Cory Booker: Living

“We say an oath that we are a nation of liberty and justice for all, but that’s just words. It’s a civic faith, but I’m one of these people that says before you, "tell me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people." Well, how are we living our civic gospel? How are we living our civic gospel that demands for us to reject the normalcy of injustice, the normalcy of apathy, the normalcy of indifference, and rise to the higher ground of activism, of engagement, of love?”

Cory Booker

2018

Love , People , Faith , Religion

“Lets you and I try to live on food stamps in New Jersey (high cost of living) and feed a family for a week or month. U game?”

Cory Booker

[Fallon, Kevin, Cory Booker Rescues a Freezing Dog & 9 Other Things He Has Saved, https://www.thedailybeast.com/cory-booker-rescues-a-freezing-dog-and-9-other-things-he-has-saved?ref=scroll, 21 August 2018, The Daily Beast, January 26, 2013]
Via Twitter, in response to a tweet asking "Why is there a family today that is ‘too poor’ to afford breakfast?" Booker would go on to do exactly that. He later told CBS that it had been a "terrible state of human existence", and continued "I'll be honest with you. I take so much for granted, even going to Starbucks and buying a cup of coffee is more than my daily food allowance right now," as quoted in [Bailey, Holly, Cory Booker’s week on food stamps: political ambition amid the burned sweet potatoes, https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/ticket/cory-booker-week-food-stamps-political-ambition-amid-101008142--election.html, 21 August 2018, Yahoo! News, December 11, 2012]
2012

Family , Food , Game

“I want to try to live my own values as consciously and purposefully as I can. Being vegan for me is a cleaner way of not participating in practices that don’t align with my values. … As soon as I said publicly that I was trying this experiment, so many vegans out there, hundreds and hundreds of people, have been reaching out to me with incredible support and encouragement as well as practical tips of how to do this without having to sacrifice that much in terms of the food and what I like. I've discovered some really delicious things—recipes, stores, and restaurants—that have made this transition far easier. … There's too much judgment out there. Really what we need to be doing is just all of us finding our own paths towards living the best lives we can live as clearly and boldly in accordance with our own personal values.”

Cory Booker

" Talking Tofurky With Newly Vegan Cory Booker http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/26/talking-tofurky-with-newly-vegan-cory-booker.html", interview with Vlad Chituc, in The Daily Beast (26 November 2014)
2014

People , Food , Way , Support

“I don’t think most Americans realize that the way we raise animals is such a betrayal of the heritage of our grandparents. I don’t think they realize that … these big companies like Smithfield and Cargill and others have our American farmers now living like sharecroppers in constant debt, forced to follow their rules. I’ve watched the suffering in North Carolina of minority communities who live around Cafos and can no longer breathe their air … and I’ve seen workers in the meatpacking plants and how dangerous those plants are. Everybody is losing in this system – except for the massive corporations that have taken over the American food system.”

Cory Booker

'A savagely broken food system': Cory Booker wants radical reform ... now https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/15/a-savagely-broken-food-system-cory-booker-wants-radical-reform-now. The Guardian, September, 15 2020
2020

Betrayal , Food , Suffering , Communication