thank all of you for all that you have done. you have shown what no one else could show. it is a gift to all of us and we want to show you -- [inaudible]

[applause] [applause] [applause] thank you very, very much.

>> [inaudible conversations] new jersey senator cory booker discusses civic involvement and recounts the experiences that shaped his political thinking and he discusses his book with robert george of "the new york post."

here we are in the middle of one of the more divisive presidential election years on both sides, and you drop a book called united. why the title and why now? >> guest: it's nice to be on. i appreciate you being here and not making me feel challenged. [laughter] >> i appreciate that. but look, i ran for this office across the state of new jersey from the county to all the southern counties actually and heard from people time and time again that one and the country was divided into there was so much partisan gridlock and about the lines that seemed to be not only dividing the country but weakening it and i wanted to speak to that because my

personal experience growing up within african-american family, living in an all-white town, i had been crisscrossing lines a lot working with the inner city is going to stanford and yale. some of the best leaders that i had coming from communities like new arc taught me the lessons of urgency breaking down the divide or helping people rising consciousness to understand that they are longer than the lines that divide us. >> host: this is an interesting book because it isn't your chronological memoir kind of thing. there's interesting people and interesting moments in your life. tell us about ms. virginia jones. >> guest: she is >> guest: she is a pretty remarkable soul that is revered

even yesterday people that we are talking about. and for me my phd because of people like her coming and i worked at the inner inner-city communities since i was a teenager in east colorado but i decided to jump in coming out of law school to try to find the most difficult i could find and i ended up living on the south with drug traffic violence, abandoned buildings being used for drugs and the like and i move onto the street and my first reactions are that i was robbed in my first moments where. the whole thing when you come to a participant of the darkness it is knowing one of two things is going to happen. now there is an elderly woman tough, profoundly wise and

really rebuilt me. i went to talk to her and i'm cory booker and she didn't seem to the least bit care. i will never forget this moment she took me to the medal of martin luther king boulevard she described the scene at the crack house in the projects i described the name of. she walked away seemingly in disgust. i ran after her very respectfully and said what. here is here's the reflected what you see inside of you the use of darkness, despair,

problems if a time you open your eyes you see hope and possibilities and love, then she just walked off making me think to myself okay that is a lesson. so i went back and came back correct and i saw the problems. i was victimized by crime. i went back now with humility to surrender my agenda and really just learned from her and she had me do work at the beginning like i became an apprentice to her and what was amazing was she showed loved and grades and a capacity to care that i didn't even fully appreciate until i was writing this book. the person was murdered in those buildings if she he was the

president the entire arc and i traded the darkened about the rise of the buildings she never gave up and what i get emotional now because it was emotional for me to find this out eventually we became partners in taking on the slumlord convicted in federal court and the buildings spiral out of control because the city comes in and was being run by a political opponent but at the end of this, now i'm coming now i'm writing this book thinking of the have stories to tell to go back to interview and track down anybody that might have been around in the '90s that could tell me what they observed, because i know what i remember but i want to know what they observed, so i look back to guys that were dealing drugs because it is more than the things we've done.

so coming out of prison assigned to other leaders and this is what i found out about her. it was very moving that she made me feel in the beginning like i have to work harder had to work hard to earn her trust, what have you had one that i learned from another she said you've got the story wrong. when you left one of the first meetings and she told me that my son. then when i'm interviewing the ones dealing drugs one of them said to me at one point either to allege i was a threat and they were going to shoot me just a warning shot in the leg, but they start telling me stories about the interactions in the early days that she would go find my back and tell them --

she was telling them leave him alone and then she used the word she was calling me family from the beginning so this is a woman who really shaped me in profound ways not only because of the colorful things that she says in her character just like rough justice, but because more of the example in the lowest moments of the years i wrote shimkus stations jim for stations and mice infestations and people walking up 13, 14 flights of stairs all the hardships that for me were difficult for seniors and children were threatening to. what i found out and i saw within her was an american character that is the best of who we are and in many ways, her ability to hold this community that has profound lessons for all of us.

>> host: family is a recurring theme. in fact you start when you learned about your ancestry having gone on henry louis gates program and finding that it goes back to a slave master who goes back to the days of the pilgrims and then fast forward and to talk about how race by a single mother and your father raised by a single mother and at that point they had the feelings of growing up, but did you having grown up with two parents it seems to be a theme of trying to identify the finale of links of both blood and long blood.

>> guest: i start the chapter in a funny way because what he did to me in this gift which is like jimmy olsen with superman -- [laughter] it starts off as a comical humbling connection with this amazing hero and then this odyssey finding out i could trace it back to the earliest americans coming to the country that i directly descended from a white confederate soldier of men who fought in the alabama creekmore but i'm a descendent of the slaveowners. it made me understand our connections including introducing me to my mom's first cousins who never knew they were

deleted because that is to tighten the south when you had a lot of the law. so that expanded my view of family right there to know i could be walking past folks and as henry louis gates said there isn't a person unless they came right from an immigrant and the flipside is there are many whites that have family they just don't know about so that expanded my idea of family and i think the leap for me is we are a spiritual family much more than we know that are all tied to each other influencing each other every single day. not realizing they have it in the first place we have power and touch to connect to the influence we don't knows of the story where it ends with my

family now fighting a court case or legal efforts to move to an integrated white town and i ended up growing up and as my mother called it and i dedicate this book to the people of that town or the people of newark new jersey that -- herington park but having to rely on the council that i had listened to these stories growing up and now i'm a reporter basically and i want to find the people that were there and i found this lawyer and asked him why did you back in the 60s get involved and he said i remember the day. it was a monday. i said why and he said because the day before, it was a sunday and i watched the bridge, john lewis and others.

i said we need to go to alabama and they were struggling lawyers just starting out and they realized they couldn't so what do we need to do right now with what we have to this great movement for civil rights that they found the housing council and a little bit later given the final of my parents and so i am not related to john lewis that i know of, christians and jews and others, that their actions send ripples out that almost immediately changed the course of my family so these are the ties of the country. he broke the cycle of poverty by showing them that i show in the book because of a conspiracy of love. they can't solve all the problems of jim crow but they

would never allow the inability to do everything to undermine the determination to do something in this moment of kindness, decency and love and be understood we understood the biggest thing you can do any day is offer an act of kindness. that's community of kindness and love broke the cycle of poverty and launched my father into the middle class and overtimes that i am a hard worker. i've made sacrifices to get to where i am but i only get to these people who did that and so that's why we are related in this country. we have this ideal of self-reliance i really respect those ideas especially good look at the individuals that didn't map the human genome. it was our ability to recognize the common destiny that we need each other to need the

independence. when they say that we pledge to each other our lives and fortunes and sacred honor it is a recognition we are going to be successful to the countries. >> host: there is an interesting kind of story that goes in here. as i said, you date your lineage from the program area and your father has ended up taking him by james who was running a funeral home and he learns the work ethic and so forth switch from the slave tim pilgrim to

pilgrim but almost a perfect wine. >> guest: i've learned there is no such thing as coincidental, there's purpose and everything. >> host: one of the segments that jumps out here is in green haven law schools which is a prison and a think it is your first or second year in law school we take a quick passage here from your interaction there was an obvious feeling i could walk out of that place not just because of my own choices but the abundant environment in which i lived there was more to my discomfort then that. i was responsible. people are being put into this facility in my name and until now i had given it little thought in kernel cases it is

the people or the united states versus and i realize now we are the people and we are the united states. peoples liberty taking away prison after prison build failed again now i know and i couldn't deny they couldn't deny i have marched right in and i have seen the good and bad, the truth and the lies come how the system works and how it failed. what i saw here through united is that there is a balance between individual choices we have to face up to the ball so the idea of the social responsibility. can you speak on that? >> guest: that is the balance between individual responsibility and the ideal of interdependency. and i was told you have to balance those and know that ultimately you are responsible for your actions and for your

success or failure. you can't lose that understanding. but you have to be part of the understanding that you are also interdependent in the things that you've relied on and of the things that you've benefited from worthless things that have been yielded by others into so my parents were relentless. my father would say don't walk out of this house you were born on third base. i worked hard in high school and my father would try to remind me about the blessings i was enjoying. i don't care the struggles, we are better to be born into circumstances of other places on the planet earth we are benefiting and reaping the harvest of other folks and so the next step of understanding that is this idea of taking

responsibility when you don't like something in the world i don't care if for this mass incarceration or the environmental contamination there are many towns throughout this country that are facing the challenges and hurting our children now. you have a choice to make. you can accept things as they are or take the responsibility for changing them if you know that you are what you are because others take responsibility even if it didn't affect them directly they took the responsibility for the civil rights or the responsibility for labor rights, to be a patriotic american who swears that we are going to be a country of liberty and justice come up and you've got to be one of those people that steps up and takes change in responsibility. one of my friends that read the book for me, a person professor who has written some books as a challenge mentioned in the last

one said that there is so much death in this book and there are a lot of stories of tragedy. i talk about his decisions led to his coffin but our state, too in retrospect -- >> it's one of those issues -- >> guest: the title father and son it's really me and my father and a son and his father and we have a bond and adjust destabilized me at the time that i was just weeks into the mayor's office and suddenly it made me re-examine --

>> host: and this is a young man that you kind of bonded with in the projects -- >> guest: he really was my dad. both were raised by single moms or in this case by father got taken in by his grandmother and so i met him when he was living with his grandmother. it reminded me of my dad's charisma and his humor and i watched him grow up and he started hanging out in the lobby of my building and i started coming home and spelling marijuana and stuff that would have been innocuous. it was common in my college that we all know that we live with a justice system and the drug war -- >> host: >> guest: nobody is saying

okay who are you buying path from, the drug dealer kingpin, they just are not facing the same justice system in fact forget class which makes it more dramatic. they will be arrested for drugs 3.7 times more than someone that is white. shocking disparities which means they didn't have a margin of error. they flaunted them cavalierly without consequence. ecstasy, marijuana, with it, you name it i saw it being used so i got to help these guys but then we are busy people, we are professionals. i met the city and my dream job and that is going to be

important because it means i could help people and so after doing interventions i got so busy i didn't have time to setup my own involvement with them and they were still so gracious and kind to me. but they picked the police officers in my lobby. i didn't see the kids until i got sworn in on and i'm responding to early on the scene there is a body covered up and this is a lot of the things that i regret. i didn't ask the name i just went about ministering to the living. come home that night and i see the police report and read it now and know that the kid below make up the fight right in front of me was now dead so i begin

this chapter with the dissent of a community in the basement of the funeral home that i like in. then we start the story. at the time but i'm the most powerful i've been in my life i feel the most impotent and at the time that i was ostensibly a success that you like the most failure. post code that is striking because it isn't something that politicians kind of own up to where they feel like even if it is in their own fault they somehow failed and you show a lot of vulnerability that you don't often see among most

politicians. are you concerned that people would feel he wears his heart on his sleeve on some of these issues? >> it broke me at times. i don't know how you can see america for who we truly are and not get broken at the time. the problem we have in our country comes from the fact we don't want to tell the truth about ourselves and admit to the injustice that exists. when people look at the history they want to whitewash it and sanitize it and so that does a disservice and diminishes the humanity as opposed to telling the truth my parents raised me

and exposed in the negativity that happened in our country and in our own lives to make me a more hopeful person because i go through this in the book that you can have great hope unless you are willing to come from to great despair. it is a response i'm going to be happy no matter what but it confronts this conviction that despair will not have the last word so i don't mind telling folks in fact i was talking about this in to look at it started making me cry again because i still as i was writing the book i was working through the demotion of all of this in my mind and i began to feel that this division i'm trying to voice against to make us more

united into this seeing each other. i'm going to be authentic and. you have to be tough and. you have this iron for scanned and that for me just as in the way that i've chosen to lead my life and i think that we need more leaders who are willing to show their vulnerability and humanity because it helps a lot for people, who are struggling themselves. one of the things i send out all the time sometimes when i am feeling that way i tell people what kind to one another because we are more fragile than we went on. when i was first there i was

stunned that it was almost like someone lifted the veil i haven't been able to see in my fellow stanford classmates because the calls would roll in about 80 disorders and about men and women coming out and about depression and mental illness and weight and sexual assault. so we had all this going on and how could we be about confronting it if we won't admit that it's happening in the degree that it's happening in the country? >> host: use of the importance of seeing people had one of your mentors talks about this. >> guest: so he took me under his wing where i am today and he wasn't a flashy guy going

through this moment i first observed him at almost frustrated with him. we are a criminal sense that people are not providing services and i'm trying to get the legal part. it's not just about healing the building. it's so much trauma in this country that affects our children and others. we need to speak truth to power and authority and was just a beautiful -- i go into this in the book.

it was coincidental that this man that is so much about seeing people's humanity, letting people's struggles the scene of validating humans and creating bonds to help each other and my career went on and so on and so forth and here is this great leader who was one of the most celebrated leaders who went along in the longest strike in the 70s as a constant advocate for his of his eyesight was going and so i started taking him out to movies and it was one of the more precious moments we have together but we have begun this rhythm where i knew he was blind and i would say frank, it's cory and he would say i see you.

he would joke and that would be over. for me, i loved it because he stole the truth of saw the truth of me and validated me and so on his deathbed days i walked in and knew that was the last day that i would see him i knew that i could into the emotional that i had a moment i said goodbye. the last of the chapter ends with a powerful moment where he says to me i see to him i love you and he forces out a very difficult i love you and then the other thing he said to me is icu and so i am a senator and if i can't recognize my constituency is even the tea party struggling making $40,000

a year and made state taxes if i can't see him just because i make preconceived notions about him immediately and judge him immediately and fail to see the bond, i.e. i weaken my country because i failed to establish the bombs and stitched together the fabric so i know this is a timely talk about the traditions in washington but you can't change something if you are not first willing to change your self. i saw this yesterday asked an interview and people were just lashing out. you can advocate your position but we need to be celebrating that more because we are where we are because of the rational love and courageous embassy.

>> host: we need to be more than just tolerant and you bring that in a couple of other times. you need to legislate tolerance. you can't legislate love. what do you as a leader how does the leader bring love into the public debate? >> guest: they say the law is costing me nothing if we don't have a spirit of democracy of love and connection and spirit and so i am frustrated to teach against tolerance but i think it is a lazy being saying i'm going

to stomach your right because i just tolerate you and then i'm no better off or worse off because i was just tolerating you anyway. we should be aspiring because it recognizes the value and that we have an interwoven destiny and it recognizes that you are hope for me because i can't move this country myself. what are the views as a sword to cut somebody else off because i make a treat and you are not. so distinguish ourselves with other americans to me that is not patriotism. it is a love of country that necessitates a love of country men and women and fellow citizens and so we are going to

be a patriotic society that we need to work on sending of tolerance to being far more loving towards each other. >> host: one of the other people that you learn from in a different kind of way, chase bradley, tell us about chase. >> guest: he could put any depiction to shame. we run the city and so again i'm living in these buildings, i've moved into these buildings in my 20s. i used to sit -- >> host: you were a sitting council man and you made a conscious decision to move to the project --

>> guest: now i'm living in this community and it is a little disruptive to the trade like i never witnessed before around-the-clock people used to line up and i used to say it is so brash and open when friends of mine would visit me. so the one that consolidated the building ran an operation detailing it that was amazing. he alleges he bribed the guards to pay three times on top of that that you helped my operation or give me the departments and he went through the whole operation some of which i detail here and the way that the projects were you could see the cop car coming for miles, so in intricate operation of drugs which i didn't know

about so he was willing in this book when i started going back to try to trace down people so i could learn what was going on and get the stories that i knew in my head to get their perspective so he is now out and his daughter i saw it yesterday but he really descended into describing this to me it was a very chilling part of the book and when he started moving out of the structure taken over by the drug dealers talking about having to intervene to protect me because i they saw how you treated my mother sort of living in those buildings so what's interesting about a lot of these guys to see their regret and

remorse and it took about how they got sucked in to begin to see that they are bad decisions but you begin to understand some of the factors of creating an environment where the trade was an option as i've already said. >> host: in the buck you get very passionate about the inequities of drug policies and the criminal justice system and so forth and you refer to it as the american cache system that is more than most realize. people teetered on the edge of the system and americans who had been arrested feel the effects that they experience even though they do not have a terminal disease they live in a world where a person is innocent until

proven guilty however 36 states allow employers to deny jobs to people that were arrested and never convicted of a crime using an innocent person with no recourse. what is it focusing on now as a senator. it was one of the more important voices in exposé and the injustice referred to in the system dot living in newark new jersey and seeing how awful the system is and how it violates the principles of justice in the country it isn't just a latino problem about one in three now

have an arrest record so that is a profound -- we are as one of my chapter titles says in incarceration arresting more people. one out of every four people on planet earth is in the united states and our jails have nine times the rate in the prisons. these are people who most are being held waiting for trial. if you and i got arrested or what have you people are in for minor crime because they can't pay the fee to get out. they are addicted, poor minorities. you want to see the truth of the country don't look at the holes with washington or the power. go to the prisons and see who they are imprisoning.

this is a nation if he were treated rich and guilty. i try to expose a lot of this in the book. you are being hurt by the system and showing doing that also as you read already the responsibility for this we must address the continued injustices in the country if we were ever to be able to truly say that we are a nation of liberty and justice for all. >> host: going from the first run for mayor in 2002 when your opponent painted you as an outsider. you were actually finding the

common ground with republicans on the issues of criminal justice and so forth. so, kind of talk about those bookends. >> host: that is the power of the issues i just described. you have republicans now from all different stripes to understand that this is a violation of the valley to see with christian evangelicals which if you read the bible like i do it is ripe with examples of compassion. if you are a fiscal conservative, this is a government expansion like never before. we were building prison every ten and 12 days up to 2,000 when we reduce investing for different types of infrastructure for the percentage of gdp if you've are a libertarian you are a libertarian and believed in the liberty of people taking the liberty the last few presidents

admitted to crimes that are felonies that people every day in america especially during the height of the drug war they were incarcerating people so i don't care if you are fiscal conservatives, christian evangelical, libertarian, whatever your area, newt gingrich, christian evangelicals in the country, the tea party member of the senate, rand paul -- the question is why are we making the change and that has been the battle of my life ever since i was in the senate where every year the gravity and the impact of the problem was dawning on me more and more.

>> host: we are in a presidential year created is almost make it harder even though there is a common ground? >> host: >> guest: it seems like everything is harder during peace time but there's momentum i was just here on the phone before i came here with senator victor -- senator durbin and ranking member leahy and we were discussing just that, this collision of can we get across the finish line and what would we be doing to help in terms of the moving it across in the supreme court battle is supreme court battle is about to happen and the like so i'm getting increasingly impatient the last few weeks because it shouldn't take this long when we have this great of a collision. we sold the house making slow

but steady progress with bipartisan leaders over there. so, i am hoping this is one of the things that is achieved in the legislation that will reverse the direction we have been going since the 80s and turned back to such a policy that's already being shown in the state. we have all these states lowering the population and the crime rate because understanding as i saw firsthand the kind try to demonstrate in the book it creates more crime and when you strip away from a person any hope they can provide for their family because remember you come out of prison for the offense you can't get many jobs were many business licenses or loans for banks or how grand to go to college or food stamps to feed yourself and others can strip all of that away from people and surprise you a slippery slope going back to making choices.

it helps people lower their rates so don't do these things. we found out who the victims are in the city who is getting killed 84% of the murder victims had been arrested before, on average of ten times, so this is the cycle of incarceration people get stuck on that often ends in tragedy to the point now there's a big story about the disappearance of men disappearing overwhelmingly because of death and murder and incarceration so the time is now. the urgency of the moment is upon us and our coalition exists but have to be doing things on the state and federal level to turn the ship around so that america the land of the free, the land of justice doesn't just talk about it can be about it in

the justice system. >> host: you are the fourth elected in the senate. barack obama was the third and he had a book obviously talking about the intersection of race and his personal journey. how do you see it? you touch upon how the races are linked by a logically going back multiple generations. how do you see where we are in terms of race right now in the 2,016th >> it's a complicated picture. you have a nation now with tim scott number five cut the first time they've ever been serving together in the senate.

we have these companies now you see some progress when you look at success, look towards double double poverty to test the country that way so when you look at how to use the racial lens you can see it jump out of the weather is with healthcare outcomes or wealth outcomes or violence to see the unfinished business that we still have a lot of work to do its white black legs better. to me, it is a very important stream of protest in the country to get people to wake up to and not pay attention to the fact we

live in a nation that if you are black or white, we know this isn't opinion, it is objective data about two people that are arrested for the same kind of the african-american on average will get a 20% longer sentence for the crime. we have courageous police officers, the head of the fbi coming out and saying that the implicit racial bias is having a negative impact on policing in america. everybody has implicit racial bias including uni that we need to start training on these issues to begin to reduce the impact that it has on our justice system, so there's a conversation we need to have, and we need to have the courage to have it. and we need to not let it fall into pre- judging and defensiveness that get to where we really need to be as a

society where no matter your background you have a fair shot and equal chance for your hard work and determination to have the kind of outcome that is the american dream. >> host: you actually touch upon this. as a major obviously you work with the police very come very close, and in the book you talk about the tough jobs that they have and the sacrifices they are making so that is going on on the one hand and then you have the black lives matter on the other. there's a divide that is going on whether you have cops often die in the streets trying to protect black lives in many neighborhoods and then there's a critique on the other. having seen it from both sides, how did you get them to try to see one another?

>> when i talk to professionals and other leaders i respect the most, i understand they reappeared and see the levels of courage and bravery every day in america for a police officer putting their lives on the line to protect their fellow americans. there's a story that i covered the policing chapter during a hostage situation but before i can even come to the conclusion on how to handle it, gun shots started gunshots start going off and i hear on the phone go, go. the officers stormed into the building with no situational awareness and these are men and women with families and others. i wouldn't be racing into that building into gunfire but they are determined to save human lives, so that's the kind of

courage that i would encounter but that isn't contrary to the fact that the people that we bestow the power and deadly force that we should want them to be their representatives in every way. if i was that police officer, train me so that i can be the best representation of the values in this community. so, admitting that there is a bias that i had to learn, and it is serious because i began not a great manager but how to manage complex organizations and how important the data is and we were going to move at a time we were reducing by 25%. we need to increase the efficiency dramatically to do some pretty exciting types of

management that i wasn't collecting the data on the police accountability and was making big mistakes working on the partnership with the head of the aclu to become the correct one for that and so as the fbi said we are not collecting the data in america to have a conversation about race, the racial bias if we don't even know and collect the data on the police involved shootings, which we know the overwhelming majority of the police are wonderful, but we are not collecting data. so i sat down with the team at the white house who is now doing things because they are not afraid to look at the problem to understand that they are human beings and the police officers under stress who are traumatized at times and can do very bad things like all of us.

but the folks at the white house are starting to see is by collecting the right data we can have collective analytics about when a cop either break or do something. remember when the police officer -- he was rightfully creating outrage at what they found is one of the predictors of the police officers doing those bad things is having been involved with suicide, not suicide themselves but doing this suicide calls. he had experience on a crisis hotline dealing with calls, those could be very mentally stressful and create the context in which somebody could flash out to you so imagine that we have the data out there. the private sectors, you and i collecting big data where they can predict what we want to die and when we might want to buy it

by our ages and habits. the private sector is using that data the player using it to better predict the behavior and they found out that having two suicide calls within a certain amount of time is so much more likely that he would have a negative interaction with somebody that you pull over what have you. but it's ultrasophisticated so for me i found that out the hard way and now i sponsored legislation to save time out, america, we are having all of these -- people are yelling back at each other without the facts and so on the policing we haven't created the kind of data that we need to be out to help our officers want to do the right thing to want to empower them to do the right thing in the communities and catch the

officers that aren't doing the right thing because i can talk you as a mayor could have 99.9% of your employers great human beings but that is actually a lot of people and you need to find ways, i don't care anybody that runs a business knows it is hard to how you're good people and you want ways of catching them when they are doing wrong and taking the corrective action or firing those people. >> host: before we finish up, one thing that you know now that you didn't know before you started writing this book. >> guest: a lot of things. i think that it just goes back to interviewing people who let me know things i didn't know at the time.

he goes back to the idea of we use our power every day. we were so upset about what you're seeing in the world that we don't recognize we can get up and do something dramatic about it. >> host: that is a good place to stop. united is the book and it is a great read. ..

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