Interview with Newark Mayor Cory Booker

Newark Mayor Cory Booker recently got a lot of buzz on YouTube during a “feud” he had with The Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien. While the feud was obviously a publicity stunt, it shows a taste of the Mayor’s creativity in bringing both publicity and funds to Newark. The feud started once Booker responded with a YouTube video to a crack that Conan made on his show about Newark. The two of them then bantered back and forth, via YouTube and The Tonight Show, until Secretary of State Hillarly Clinton made her own YouTube video, essentially calling on the two to “kiss and make up.”

 

Publicity stunt aside, Mayor Booker deserves to be in the public eye. One reason? Newark’s radical drop in crime since Booker took office.

 

Booker and his administration have accomplished this by establishing night patrols made up of members of the community. On The Tonight Show, Conan jokingly compared Booker’s personal involvement in the night patrols to “Batman looking for criminals.”

 

On a recent night before Booker headed out on one of these night patrols, he gave me an interview at a Newark fire station used as a command post. There, Booker explained that his greatest challenge as mayor hasn’t been crime, poverty or budget crises. Elaborating, Booker said:

 

“I think the biggest challenge is bringing people together to work collectively to solve their problems . . .. The collective strength of any community is big enough to overcome any challenge if you can really get people focused on it. Tonight is a great example, bringing people together to fight crime is the reason why we have this 42% reduction in shootings since we’ve been in office.”

 

Booker added that, it’s not always easy and it’s a lot of work, but if you can bring people together to focus on their common goals, common values, and get common sacrifice you can be really successful. (Booker had pointed out such success on Conan’s show, noting that Newark is actually leading the nation in the reduction of shootings and murders and driving down youth violence when it’s increasing in other places.)

 

I asked Mayor Booker if he thought losing the election in 2002 was actually a blessing,giving him the chance to start Newark Now (a non-profit organization that he started in 2002 to serve the Newark community just after losing his first bid for Mayor to Sharpe James). He answered that there is an old Hebrew phrase “which means in everything there is purpose” and you should never look at anything as a failure but always look at what the opportunity is. “You’re right, [without losing that election] we would have never founded Newark Now.” Losing the election gave him four more years of growth and time to study other cities. Booker explained that “So much opportunity came about from that loss and it positioned us to really win in a landslide. Before if we had won . . .it would have been winning a much more divided city.”

 

Mayor Booker and I also talked about Safe Haven Urban Redemption, a non-profit ministry founded by Pastor Danny Iverson of Trinity Reformed Church in a tough area of Newark. Booker described Safe Haven’s gospel-centered approach to its work in the community as “phenomenal,” commenting that he has a lot of respect for Iverson and what he’s created. “His organization is serving needs, urgent needs and he has found a great niche where he not only focuses on reducing violence but really helps people find their own calling and connect to their own sense of individual life purpose.”

I asked Mayor Booker if he thinks the next generation will be more successful than the last, in view of the tremendous challenges that kids are facing today, many of them stemming from the breakup of the traditional family. Pausing to reflect, Booker responded:

 

“Look, I think the last generation before us has had tremendous successes in many areas but I think you’ve put your finger on a hot button. I mean we’re just seeing a lot of problems come about that have made it much more complicated today. So I want to thank the generation always that came before us because they built the bridge that we’re walking over . . . but look, we in our generation have to meet the complexity and the challenges that we have. I have infinite hope that we are going to be able to do things like we’re doing now in Newark, frankly, that are going to help to heal, help to strengthen, help to connect families back to what their core is. I think we can do a lot to help foster that environment in the city of Newark.”

 

In view of his last answer, I reminded Booker of Trinity Reformed Church and its after-school program, food pantry, family dinners, teen employment program, and the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ and then asked him if he thought the community would weep if the church vanished? Mayor Booker explained that he thinks without the church there would be a hole [in the community] and that, what the church is doing “is creating a presence that is really light to people and when light disappears it does hurt.”