“It’s easier to build a healthy child than to fix a broken man” photo via facebook
Cory Booker tells the tale of Wazn Miller’s murder as a set up to an important insight the mayor says his father shared with him in the aftermath of the incident—that the elder Booker, born in 1936 to a Black single mother, in poverty in a segregated community, had a better future than Black men born in 1996 (or 2006 depending on where and when the younger Booker told the story) have before them.
The news out of Newark of 10 murders in 10 days is a testament to the truth of that insight. The recent news of violence in Asbury Park, Camden, Trenton, Chicago and Detroit further attests to the fact that young Black men today are more likely to end up dead or in jail than they are to become IBM executives residing in Harrington Park and, if they know their sons, witness them graduate from the most prestigious universities in the world, become mayor of a major U.S. city or serve in the United States Senate.
Cory Booker heard that insight from his father in 2004, before he became mayor.
Yet the well intentioned policies that Booker pursued in leading the city have failed. They failed in Newark, as they have failed in Asbury Park, Camden, Trenton, Chicago and Detroit. Young Black men are more likely to end up dead or in jail today than they were when Booker, and his father, were growing up. The progress in racial equality that Booker’s father’s generation fought for, and Booker’s generation reaped the benefits of, has been replaced by a not so great society of despair.
As Booker says in his speeches, we’ve made a great deal of progress towards racial equality, that his father’s generation fought for, yet we’ve got so much further to go. To the young Black men, and their families, in Newark, Asbury Park, Camden, Trenton, Chicago and Detroit, there is no where to go but failing schools, gangs, guns, death or jail.
In the video below of Cory Booker addressing the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy in 2010, the mayor recounts how his father’s stories get better (or worse, depending on the point of the story) the more often he told them.
Good story telling to make a point, or move an audience or teach a lesson, either in a conference room, college graduation, church or family dinner table, is a trait Booker apparently inherited from his father.
At the 14 minute mark of the video, Booker tells the story of “the lowest point” of his life. Wazn Miller’s murder in 2004.
In the version of the story told at ACS, Miller doesn’t die in Booker’s arms.
Booker gave basically the same talk at NYU Law in October of 2010. In that version, Booker was present when Miller died. He starts the Miller story at the 6:30 mark and speaks of the death at the 8 minute mark.
A spokesman for the Booker administration in Newark is denying reports that the city is stonewalling the response to OPRA requests, according to a report on PolitickerNJ.
The City of Newark has been sued by The National Review and the Lonegan for Senate campaign for failing to comply with Open Public Records Act requests. NR is seeking police reports from a shooting incident during which the victim died in Booker’s arms, according to numerous stories the mayor has told over time. The Lonegan campaign is seeking Booker’s expense and reimbursement reports from the city during his tenure as mayor.
According to PolitickerNJ, City spokesperson James Allen disputed NR’s claim, saying that the city promised to provide the police reports by September 13.
John Ginty, the Lonegan campaign’s attorney, told MMM that since filing his suit, the city has promised to comply and provide the requested documents, also on September 13.
However, NR and Lonegan are apparently not the only information seekers being thwarted.
GOP U.S Senate nominee Steve Lonegan has sued the city of Newark for the release of Mayor Cory Booker’s expense records since he took office, because the city has failed to comply with the Lonegan campaign’s OPRA (Open Public Records Act) requests.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker has an “almost insurmountable” lead over former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan in their race to replace the late U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg in the October 16 special election, according to a Rutgers-Eagleton poll released this morning.
64% support Booker, 29% Lonegan and 6% are undecided.
56% of likely voters, including 44% of Republicans, don’t know enough about Lonegan to form an opinion. Voters who are familiar with the Republican are split 22%-22% in their favorable/unfavorable impressions of him.
Booker favorably impresses 63% of likely voters. 19% have an unfavorable impression of the Newark mayor. 17% say they are unfamiliar with him.
Rutgers-Eagleton surveyed 925 New Jersey adults, 814 of whom said they were registered voters. Of the registered voters, only 462 are likely to vote on the third Wednesday in October.
93% of Democrats, 52% of Independents and 19% of Republicans said they were voting for Booker. 90% of Liberals, 70% of Moderates and 20% of Conservatives said they were voting for Booker.
Polling Director David Redlawsk said Lonegan’s “most recent news highlights attacking Booker’s masculinity have been quite unflattering.” If Redlawsk asked a question about those recent news highlights, he did not report it or the results in the poll release.
Donna Jackson might be Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s biggest threat to being elected a U.S. Senator.
Councilwoman Mildred Crump and Teachers Union President Joe Del Grasso, the other stars of the above video from our friends at BookerFail, could be said to have their own political axes to grind with Booker. But the Mayor himself told the Star Ledger in 2010 that Jackson does not have a political agenda, she just cares about Newark.
She says the media and Newark’s government are hiding the city’s problems to give Booker political cover. She says Newark is worse since Booker became mayor. “Booker’s national profile is killing us,” Jackson said.
Last May, Jackson accurately predicted the coming outbreak in violence in Newark, during an impassioned rant before the city council wherein she also complained that Newark residents, “darkies” she called them, are not being employed at the new construction projects that Booker often touts. She calls Caucasians “clear people.”
Jackson says Newark’s mismanagement is intentionally designed to drive residents making less than $100,000 out of the city.
Jackson says she’s “anti-government, anti-government and everybody’s got to go.”
John Munson/The Star-Ledger NEWARK — Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s political stardom has paid off well. The Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful has earned nearly $4 million from various endeavors over the past 15 years, including an average income of $577…
Steve Lonegan holds a NEWS conference outside the Assyrian Orthodox Church of the Virgin Mary, Paramus, NJ. Also speaking is Montvale Councilman Mike Ghassali and Archbishop Mor Cyril Aphrem Karim. Video by Donald MacLeay.
