Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

So shall we go back to reading Cory Booker's biography, "United?" A rhetorical question. We shall, because it is what I have set out to do today, and if I don't do it, I will hate myself. Es muss sein.

We now begin the sixth chapter. Coming up is a section of glossy photos, so I'm getting worried: He hasn't yet made any argument about policy, or why he would be suited to be the President of the United States.

In fact, his tenure in Newark, as he describes it, suggests a certain masochism, to be sure, but not much by way of talent for to turning things around. He has less than half of a book left to explain to me what he would do, if elected, and why.

Chapter 6 is called "I See You," and it's about Frank, who is dying of cancer. Frank was one of his great mentors, "a man who changed the course of my life."

No, don't do it, Senator!

"He was dying, but no disease could obscure his truth."

He did it anyway. Every time he says that, an ontological fairy dies.

He met Frank through Ms. Virginia Jones. Frank was head of the Greater Newark HUD Tenants Coalition. "Franks eyes struck me. They were gentle, kind, and patient. They put me at ease, made me feel comfortable sharing."

They set out to "shine a brighter spotlight on the buildings, letting federal authorities see how taxpayer money was being invested--and, perhaps, to expose the illegal activities of the landlord."

Ms Virginia told the tenants: "HUD needs to get our here and see how we're living. They need to come out here and listen to us."

Tenants: Nods, claps, "That's rights!"

Then Frank spoke. He wasn't flashy. He made no attempt to preach. He said he was there to help, would do what he could, and hoped to learn more. Then he sat down.

At first Cory was disappointed: That's it?
Then he realized the genius of it: His focus was on *them.*

They took turns expressing their frustration. They catalogued their afflictions: rats, roaches, heat and hot water failures, vandalism, theft, always wondering if the sound you just heard was gunfire.

Cory began looking at his watch, especially when tenants began to repeat themselves, but Frank was a bottomless well of patience.

He realized that whenever Frank looked at a speaker, he *saw* them.

"What made it particularly impressive to me was that Frank's presence was humble, somehow, he made each speaker feel like he or she was in the center of attention."

Later Frank explained to him that he believed these buildings were causing their tenants spiritual harm. Cory agreed. (I do, too.) The meetings, Frank said, served a vital function: They were places to be share and be validated, where you know you aren't alone.

Frank was determined to address the condition of the buildings, but insisted they not neglect what the residents had endured: "It can't be covered over, ignored, or forgotten. There is a need for healing."

Aha! An idea. A policy idea. Of sorts.

Frank asks how we can have such intolerable conditions not just in Newark but all over the country. His answer: We suffer from an empathy deficit.

"People's inability to see," said Frank, "what is going on in the lives of their fellow citizens, to understand what so many Americans endure, creates an atmosphere that allows injustice to fester and proliferate."

In Newark, adds Booker, in places all over our country, we are failing to see the fullness of the injustice. Our distance from one another allows us to avoid seeing the conditions of our fellow Americans, so no empathy is extended.

Frank: Our housing policy, from local to federal, was exactly what the civil rights movement was fighting against: segregation, the building of walls between people.

Frank is about to say something profound. (Cory always does a little wind-up to indicate: "Profound thought ahead. Pay attention."

He says he'd never heard this before.

FRANK: "Civil rights--indeed human rights--are not just about equal access to public accommodation 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."

Why, I wonder, did this idea strike him like a thunderclap? How did he get a BA & MA in sociology at Stanford, study modern history at Oxford, then get a law degree from Yale--without encountering the idea of positive and negative rights?

Does that sound plausible to you? It doesn't to me. It makes the section ring dishonest.

In any event, the moral of the chapter is that America's pockets of minority poverty were often created by local, state, and national government policy.

After WWII, racially-focused housing policies were set in place at every level of government, including restrictive covenants that banned sales to blacks, zoning rules that prohibited low-income housing in upscale towns, etc.

"Newark's Brick City is derived from a federal policy to pack low-income housing into Newark and not diffusely throughout the state." Housing policy, over generations, has compounded the impact of lack of job opportunities,

as well as opportunity to build one's own home, live in a community free of violence, and lack of equal access to education.

Anyway: Frank believed we needed to move beyond the shallow notion of "tolerance" to "love." "Tolerance crosses the street, love confronts."

So that's the first policy idea of the book: Less tolerance, more love. He doesn't explain how he'll be able to make Americans feel an emotion they don't naturally feel, but at least he has a goal.

I'm so far more persuaded by this book that Cory should be at HUD than I am that he should be president. But let's press on.

Frank dies.

"I placed my hands on his head. I laid my head next to his. I fought back tears."
"Frank, it's Cory."
"I .... see ... you."
Frank, I love you."
"I .... love .... you ... too."

I get the feeling that as he was writing this he was envisioning thanking the Academy.

"And the Oscar goes to .... Cory BOOKER for ....
A NEWARK LOVE STORY!!! ...

The crowd goes mad: CO-RY!-CO-RY!-CO-RY! ...

He's a little manic as he types, thinking about Oprah handing him the Oscar, all the Hollywood stylists and starlets buzzing around him, telling him what an uplifting tearjerker it was, especially when Frank croaks.

Well, Newark's behind us, we're going to Washington!

Chapter 7 awaits.