Early Political Career
After graduation, Booker served as Staff Attorney for the Urban Justice Center in New York and Program Coordinator of the Newark Youth Project.
In 1998, Booker won an upset victory for a seat on the Newark City Council, defeating four-term incumbent George Branch. To draw attention to the problems of open-air drug dealing and the associated violence, Booker went on a 10-day hunger strike, and lived in a tent and later in a motor home near drug dealing areas of the city. He proposed Council initiatives that impacted housing, young people, law and order and the efficiency and transparency of City Hall, but was regularly outvoted 8–1. He also became an outspoken advocate of education reform.
Read more about this topic: Cory Booker
Famous quotes containing the words early, political and/or career:
“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and organize.”
—Albert Gore, Jr. (b. 1948)
“There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one’s enemies as if they may one day become one’s friends; as it commonly happens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)