawyer to fight for the rights of people who are often looked down upon.
06:51But where people don't see their worth and see their dignity.
06:54And I have to say, I moved into the neighborhood I live in now and it was like God just said,
06:58you don't even know, you think you know, but you don't know how special this community is.
07:03And I met a woman who, I always say I got my BA from Stanford, but my PhD on the streets of Newark.
07:08I met a woman named Miss Virginia Jones, who I just mentioned here at the, at this incredible 25th Essence Fest.
07:15And I basically, she told me, she goes, look around this neighborhood and tell me what you see.
07:20And I was like, okay, I see the crack house.
07:22I see the, I just described the projects.
07:24And she goes, well, you can never help me.
07:26And I go, what do you mean?
07:27She goes, the world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you.
07:31If you only see problems and darkness and despair, that's all there's ever going to be.
07:34But if you're stubborn and every time you open your eyes, you see love, you see the face of God, beauty, then you can help me.
07:42And it was like a transformative five years of my life working with this woman because she knew the worth of her neighborhood.
07:49She never mistaked wealth with worth.
07:51She knew the potential.
07:52And so if I walked you back then in the nineties and now walked you in 2019, you would see black female owned businesses in my community thriving.
08:01You'd see new parks, new high schools, you'd see new housing.
08:05And I always tell people like, oh, you should be proud of what you did as mayor.
08:08I go, no, no, no.
08:09We're seeing this now because people like Ms. Jones saw this then.
08:12They never gave up on their community.
08:14They had a defiant love.
08:15And so the reason why I still live there, if you want to boil it down to one thing, I didn't think I'd get into politics.
08:20It was Ms. Jones that made me and a whole bunch of tenant leaders told me to run for city council.
08:24And the one promise she ever extracted from me was don't forget the people that got you into politics and don't leave this community.
08:32And so I told her I wouldn't.
08:34I would move into the project.
08:35So I lived in high rise projects for about eight years and have stayed a part of this community.
08:39And people think, oh, it must be hard.
08:41You know, we have shootings in our community still.
08:42We haven't solved all the problems.
08:44But I've never lived in a neighborhood where you see the kind of grit, defiant love and sense of community that I've experienced,
08:53this kind of community that I've experienced in Newark.
08:55And the only eight years I might leave is for eight years in the White House.
08:59Understood.
09:00So you spoke about your mom.
09:03You spoke about Ms. Jones.
09:04Which other black women have been influential in your life?
09:07Well, I mean, my icon, her statue is sat on every desk I've had from City Hall to the Capitol of the United States.
09:13The Capitol of the United States is Harriet Tubman.
09:15She's like my model.
09:16Because, first of all, she would have died if we wouldn't have known who she was if somebody at the end of her life didn't interview her and write a book about her.
09:23So I see if you win, you're going to pass that bill, right?
09:25We're going to see you on the 20th dollar bill?
09:27God, yes.
09:28But you know what?
09:29First order of business.
09:30Maybe not, but still important to me.
09:33But, you know, she was this woman that understood that she did so much sacrifice for her freedom but then didn't stop.
09:39Kept going back down south five, ten, fifteen plus times.
09:42And I just like that model of folks who are humble leadership.
09:45They never mistake celebrity with significance.
09:47Never mistake popularity with purpose.
09:50And so I feel very blessed that I've had a circle of great black women my whole life.
09:56Aunts, uncles.
09:57You know, I was shouting out out there.
09:59I had AKAs, Deltas.
10:00I had Link Sisters.
10:01I had community leaders.
10:03If you live in communities like mine, you know that it's black women that have held communities together and that have been at the center of every major from the workers' rights movement to the civil rights movement or abolition movement to end in Jim Crow.
10:18You've had black women at the center of every movement for social justice.
10:21And I feel like I've been lucky to have circles of black women that helped raise me and rear me and send me off into the world.
10:27And even when I'm out there who adopted me like Miss Jones and kept me on the right path.
10:33Now we know how important, as you speak a lot about community, which is so important for our community to band together and make change.
10:40Give a little advice to people about how we can work together within our communities to not be frustrated, but actually to work together with the local politicians to get what we want done.
10:50Because I think that frustration right now is that, you know, we're all, we're not getting it done.
10:54You know what I mean?
10:55Yeah.
10:56And we have these frustrations, but we don't know how to work together because we don't all agree.
10:59So what advice do you have?
11:01Well, I think that there's, we don't, we shouldn't all agree.
11:03Right.
11:04I mean, you're married to a great man and you two don't always agree on things.
11:07Quite a lot.
11:08We don't.
11:09Quite a lot.
11:10But, and so, I mean, that's the challenge in life is to be bridge builders.
11:14Even when there's a chasm between you and somebody, still to find that common ground.
11:18And what I've seen in my community is when people create a Facebook page to organize around an issue and suddenly they are issue focused.
11:26Because we're, a lot of the challenges we face are because people are single issue focused.
11:30There are people who get up every single day with a determination to make it illegal for someone to have an abortion even if they've been raped or a victim of incest.
11:39There are people who get up every single day and do not, are fighting not to let one single gun safety law change.
11:45We've got to start finding the issues that drive us, organizing around those issues and demanding that they change.
11:51Because, you know, think something very simple.
11:53Like for Medicaid, which is where it's close to a majority of babies are born through Medicaid.
11:59But they cut off postpartum Medicaid, postpartum access to health care early.
12:06They don't let it go for a year.
12:07It's one of the reasons why we have such high rates of maternal mortality in our country.
12:11And amazingly, black women, it's almost three, four times higher than white women.
12:16And so I introduced a bill to just address these issues, to allow women to have, low income women to have access to doulas, to have extended time on Medicaid.
12:28All things that we know would drop the rates of complications.
12:31But yet we've got to create political will around those things and folks that are going to use their political power to demand simple policy changes that make big differences in our community.
12:42Let me give you another example.
12:44These activists came to me and said, sickle cell, like this is an issue for our community.
12:49That is a disease that affects so many more people than other diseases that affect a fraction but get a lot more funding.
12:58And they were like, well, this here's something that affects African American communities more.
13:02Can you help us champion for this?
13:04And I'm like, you know what? Absolutely.
13:06I didn't know this.
13:07And they came to their elected official on this issue.
13:11And we've actually passed legislation now to help to correct these disparities of investment.
13:16So I've seen the system work because of grassroots activists who find issues that are important in them and organize around those issues.
13:23Remember, change has never, ever come from Washington.
13:27It always comes to Washington.
13:29It wasn't like Strom Thurmond woke up one day and said, I've seen the light.
13:33Those Negro people should have some rights.
13:35No, it was African American organizers, black, white, Jewish, rainbow coalitions that brought these things to do.
13:41So we need to be those coalition builders, those bridge builders that unite people in common cause on common issues.
13:47Well, thank you for being a bridge builder.
13:49Thank you all for being a bridge builder.
13:51Thank you for giving us the time.
13:52Can I tell you something?
13:53Well, you know, black radio has a, and podcasts is a modern day manifestation of it.
13:57But we were joking before about DC.
13:59You're from the DC area.
14:00I was born in DC.
14:01My parents met there.
14:02My father came and coming from North Carolina Central.
14:05My mom came from Fisk, met and married there.
14:08My dad had the luck and the fortune to marry my mom.
14:10My mom had the charity and mercy to marry my dad.
14:13But, but, you know, black radio during that time was not just about entertainment.
14:18It's, it fueled the movement.
14:20It kept people informed and engaged, challenged people.
14:23And these DJs were like nationally known.
14:26Some of them had those kind of profiles.
14:28And so you all are in that tradition and having conversations like this, it doesn't just inform
14:33people of politics.
14:34I think it's actually your voice has helped to sustain people and motivate people and entertain
14:39people and elevate people.
14:40And that's what we all should be about for each other.
14:42We received that.
14:43We received all of that.
14:44Thank you so much.
14:47No, thank you.
14:48Thank you for coming.
14:49So good to be here.
14:50Yes, absolutely.
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