Mayor Cory Booker
Mayor Cory Booker announces $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the schoolyard shootings.

I was devastated this morning to read this story about murders over the weekend in Newark, New Jersey:

“Three college-bound kids were killed after being forced to kneel against a wall and then shot in the head at close range Saturday night, police said.” Read the full story

It’s hard to be sincere and compassionate about every murder story that on the news, mostly because murders have become so common. The media exploits murders as cheap content; rarely do they take responsibility and try to reveal the social climate that allows for these crimes. They just tell you it happened, and then go on to the day on Wall Street.

But this story hit me hard, because I have great hopes for the city of Newark because of their ambitious new mayor, Cory Booker. He seems like a good man who is truly trying to undo the misery of the people of his city.

I first learned about Cory Booker through a documentary on HBO called Street Fight late one night at a hotel somewhere in the Midwest. (I forget which state I was in, but I was cold the whole night in the hotel, and the next morning I flew out of the Minneapolis / St. Paul airport.)

This documentary was about the 2002 mayoral race in the city of Newark. The young Cory Booker was trying to replace Sharpe James, the incumbent mayor of Newark, New Jersey. The documentary was fascinating and compelling. It portrayed Booker as an idealist with hope, and his opponent James as a dead-beat politician who exploited his office and ignored his people. This was the stuff of a real Hollywood story.

Unfortunately, the documentary closed with Booker losing the 2002 election. Life got busy and I forgot about the story. That was until late last year when I saw Cory Booker’s face in the the papers after he was finally elected the mayor of Newark. It looks like the previous mayor’s corruption revealed in the documentary could be true. A few weeks ago this headline:
Former Newark mayor Sharpe James indicted on federal charges

Cory Booker’s Lecture at the New School

When I was back in Georgia last month, it was difficult for me to fall asleep because I was on Pacific time. For every night of my visit, I had three or four hours to myself after Mom and Dad had gone to sleep. I spent a most of that time praying and preparing the sessions I had to give at summer camp for the following week, and the keynote I would give at the end of the trip in Tucson, Arizona.It can be discouraging to write sessions for teenagers because I’m never clear who I am talking to. Each person has a different story, a different family, a different world waiting for them after they leave the camp or conference. After an hour of staring at my monitor and coming up with nothing useful, I turned off the computer and walked across the creaky wood floor to the living room to watch TV.

I flipped through the channels and then stopped on C-SPAN, the one channel I’ve never watched for more than two minutes. I was thrilled because I caught the beginning of a speech that Cory Booker was giving to the New School in New York. Please watch the video on Fora.TV and you’ll see why I was impressed.

Mayor Booker spoke with so much clarity and resolution. I was so inspired to see an idealist like me actually out there fighting tooth and nail to bring about change. There are so many political agitators out there that do no good for our society. Under the banner of “idealism,” they complain about circumstances and blame them on an unpopular president. They incite division and hatred. But Cory Booker is a person who who finds a problems and pragmatically fights for a solution.I was so enthralled by his lecture and was so eager to start my next day that I didn’t fall asleep until after four in the morning. I just laid there in my bed, eyes wide open, staring into the stillness of the night. This was a rare moment for me, because I’ve become more and more discouraged the older I get. I get tired of “trying to make a difference” and I want to retreat to some other path in life. There are so many critics out there, and so many obstacles. I really start to wonder: what am I fighting for? Is this worth it?

Why Newark Matters

I don’t just admire Cory Booker because he’s trying to make a difference. I spend time with these types of people all day, everyday. But what is unique about Booker is that he’s chosen to turn around the city of Newark.Newark is ignored by the country because it is in utter contrast to the glowing city 11 miles west, the unofficial capital of American pride: New York. New York is the center of the worlds of finance, music, publishing, fashion, and (for what it’s worth) modeling. It’s a city marked with glamour and power.

Newark is plagued with poverty, crime, drugs and a terrible education system. It had such a bad reputation that nobody I have ever known actually went into the city of Newark, except to fly in and out of the airport. If I could summarize Newark in one word: hopeless. It epitomizes the American inner city.

I lived in am apartment in Washington Heights, a ghetto of Harlem. Throughout the days and nights, I hung out with rich, influential people in the media. But I always came back to my humble apartment in a rough part of town. As the summer progressed, I spent more time with the neighborhood kids and their moms. It was easy to meet and talk with the community because our street was a “play street” for most of the summer. Both ends of 151st Street were blocked off at Amsterdam and and Broadway to keep cars away, making room for the kids to play with their friends.

I ignored the difference in our races and talked to everyone like we all came with matching skin. I made some good friends and met some fascinating people. I also saw some terrible things: broken families, drugs, violence, generations of poverty. Although I’ll never know what it’s like to be born and raised in a ghetto, I lived there long enough to see the sharp contrast between ghetto life and the world I was raised in. Everyone faces challenges in their youth, but the children of the ghetto have a whole different reality to wake up to every morning.

Everyone 50 streets south of us had all the wealth and opportunity the world had to give. Up there in Harlem, I didn’t see any answers. I left Harlem that September wondering if there was anyone inside or outside of the ghetto cared enough to help the people suffering on its streets.

Most of what I’ve done with my life sense that summer has been with white, suburban kids. These young people have their own problems and they definitely need help. I wake up each day and do what I do, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve abandoned a whole part of our society because the obstacles were too big.

This is why I am so excited about Mayor Cory Booker. He’s someone who deeply cares about the people of Newark and is doing all that he can to help him. If his policies and community-building efforts work, then this will bring hope to inner cities across our country. I’m especially interested in the pragmatic changes he’s making to the schools, especially his work with KIPP.

Here is a summary from the KIPP website:

KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program, is a national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools in under-resourced communities throughout the United States. There are currently 57 locally-run KIPP schools in 17 states and Washington, DC, which are serving over 14,000 students. KIPP schools have been widely recognized for putting underserved students on the path to college. More than 80 percent of KIPP students are low-income and more than 90 percent are African American or Hispanic/Latino. Nationally, nearly 80 percent of KIPP alumni have matriculated to college.