MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript Interview with Cory Booker

Interview

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Joining us now is one of the members of congress who pushed for the release

of the data, Democrat of New Jersey, Senator Cory Booker.

Senator, I know that before this data even was released I know you and

other members of congress were working on compiling it and getting it. Why

was it -- why was it so important to you?

SEN. CORY BOOKER, (D) NEW JERSEY: Well, we know we have a country with a

wild health care disparities already. And we knew that this was going to

be, in particular, a help in dealing with what I saw firsthand as a guy who

lives in a majority African-American city, that this virus was ravaging

African-American communities, and even have strategies to deal with

something, you need to have the data that can inform those strategies. And

so it was very important to me and other members of congress to get that

information.

HAYES: What is your reaction to seeing it laid out in the way that the CDC

has? I mean, I think we all anticipated the general direction of this, but

it is quite stark how consistent the pattern is across so many different

areas.

BOOKER: You know, it reveals what is the truth in our country, is we have

these profound racial disparities that penetrate so many areas of American

life from employment to the criminal justice system -- you have written

about that eloquently -- but also, to the areas of health care.

You know, I have been dealing with one of the founders, along with Tammy

Duckworth of the environmental caucus, because we, she and I both know that

the number one indicator of whether you are going to be drinking dirty

water, whether you are going to be breathing toxic air, whether you are

going to live around toxic super fund sites is the number one indicator is

the color of your skin. We have African-Americans that have less access to

health care and more.

So, this is not surprising to me, but it does highlight the urgency of this

moment.

HAYES: Yeah, you know, I -- you mention, you talk about these disparities

and it`s remarkable when you walk through just the data, right, just this

sort of objective conditions of people in this country, in different racial

categories, and whether it`s household wealth and the ability to buy a

home, whether it`s just life expectancy, right, like how many years are you

going to live? Health disparities and health outcomes, poverty,

environmental justice, all of these issues. They are enormous.

And I am curious what you think of the moment we are in, because it seems

to me that these protests that are by some measures the largest we have

seen in generations, if not decades, starts with the killing of George

Floyd on camera, and addressing all these various racial disparities in how

people are policed and household wealth. And there is, to me, a kind of

desire to wrench them into the sort of cultural symbolic realm so that the

answer is like they take some Golden Girls episodes off of streaming

service, but the disparities you`re talking about are so profound and so

extant, like what do you think about the national conversation we`re having

right now more than a month after Mr. Floyd`s death?

BOOKER: Well, so, first of all, I`m encouraged to see the kind of dialog,

conversations and movement that we have had, but we are just in the

foothills of the mountain we have to climb in this country and have to come

to grips with and speak truth about.

This is not going to be an easy quick fix. They are not some corporations

who pull down their pancake mix or change the name of a product or put a

little bit of, of sort of, more emphasis on diversity. These are structural

problems in our country that actually hurt everyone, economic disparities,

educational disparities, these have a financial impact on the flourishing

of our nation as a whole, and there is an urgency that we actually go

deeper than we are right now.

So, this is an encouraging beginning, but if America really stops and looks

plain at the data -- and really the not deep historical roots. We don`t

have to go back that many generations, as you wrote about again in your

great book, this was by design, in my lifetime.

I mean, I told the story a lot about on my, on the campaign trail last

year, about that it was, I was a baby when my parents had to get a white

couple to pose as them to buy a house in a -- and to be the first black

family to integrate a part of New Jersey, because housing segregation was

so stark.

Well, following from housing that, the disparate educational opportunities

people get, following from the disparate educational opportunities that

people get follow a whole bunch of other aspect of life opportunity, these

are all deeply entrenched problems that we created as a society by

consciously doing it, and now it`s systemically apparent.

But to deal with this, we have to have the same conscious intention. And

the first thing we have to do is be aware of the depth of the problem, and

that`s where I`m hoping this conversation as a nation goes.

HAYES: You know, one of the other huge disparities in American life, of

course, is the likelihood of particularly young black men being victims of

violence, particularly violent homicide. We have seen in the -- in the last

few weeks there have been really some really worrying data out of cities

like Atlanta, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, about year over year

increases in shootings and homicides.

There`s a certain argument being made explicitly by NYPD Commissioner

Dermot Shea I think today, by others who tend to be conservative, saying,

look, this is what happens, you protest the police and you say you don`t

want the police and you say you want to defund the police and the police

going into a defensive crouch, and then we get violent crime.

And someone that was the mayor of Newark, who lives in Newark still, I want

to hear your response to people making that argument, because it goes all

the way up to the president of the United States.

BOOKER: Well, it`s shamefully shallow and it hurts. Look, I don`t need to

watch the TV, I have lived this experience. Right up the -- a block up the

street from where I used to lived in these high rise projects, these

beautiful, brilliant children, boys used to hang out in the lobby. The

first one died was Hassan Washington (ph) back in 2006, the last one of

that crew that died was Shahad Smith (ph), shot with an assault rifle at

the top of the block that I lived on.

The numbers of kids that I know that are dead right now in a world that is

constantly assaulting them, from poisoning them with the water that they

drink, assaulting their lungs with the air they breathe, denying their

equal educational rights. I could go so deeply into all the causes. And we

know, I can show you the data, that extending Medicaid lowers violence.

Nurse-family partnerships lowers violence, economic security programs,

expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, lowers violence in America.

Why are we thinking that public safety in America, true safety and

security, means more police or less police? True safety and security in

America is investing in the things of human flourishing.

My first meeting with the FBI when I was the mayor of the city of Newark,

and I asked him about the gang problems, how we solve this, he looks at me

honestly and says we don`t solve these problems. In other words, he knew

that these problems stem from a poverty of empathy in our nation.

And god, if we want to talk about being the kind of beloved community that

is necessary to prevent this level of violence and death and attacks and

assaults on black bodies in our country, we have to have a deeper

conversation that is far more focused on a more substantive type of love

that`s evident in policies and investments and in true caring about

children to prevent problems from happening before we read about them in

our newspapers and in our statistics.

HAYES: Senator Cory Booker of the great city of Newark, New Jersey. Thank

you so much for joining us tonight.

BOOKER: Thank you, my friend. I`m grateful for you, more than you know.

HAYES: Thanks.

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