United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good by Cory Booker.

4/5 rating. 215 pages.

Book #5 of 2022. Read January 22, 2022.

 I absolutely loved this book, I’ve listened to a few interviews with Cory and just resonate so deeply with his optimism, love, and hope – and hard work to support that hope – for a brighter future. 

Cory has a law degree, grew up in the suburbs, but decided to move into one of the most dangerous parts of Newark because he wanted to push for change. He worked up through the ranks to become mayor of Newark and finally a Senator. This book tells about how he has gotten to where he is: the people who changed his life, impacted his beliefs, and made Newark (and therefore, the world) a better place.

Cory broaches topics of criminal justice reform, poverty, the environment, housing, and compassion for those around us. While I could summarize more, I think just including some of his beautiful quotes will probably be more impactful. 

• “Before you speak to me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people; before you tell me how much you love your God, show me in how much you love all His children; before you preach to me of your passion for your faith, teach me about it through your compassion for your neighbors.“
• “I’ve learned that we must be more courageous in the empathy we extend to one another; we must shoulder a deeper responsibility for one another, and we must act in greater concert with one another.”
• “In the end, it is up to us to instruct, inspire, and encourage one another by what we do and how we live.”
• “[T]he biggest thing you can offer on any given day is a small act of kindness.”
• “They told me the story to show me that good people doing the right thing can make a tremendous difference.”
• “So many of us showed up, but it cut at me: we were there, assembled for his death, but where had we been during his life?”
• “My father taught me early in my life that attitude is a conscious choice; it is a currency available even to those with no access to money.”
• “We, each of us, manifest our power through our daily actions: the depth of our empathy for others despite lines of division, the strength of the kindness we extend to those outside of our circles of comfort, and the sacrifices we perform in service to the greater good.”

In short, if you’re looking for some optimism in the future of America, this is a great book to read.

Additional Quotes:

“To honor someone is not just about venerating them; it’s about learning from them.”

“When too many are despairing over a nation that seems mired in partisanship, divisions, and petty grievances, and a society that still struggles to address enduring injustices, it is imperative that we recognize the power we have to transform the reality we criticize or condemn. As Alice Walker wrote, ‘The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.’”

“We must all, in this sense, be activists. If we want more connection, we must work harder to connect with others. If we want more unity, we must work to be uniters. If we want more leadership, then we must lead.”

“But rugged individualism alone did not get us to the moon. It did not end slavery, win World War II, pass the Voting Rights Act, or bring down the Berlin Wall. It didn’t build our dams, bridges, and highways, or map the human genome.”

“The most consequential daily decision you make, I was told, is the attitude you choose as you engage in your day.”

“We are defined by what we do.”

“The most important thing to remember is this: to be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.” – W. E. B. Du Bois

“What would I do if I couldn’t fail?….The question awakened my imagination again; it ignited dreams.”

“‘I think America must see riots do not develop out of thin air,’ [Dr. King] said. ‘Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as condemning riots….Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.’”

“If a black boy doesn’t graduate from high school, he is more likely to go to prison than have a full-time job. A black boy born today has a one in two chance of being arrested – more if he is poor and from a single-parent family.”

“It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act.” – The Dalai Lama

“No matter what the circumstances, you exercise your power, you demonstrate your worth, when you decide how to act and react in the face of it all. If the world punches you in the gut, that doesn’t define you; it’s what you do next that speaks your truth.”

“This is the true joy in life ,the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” – George Bernard Shaw

“In this dank basement, people turned toward him to feel his warmth, and they were made better by his energy.”

“Frank asserted that civil rights – indeed, human rights – were not just about equal access to public accommodations and equal employment opportunity. Human dignity, security, freedom from fear, environmental toxins, and physical deprivation were also rights that should be defended and fought for. It was then that he said to me, looking at me with his kind eyes, ‘Cory, housing is a human right.’”

“In his mind, our nation needed to move beyond tolerance to love. Because love recognizes that every person has value, that we need each other, that we are interdependent – that what happens to you matters to me. Love necessitates extending yourself, often out of your comfort zone, making the conscious choice to see that person, despite his or her circumstances, as worthy and as vital to you. Love recognizes that of another falls, fails, or succumbs, then we are all worse off and our lives are diminished.”

“Tolerance builds fences; love opens doors. Tolerance breeds indifference; love demands engagement. Tolerance couldn’t care less; love always cares more.”

“America has become the undisputed global leader in putting her own citizens behind bars – our nation is home to 5 percent of the world’s population but incarcerates 25 percent of the world’s prison population.”

“If you are born in America today and are white, you have a one in seventeen chance of spending time in jail; if you are Latino, one in six; if you are black, one in three. If you go to prison for a nonviolent crime, you will return to society as part of a growing group of second-class citizens – often denied basic citizenship rights such as being able to vote or serve on a jury. If you have a felony conviction, you face often overwhelming obstacles to getting a job, obtaining housing, receiving a license to start a business, being approved for a loan, getting a driver’s license, having access to drug treatment, finding educational opportunities, receiving job training, or finding money for your next meal, as even food stamps are routinely denied to the formerly incarcerated.”

“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” – Lincoln

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” – James Baldwin

“Sixty-six percent of tipped workers are twenty-five years or older. Half, like Natasha, are over thirty. About a third are parents. Between 40 and 50 percent earn less than a living wage, which means that they don’t make enough money to maintain an adequate standard of living and have to turn to other means to make ends meet. These ‘other means’ are often public assistance.”

“According to [the Restaurant Opportunity Centers United’s] report, between 2009 and 2013 Americans subsidized the restaurant industry’s low wages with nearly $9.5 billion of tax money through programs such as SNAP (food stamps), public housing and Section 8 housing subsidies, and Medicaid.”

“We are one society, and as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, what we will have to repent for is not the ‘vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people,’ but the ‘appalling silence and indifference of the good people.’”

“Perhaps the reason we struggle as a nation is because we’ve come to see only what we represent, at face value, instead of who we are. We simply must see the people we serve.” – James Comey

“I am still astounded at how little data on police accountability and integrity we collect and analyze. You can’t have accountability without standards, a way to measure those standards and consequences, or changes that are made when those standards aren’t met.”

“The first step to understanding what is really going on in our communities and in our country is to gather more and better data related to those we arrest, those we confront for breaking the law and jeopardizing public safety, and those who confront us. ‘Data’ seems a dry and boring word but, without it, we cannot understand our world and make it better.” – James Comey

“For the sake of their work, our safety, and the integrity of our nation, we must train [police] better and hold them to higher levels of accountability. And we must remember that police can’t solve the problems of crime in America alone. We must take much greater responsibility upon ourselves to do that. We must take much greater responsibility for each other.”

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”

“In 1994 the research agency for the federal courts, the Federal Judicial Center wrote: ‘There is substantial evidence that the mandatory minimums result every year in the lengthy incarceration of thousands of low-level offenders who could be effectively sentenced to shorter periods of time at an annual savings of several hundred million dollars, and that the mandatory minimums do not narrowly target violent criminals or major drug traffickers.’”

“The federal incarceration rate has increased 800 percent and state incarceration rates have increased 500 percent since 1980.”

“Roughly one-third of all adult Americans have an arrest record.”

“As the Washington Post reported, ‘We have slightly more jails and prisons in the U.S. – 5,000 plus – than we do degree-granting colleges and universities. In many parts of America, particularly the South, there are more people living in prisons than on college campuses.’”

“Sixty-five percent of all American inmates meet the medical criteria for the disease of addiction.”

“The war on drugs has turned out to be a war on people – and far too often a war on people of color and the poor. Marijuana use, for example, is roughly equal among blacks and whites, yet blacks are 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for possession than whites; in some states they are six times more likely. In the states with the worst disparities, across all offenses blacks were ten, fifteen, or even thirty times more likely to be arrested than white residents in the same county.”

“However, thirty-six states legally allow employers to deny jobs to people who were arrested but never convicted of a crime, leaving an innocent person with no recourse in the face of this legal discrimination.”

“A Villanova University study concluded that had the explosion in mass incarceration not occurred, poverty in America would have decreased by more than 20 percent.”

“People have themselves to blame for their decisions; that is undeniable. But don’t we have a legal obligation to structure a system that is balanced, not savagely slanted against minorities and the poor? Don’t we have a fiscal responsibility to take a commonsense approach to reducing the cost to taxpayers? Don’t we have a moral responsibility to offer redemption to someone who has paid his debt instead of unyielding retribution against him and his family? For a crime, there is a debt owed to society, and there must be a proportionate punishment. But the man with the binder full of references was asking the right question. Aren’t we a nation that believes our fellow citizens deserve, at some point, a second chance?”

“[T]hey lit up some of the darkest corners of our nation with the light of their love. They exhibited greatness in perhaps the most important way – not in how high they rose, but in how many people they lifted.”

“Each year, more than half a million children under the age of six are diagnosed with lead poisoning.”

“In recent years, childhood asthma rates have skyrocketed, especially in inner cities. Poor Americans are at least 50 percent more likely to have the disease than those not living in poverty.”

“Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Cynicism about America’s current state of affairs is ultimately a form of surrender; a toxic state of mind that perpetuates the notion that we don’t have the power to make a difference, that things will never change. This idea is not only wrong, it is dangerous.”

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