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America's Unsung Heroes: A Journey Through Connection and Service
Cory Booker's "United" isn't just another political memoir-it's a radical reimagining of what American society could be if we embraced our fundamental interconnectedness. When Oprah Winfrey named it to her coveted book club list in 2016, she called it "a clarion call to find common ground in an increasingly polarized nation." The book arrived at a pivotal moment in American politics, offering an alternative vision to divisiveness through stories of everyday heroes who changed lives through small acts of courage and compassion. What makes this work remarkable is how Booker, now a prominent Democratic senator and former presidential candidate, grounds his political philosophy not in abstract ideology but in the lived experiences of people he encountered in Newark's toughest neighborhoods. As Lin-Manuel Miranda noted, "Booker's stories reveal how the most meaningful connections often cross boundaries of class, race, and background-exactly the connections our country needs most right now."
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A Conspiracy of Love: The Power of Collective Action
When I first glimpsed my family's history through Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s research, I discovered something profound about American identity. My DNA revealed I was 47% African, 45% European, and 7% Native American-a living embodiment of America's complex racial history. I learned I descended from both slaves and slave owners, including a Confederate soldier. Most surprisingly, Gates confirmed my grandfather's biological father was a white doctor from Louisiana named Stephen Henry Brown.
This revelation expanded my understanding of family beyond blood to encompass a "conspiracy of love"-countless individuals whose consistent acts of decency transform lives across generations. My parents embodied this ethic, teaching me both personal responsibility and communal connection. They reminded me I "was born on third base" because of others' sacrifices.
The civil rights movement directly shaped my family's destiny. After Bloody Sunday in Selma, attorneys Arthur Lesemann and Leo Lieberman were inspired to join New Jersey's Fair Housing Council. Through this organization, my parents found help when facing housing discrimination in Bergen County. When my father tried buying a home in Harrington Park, he was falsely told it was sold. With help from attorney Marty Friedman and a "test couple" sting operation, they exposed the discrimination, though it led to a physical confrontation with the real estate agent.
My parents eventually moved in, becoming "four raisins in a tub of sweet vanilla ice cream." This experience showed me how ordinary people taking action can transform lives. My mother later became president of the Fair Housing Council's board, continuing the "conspiracy of love" that had helped our family.
What's remarkable about America isn't just our individual stories but how they intertwine. John Lewis's courage on Edmund Pettus Bridge unlocked opportunities for my family. The attorneys who helped my parents weren't famous heroes-just everyday people who refused to accept injustice. Their actions remind us that meaningful change happens when individuals join together in stubborn belief they can make a difference.
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Finding Your Purpose: Faith Over Fear
At twenty-five, I found myself in an uncomfortable position. After years of intense goal-setting-from Stanford through a Rhodes Scholarship to Yale Law School-I suddenly couldn't articulate my future plans. My mother's persistent question about post-law school plans made me squirm because, for the first time, I had no clear answer.
Until then, I'd maintained whiteboards listing my objectives. This clarity had guided me through my education. But in law school, my vision darkened. My experiences working with children and nonprofits ignited a passion to address inequality, but I couldn't articulate exactly how. Unlike classmates interviewing for lucrative positions, I immersed myself in community legal clinics and mentoring.
When cornered by my mother's direct question about my plans, I admitted my uncertainty. Rather than lecturing me, she surprised me with life-altering wisdom about faith versus fear. "Fear cuts off possibilities, faith expands them," she told me, recounting the biblical parable of talents where servants who invested their master's money were rewarded while the fearful one who buried his talent was punished.
She challenged me with a powerful question: "What would you do if you could not fail?" This question awakened my imagination and ignited dreams. I began seeking role models in public service and discovered inspiring organizations like the Vera Institute of Justice and the Harlem Children's Zone.
Through this exploration, I found myself drawn to Newark, New Jersey-a city I felt connected to before truly knowing it. Despite being maligned in the suburbs, the city showed resilience and unshakeable belief in its unappreciated beauty. Among its activists and citizens, I found a stubborn love and pride that pushed back against shallow assertions that Newark was dead.
I split my summer between legal work at Yale and teaching teenagers about their legal rights in East Harlem. That summer, I crafted a comprehensive five-year life plan including my vision for a Newark nonprofit. Though God likely laughed at my detailed plans, they got me moving in the right direction.
At a fundraising event, I met Ray Chambers, a wealthy Newark philanthropist. In a strange meeting, I rambled about both my romantic and professional dreams. Ray bluntly told me Newark didn't need another nonprofit-I should run for mayor instead. Though I dismissed his advice initially, it planted a seed that would later grow into reality.
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Seeing With New Eyes: Ms. Virginia Jones's Wisdom
Following advice to meet Ms. Virginia Jones before starting work in her neighborhood, I found myself across from Brick Towers, two sixteen-story low-income buildings where she served as tenants association president. My early days living on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard were challenging-my belongings were stolen, drug dealing was rampant, and I felt constantly watched by suspicious dealers.
One day, Ms. Jones led me through the building, past drug dealers, and onto the street where she asked me a question that would change my life: "What do you see?" When I hesitantly listed the physical surroundings-the buildings, the street, the bodega-she cut me off with disappointment: "You can't help me."
She then delivered a profound lesson: "The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you. If all you see are problems, darkness, and despair, then that is all there is ever going to be. But if you are one of those stubborn people who every time you open your eyes you see hope, you see opportunity, possibility, you see love or the face of God, then you can be someone who helps me."
Her message struck me deeply-was I seeing the community with loving eyes, or was I reducing people to their circumstances? Was I recognizing their humanity and potential? I realized I needed to cultivate love within myself first. I returned to Ms. Jones ready to listen rather than talk, to learn rather than assume, to love rather than judge.
Brick Towers, where I lived from 1998 until its closure in 2006, consisted of twin sixteen-story buildings completed in 1969. Standing on a hill in Newark's Central Ward, the buildings offered dramatic views of the city and Manhattan skyline. Their design featured a protected courtyard between the buildings, creating a safe community space where children played, seniors relaxed, and residents connected.
The first residents underwent a rigorous application process. Ms. Jones quickly established herself as the community's backbone-stern but deeply compassionate. Working at a youth detention facility, she was determined that Brick Towers' children wouldn't suffer the same fates as those she saw in the system. She treated every child as her own, creating a community where all adults took responsibility for all children.
As the first tenants association president, Ms. Jones gathered strong leaders, mostly women, who took responsibility for every aspect of the buildings and their residents. Beyond managing basic maintenance, they created meaningful traditions: holiday celebrations, an annual fashion show, and numerous field trips for children. They innovatively funded these activities by pooling their own money and securing donations from local businesses.
By the mid-1980s, Brick Towers faced twin threats: negligent building management and the encroaching drug trade. The once-symbiotic relationship between management and tenants had turned parasitic, with owners draining resources while neglecting maintenance. The strict tenant screening process was abandoned, allowing some residents involved with drugs to move in.
Despite the deteriorating conditions, Ms. Jones remained a fierce advocate for residents. In one legendary confrontation, she punched a building owner during an argument about conditions. Though she had means to leave after her only son Charles was murdered in the building's lobby in 1980, Ms. Jones stayed. Rather than blame Brick Towers for her son's death, she channeled her grief into even greater community responsibility, her love becoming "defiant, stubborn, resolute."
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Taking Action: When Words Aren't Enough
In July 1999, I nearly quit politics after my first frustrating year on the Newark City Council. I had abandoned my legal fellowship helping tenants to become a politician, but found myself consistently outvoted 8-1 and unable to create systemic change. My self-righteous rejection of council perks alienated veteran colleagues whose support I needed. Mayor Sharpe James actively undermined me, limiting my access to department directors and dismissing my policy suggestions.
The mayor's intimidation tactics extended beyond verbal threats. My car received numerous parking tickets even when legally parked, my office phones were allegedly tapped, and police followed me. These experiences triggered my father's worst fears about racial injustice. Though my father had raised me to trust in America's promise that hard work would be rewarded, he also knew this bargain wasn't extended to all citizens.
As my political conflict with Mayor James escalated, he publicly attacked me with racial slurs and inflammatory accusations. These attacks, coupled with my inability to pass meaningful legislation, left me questioning whether to continue in politics.
Everything changed when I received a desperate call from Virginia Morton, tenant president at Garden Spires housing complex. The buildings were in deplorable condition-no security, broken elevators, rampant drug dealing, and infestations. After visiting and seeing children living in these conditions, I knew I had to act dramatically.
I decided to pitch a tent in the vacant lot across from Garden Spires and began a hunger strike. Initially, the mayor's office and police department ignored us. But as media coverage grew and community members joined our vigil, pressure mounted. The Star-Ledger published an editorial criticizing Mayor James for his absence and the police department's refusal to provide security.
When Mayor James finally visited on the seventh day of my fast, I surprised everyone by praising rather than condemning him. After days of fasting and prayer, I felt no negativity toward him-only love. I called him "the father of Newark" and myself "his son under a larger political family." We embraced, a moment captured on the Star-Ledger's front page. The mayor promised to build a park, establish a police command post, and increase security funding.
Though the immediate police presence lasted months, eventually the drug problems returned, and the promised park was never built. But something more important happened during those ten days-I learned that direct action, even when imperfect, could create momentum for change. The community came together, people felt their voices mattered, and we established that intolerable conditions wouldn't be silently accepted.
This experience taught me that sometimes we must put our bodies where our beliefs are. Words and legislation matter, but physical presence in places of suffering carries unique power. The Garden Spires vigil didn't solve all problems, but it showed me that creative, nonviolent direct action could pierce through political gridlock and force attention to issues that had been conveniently ignored.
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When Systems Fail: The Cost of Indifference
I descended into the cramped basement of Perry Funeral Home for Hassan Washington's wake, surrounded by grieving community members. Unlike Emmett Till's murder, which once galvanized national outrage, Hassan's death-like thousands of other young people's deaths-passed without media attention or national conscience. As Newark's new mayor, I felt helpless amid the sorrow, overwhelmed by guilt rather than fulfilling my responsibility to comfort others.
Hassan Washington lived four floors below me in Brick Towers, in apartment 12C with his grandmother. During warm evenings in the courtyard, Hassan stood out among the neighborhood children-outgoing, enthusiastic, funny, and exceptionally bright during his grade school years. As he grew into a teenager, I watched him drift toward trouble, hanging with a crew in the lobby, their graffiti spreading through the building with Bloods signs.
I tried intervening-having serious conversations, bringing food, taking them to movies, introducing mentors who had dealt drugs themselves. But as my mayoral campaign intensified, I pulled back, telling myself I'd reconnect after the election. After winning the election, security details meant the lobby was no longer their hangout spot, and I barely noticed Hassan's absence. Then on August 14, 2006, just six weeks after my inauguration, I responded to a shooting scene blocks from Brick Towers. Only later that night, reading police reports, did I discover the victim was eighteen-year-old Hassan.
I felt profound failure-God had put Hassan directly in my path, yet I hadn't stepped up when it mattered most. His death revealed the cost of our collective indifference to young people in challenging circumstances.
Charlton Holliday, Hassan's father, had followed a similar path decades earlier. As a sixth-grader in Newark, he began shoplifting ladies' gloves from Bamberger's department store with friends. Instead of receiving constructive discipline, he was recruited by local drug dealers, making $50-100 daily by age thirteen. After multiple arrests as a teenager, he killed a man at twenty-one.
While incarcerated, Charlton tried warning Hassan against following his path, but his words rang hollow. After Hassan's murder, Charlton received permission to attend the funeral with prison guards, where he shaved his dreadlocks to be buried with his son.
Upon release, Charlton struggled to find work in Newark but eventually secured a forklift job in West Virginia after convincing a manager to give him a chance. Now he returns to Newark to talk young men out of the criminal life, though few believe they can escape.
Hassan's story illustrates how systems fail our most vulnerable. Schools failed to engage his talents. Community programs couldn't compete with street economics. The criminal justice system offered punishment without rehabilitation. And I, despite living in the same building, failed to provide consistent mentorship when he needed it most.
What saved my father from a similar fate decades earlier was the consistent kindness from people in his segregated town, a strong church community, and the nurturing Pilgrim family. This filled him with endless gratitude that defined his character. Hassan needed that same conspiracy of love, but it wasn't there for him in sufficient measure.
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The Power of Being Seen: Frank Hutchins's Legacy
This chapter opens with a quote from George Bernard Shaw about finding joy in being used for a mighty purpose rather than selfishly complaining about personal happiness. It begins with me sitting beside Frank Hutchins, a 75-year-old housing advocate and tenant organizer dying of cancer in a hospice center in 2009. Frank was a father figure and cherished teacher who changed the course of my life.
Before my political career began, I dreamed of starting a nonprofit while living across from Brick Towers. I first met Ms. Virginia Jones, who put me through an intense initiation process doing unglamorous tasks around the building. In summer 1997, Ms. Jones introduced me to Frank Hutchins, head of The Greater Newark HUD Tenants Coalition, who immediately treated me like an old friend. What struck me most were Frank's eyes-gentle, kind, and patient behind large-framed glasses. When he looked at me, his whole being seemed present and attuned to mine.
Frank possessed a remarkable ability to truly see people. While I grew impatient during lengthy meetings, Frank maintained unwavering attention for each speaker. People instinctively directed their comments to him, drawn to his warmth and genuine interest. He listened in such a way that monologues became dialogues, offering each person dignity through his attention.
Frank taught me that tenant meetings weren't just about gathering information but about healing-providing spaces where people could be seen, heard, and validated. "Housing is a human right," he told me, explaining how America's empathy deficit allows intolerable conditions to persist.
What frustrated Frank most was how America's housing problems stemmed from deliberate policies that created segregation and concentrated poverty. Post-WWII housing policies-restrictive covenants, discriminatory lending, redlining, and public housing concentrated in urban areas-had compounded over generations, denying minorities opportunities for jobs, wealth-building, safe communities, and quality education.
Frank rejected the shallow notion of tolerance, believing our nation needed to move beyond it to love. While tolerance merely acknowledges another's right to exist, love recognizes every person's value and our interdependence. For Frank, housing activism wasn't just about buildings but about seeing people's humanity.
As mayor, I attacked housing issues inspired by Frank's work. We doubled affordable housing production during a national housing collapse, insisted on integrated housing in new developments, and turned around the troubled Newark Housing Authority.
In 2009, as Frank's health failed and he lost his eyesight, I visited him in hospice. Our greeting became ritual-"Frank, it's Cory," I'd say. "I see you, Cory," he'd respond. Even blind, Frank truly saw me. During our final meeting, his breathing shallow, I placed my hands on his and fought back tears. "Frank, it's Cory." "I...see...you." "Frank, I love you." "I...love...you...too." Like stars whose light continues long after they're gone, Frank's impact remains eternal.
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Breaking Chains: Criminal Justice Reform
In 1994, during my first year at Yale Law School, I visited Green Haven Correctional Facility as part of a program connecting law students with those most impacted by our laws. At twenty-five, I knew little about prisons beyond abstractions-they were like landfills where we sent people without much thought. This troubled me, especially given my faith's teachings about our obligations to prisoners.
That same year, Congress passed the largest criminal justice bill in U.S. history, accelerating the tough-on-crime movement despite crime rates already beginning their long decline. Research shows no correlation between our massive imprisonment increases and this decline. The Federal Judicial Center had already warned that mandatory minimums were unnecessarily incarcerating thousands of low-level offenders at enormous cost without targeting violent criminals.
My first journey to Green Haven Correctional Facility left me feeling disoriented and embarrassed by my ignorance. After passing through security, I met with inmates whose sharp, sophisticated conversation reminded me of discussions in my law school cafeteria. These men were more than the worst things they'd done. One lifer found purpose mentoring short-term inmates, helping them avoid returning. Walking out, I felt the weight of responsibility: people were imprisoned in my name, as part of "the People versus..." I left physically free but shackled to this knowledge, implicated in a system I could no longer ignore.
The explosion of mass incarceration has diverted critical resources from national priorities. While a new prison opened every ten days between 1990-2005, America's once top-ranked infrastructure slipped to twelfth place globally. We now have more jails and prisons than degree-granting colleges, particularly in the South. This system disproportionately targets society's most vulnerable-the poor (80% of those charged with felonies), the mentally ill (25-40% will be jailed in their lifetime), those suffering from addiction (65% of inmates), and victims of childhood trauma. Most disturbing is that the vast majority are nonviolent offenders: 74% in state prisons, 87% in federal prisons.
In law school, studying landmark cases like Brown v. Board of Education and Miranda v. Arizona, I witnessed our legal system's dramatic shift. The harsh new laws transformed the roles of lawyers and judges into political pawns as the legislative branch waged its drug war. Mandatory minimums and three-strikes laws removed judicial discretion, while the Willie Horton era fostered fear-based politics. The Supreme Court upheld unprecedented sentences-even life imprisonment for first-time drug offenses. Trials became virtually extinct as harsh penalties created perverse incentives to accept plea bargains.
Twenty-one years after my Green Haven visit, while filming a documentary in Newark, I spoke with dozens of men on the street-not one had avoided jail or prison. This broken system diminishes us all, imperiling our cherished ideals of freedom, fairness, justice and redemption. Yet criminal justice reform uniquely unites Americans across political divides. I've found allies in the Koch brothers and the Clintons, partnered with Republican senators like Ted Cruz and Democrats like Dick Durbin, worked with diverse figures from John Legend to Grover Norquist. Our nation increasingly agrees: we must end this legal, fiscal, public safety, and moral nightmare.
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Stewardship: Reclaiming Our Environmental Commons
Like drops of water in a pool, we are all profoundly connected-introduce a stone and all are elevated, poison a part and all are affected. Too often we ignore this truth of our interdependence, creating consequences for the whole. The humble people I've met embody Dr. King's wisdom that "we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a common garment of destiny." These masters aren't found on television or in universities, but in everyday life, doing the best they can with what they have.
When retired government worker Mr. Leroy Edwards received his stimulus check, he bought a lawn mower and began transforming a drug-dealing vacant lot across from his building. Despite fears for his safety, he persisted-cutting grass, removing trash, and revealing the earth's beauty. Gradually, the drug dealers left, and a community green space emerged where people could gather with pride. Mr. Edwards embodied the ideal of stewardship of the public trust, reflecting the Justinian principle that nature belongs to all citizens.
Ecologist Garret Hardin's 1968 essay described how individual self-interest leads to collective ruin. When herdsmen each add animals to a common pasture, maximizing personal gain while sharing the negative consequences, the result is overgrazing that destroys the resource for everyone. This environmental irresponsibility-"stealing from the future and calling it profit"-explains why taxpayers now spend billions cleaning up polluted sites and covering related medical expenses.
The Passaic River once provided abundant food for Newark residents. Even America's founders enjoyed its beauty-Washington, Lafayette, Hamilton, and McHenry once picnicked at the Great Falls. While Alexander Hamilton envisioned harnessing the falls for manufacturing, which helped fuel America's industrial revolution, pollution grew alongside production. The river's fatal blow came in the 1960s when Diamond Alkali, producing Agent Orange for the Vietnam War, dumped toxic chemicals directly into the water to avoid proper disposal costs. By 1983, the EPA confirmed the grave threat to human life, adding it to the Superfund list and committing billions in public funds for cleanup.
Though I'd attended Stanford and Yale with their environmental consciousness, my true awakening came in Newark. I realized pursuing justice without addressing environmental injustice was treating knife wounds with Band-Aids. The Passaic contained deadly dioxins, PCBs, and mercury, poisoning nearby communities. Activist Nancy Zak educated me about government workers in hazmat suits testing Newark's Ironbound neighborhood in 1983, finding the highest dioxin levels in America while residents remained exposed.
As Newark's mayor, I worked with activists to reclaim our environmental inheritance through creating parks, retrofitting buildings, and partnering with the Greater Newark Conservancy. We launched an "adopt-a-lot" program enabling urban gardens and transformed acres into productive farmland. Gardens in cities became revolutionary acts of righteous insubordination. We increased community gardens, urban farming, farmers' markets, and brought in supermarkets to communities that hadn't had them for decades.
Robin Dougherty chose Newark over a cushy environmental job in the Poconos because she recognized the city needed environmental focus. She took over the Greater Newark Conservancy, transforming an old synagogue in the riot-damaged Central Ward into New Jersey's first urban environmental center. This sacred space became a sanctuary of reconnection, education, and fresh food production.
As mayor, I partnered with the Greater Newark Conservancy to create an urban farming movement that transformed nearly two city blocks into productive farms. Starting with 5,000 pounds of vegetables, we eventually grew to 65,000 pounds annually. These farms became vital community centers and unexpectedly powerful rehabilitation tools for returning citizens. Our Clean & Green program offered minimum-wage jobs to men and women coming home from prison. Many program participants became supervisors and staff, like Naimah Evans, who rose from field worker to office manager despite her difficult past of foster homes and incarceration.
Organizations like the Greater Newark Conservancy focus not just on environment but on rehabilitation, redemption, and connection. They restore the commons and our right to access what binds us together, facing enormous challenges with ceaseless determination. Every day we choose through action or inaction whether to help or harm the commons. The tragedy of the commons isn't preordained-with small seeds, good soil, and hard work, we can reclaim its wonders.
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United We Stand: Our Interdependent Future
Gandhi believed that interdependence should be as much man's ideal as self-sufficiency. I keep an African proverb close at hand: "If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together." This question of going together or alone is one each of us must answer.
Cynicism about America is a form of surrender, perpetuating the dangerous notion that we lack power to make a difference. I learned in New Jersey that problems like violence exploded because too few took responsibility for their neighbors' tragedies. My heroes-parents, teachers, colleagues, mentors-taught me that individuals can profoundly impact communities through daily actions: empathy across division, kindness outside comfort zones, and sacrifices for the greater good.
America's story has always celebrated our connections. As Daniel Webster said in 1825, while we can't win laurels in wars already fought, we have "a great duty of defense and preservation" and our "proper business is improvement." To meet our challenges, we must come together, recognizing that our nation will rise or fall together as an interdependent people.
The lines dividing us are nowhere near as strong as the ties binding us-we share common interests, causes, and destiny. E pluribus unum-out of many, one. This connectedness isn't automatic; a united country requires collective work and individual sacrifice. When many despair over partisanship and enduring injustices, we must recognize our power to transform what we criticize.
We have a choice: accept things as they are or take responsibility for change. The most profound changes come when individuals join together in stubborn belief they can make change. We need people willing to bridge gaps and heal wounds, rejecting cynicism for the difficult work of uniting our country in common cause.
As James Baldwin wrote, "Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands." Every day, through our actions or inaction, we choose what kind of society we create. The conspiracy of love that shaped my life isn't unique-it's available to all who choose to see beyond division to our shared humanity. When we embrace this vision, America's promise becomes not just a distant ideal but a living reality we build together, one relationship, one community, one act of courage at a time.
