New Jersey’s senior U.S. senator and a Garden State rock legend will be promoting a book the senator wrote as a map for people to navigate a political climate that is “absolutely” the most contentious he’s ever seen in his career.
Sen. Cory Booker and rock star and philanthropist Jon Bon Jovi will hold a talk to promote the senator’s book STAND at 2 p.m. March 22 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark just ahead of the book’s national release March 24.
“I wanted to write a book that was part inspiration, part instruction that wove together stories from our history and our present to really show people a map of how we’re going to make it through and how we’re going to ensure that better days are ahead,” Booker told Out in Jersey.
The Democratic senator said so many people are feeling they are in a state of crisis.
“Every time you turn on the news, it just shoots cortisol through your body and stress and anger and hurt, and I think that the truth is that there’s so much alike coming from the stories of who we are that American history is a screaming testimony to overcoming wretched, awful, difficult times. Not just overcoming, but finding a way to persevere and to thrive,” he said.
The talk will be a “timely and hopeful” one on reclaiming America’s shared ideals, according to a news release from NJPAC.
Asked what ideals has America lost and how can they be reclaimed, Booker began by relating a conversation he had with a friend of his who raised an American flag, and his teenage son asked when did they become Republicans.
“We’re forgetting this reality that we’re not a nation of tribalism; we’re one nation under God, and that we have shared dignity but also common cause,” Booker said.
That common cause is reflected in the 10 virtues Booker included in his book. He devotes a chapter to each. He believes those virtues – agency, vulnerability, patriotism, truth, humility, community, creativity, perseverance, grace, and vision — are keys to the nation’s survival and success.
“Virtue is not a luxury or an end in itself,” Booker wrote in his book’s introduction. “Virtue — the disciplined practice of our highest ideals — is the strategy through which we as a nation survive and prevail. It is how we fight. It is how we win. It is how we heal.”
Healing the widening political divide might be a long way off, though, as the LGBTQ community in particular has taken hits that include the fight over the removal of the Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument, the successful removal and attempted removal of rainbow-colored crosswalks, and a slew of anti-trans executive orders and legislation nationwide. Many LGBTQ Americans are afraid, and hope for many is hard to come by.
Booker said that fear is justified.
“To see people from the highest positions of power question your dignity, your humanity, from people in the executive branch, the legislative branch, the judicial branch, it is terrifying,” he said. “But I make it clear in this book, you cannot have great courage without great fear. You cannot have great hope without confronting great despair. Ultimately, hope and courage are choices we have to make. In fact, I think hope is the active conviction that despair will not have the last word.”
He said his book pulls from the LGBTQ community as instructive to other Americans. It tells the story, he continued, of the depth of the fear of the AIDS crisis, where there was the “outrageous indifference” of a president and a federal government that was not only denying healthcare and research dollars, but was “shaming and blaming” the LGBTQ community.
The “great leaders” of the LGBTQ community taught America through their agency and activism not to give up and to force America to see the truth “that we all have shared humanity,” he said.
In addition to the LGBTQ community, Booker incorporated into his book stories of other leaders and pioneers, including President George Washington, Congressman John Lewis, suffragist Alice Paul, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, environmental justice advocate Ron Finley, and disability rights activist Jennifer Keelan Chaffins.
Helping to promote STAND will be Bon Jovi, whose humanitarian work, Booker noted, included building housing for disabled veterans and individuals with HIV/AIDS in Newark and his “soul kitchens” in the state that provide free meals to those who are less fortunate and who are hungry.
“Jon Bon Jovi has been a friend of mine for decades,” Booker said, “and I know America knows him as a rock star, but he is one of the most hopeful servants of this nation that I know.
“He’s just a truly great humanitarian and somebody who has a heart full of love and a spirit of courage, so I’ve known him for years and the chance to sit with him and have this conversation is something that’s really exciting to me.”
An interview with Bon Jovi could not be arranged.
Booker said he wanted to add that he hates that it often falls to communities that are often the target of hate, that are the most marginalized, and are often the most scapegoated to be the ones to speak up.
“I hate that it often falls upon those communities to be the very moral voices that we need. I see that as an African-American. I see that with so many of the LGBTQ leaders who have not given up in the midst of these times,” Booker said, “and in many ways, what this book is going to be is a celebration of that spirit.”
In Booker’s nearly 30 years in politics — he started in 1998 when he ran for Newark City Council — this is “absolutely” the most contentious political environment he has seen.
“I’ve seen tough, gritty, brutal politics before, but there’s something happening right now in our country that makes me really believe this is not just contentious times, but dark times. But it also makes me believe and know in my heart that it is very much at times like these throughout our history that it had the makings of the combustible material to ignite a new spirit of a common cause, a common conviction, and ultimately a redeeming of the American dream,” Booker said.
In addition to Newark, the book tour will make stops regionally in:
- Philadelphia at 7 p.m., March 26 at the Philadelphia Free Library.
- New York City at 8 p.m., March 31 at Temple Emanu-El Streicker Cultural Center.
Stops are also planned in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, St. Louis, Mo., and Washington, D.C.
STAND is published by St. Martin’s Press.
