United

Cory Booker chose to live in the projects of blighted Newark, NJ, and on food stamps, to better understand the experience of poor families. He took Hurricane Sandy victims into his own home. He watched violence tarnish his city; for ten years he felt like he went from funeral to funeral. As mayor from 2006 to 2013, he became the public face of an American city that had gone years without positive national attention. In 2013, Booker won a U.S. Senate seat, becoming the first black Senator from New Jersey.

To illustrate his overarching ideas on uniting in the name of helping each other and tending to our shared resources, he WRITES ON ISSUES about which he cares deeply, AND PROVIDES SOLUTIONS:

Criminal justice: running prisons in a way that encourages true rehabilitation; race and crime; the role of the police; mass incarceration

Economic justice: the financial industry preys on the poor, and how this flies in the face of the true intent of capitalism

Environmental justice: lack of connection to the earth harms us all and limits our potential as a society

About the Author

Cory Booker is the junior United States senator from New Jersey. He was born in Washington, D.C., and his parents, who both worked for IBM, later relocated the family to Harrington Park, New Jersey. A star high school athlete, Booker received a football scholarship to Stanford University, where he earned his bachelor s and master s degrees. He then attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar before earning his law degree from Yale University.

Booker won a special election to fill the term of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg to become New Jersey s first African American senator and only the twenty-first person in American history to ascend directly from mayor to senator. Booker lives in Newark s Central Ward.