Jack & Jill Politics

How much are we talking on iTunes? (I'm at work & no iTunes here!)

I saw Cory Booker a few years or a bit longer when I watched 'Street Fight' about his run for mayor. He's an amazing guy.

My cable bill is too high in my estimation already.

I saw Brick City for the first time Monday and was very impressed with Mayor Booker. He really believes that he can make a difference in his community and I hope he doesn't give up on that fire. I don't think he will though…

You are doing a good thing Mayor Booker

Booker is very impressive. His enthusiasm is infectious. I first met him in DC at a joint for fundraiser for him and Mayor Fenty (DC). I kept thinking what a stark contrast. DC would be an entirely different city if it had someone like Booker at the helm.

On Coy Booker:

From The Black Commentator: http://www.blackcommentator.com/harvard.html

“BEWARE OF THE BLACK TROJAN HORSE”

Dr. Martin Kilson, Guest Commentator

When Cory Booker emerged as a real contender for Mayor of majority Black Newark, New Jersey, some African American intellectuals sounded the alarm. Among them was Harvard's Dr. Martin Kilson, a research professor of political science who was the first African American to be granted full tenure at the college, in 1968. Dr. Kilson wrote a letter to his friend, Lee Daniels, publications director of the National Urban League, in New York, warning of Booker's close ties to the Hard Right:

Lee Daniels

National Urban League

My Dear Lee:

I think I sent you a copy of George F. Will’s column that appeared two weeks ago in which he informs his nationwide conservative rightwing network about Cory Booker’s campaign for the mayoralty of Newark, NJ. As soon as I read Will’s column celebrating Booker’s run against four-term Mayor Sharpe James it was clear to me that—Sharpe James’ limitations to the contrary notwithstanding—Booker was a “Black Trojan Horse” so to speak, Lee. As you know, George Will represents the most reactionary intellectual and public policy elements among Republican conservatism in today’s America. I mean even the conservatism of Pres. George Bush has recognized the need to ethnically and racially diversify executive offices in today’s Republican administration, something George Will and his rightwing circle—Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Richardson Scaife Foundation, etc.—have yet to publicly endorse. The fact of the matter is that George Will and his particular circle of American conservatives (which includes my Harvard Dept. of Government rightwing colleague Professor Harvey Mansfield) would turn-back-the-clock on civil rights for African-Americans to the Plessy v. Ferguson era if they could get away with it, Lee Daniels…

Thus any celebration of Cory Booker’s campaign in Newark by George Will and his ilk must be viewed automatically as bad news for Black people of Newark. This was my immediate reaction to the celebratory column on Cory Booker’s campaign by George Will—my sort of knee-jerk progressive Black intellectual reaction, Lee. Then earlier this week I received from my old friend Gregory King, who’s an administrator in the Newark Public School Administration and a very talented fellow…a copy of a recent talk Cory Booker delivered to one of George Will’s favorite Republican research centers—the Manhattan Institute. It’s where White conservatives like Nathan Glazer, Abigail Thernstrom, William Bennett, and other conservative opponents of the mainstream Black American leadership’s civil rights agenda hang their hats, Lee. When you put together the appearance of George Will’s celebratory column on Cory Booker and Booker’s address at the Manhattan Institute, the only conclusion to make Lee is that Booker is a “Black Trojan Horse” for the Republican rightwing.

For the first time, the Republican rightwing network—not the liberal Republican network that gave us civil rights activist oriented Black Republicans up until the Reagan Administration—now has a bear hug around a potential Black Mayor of a major city with a Black and Latino majority population. Mind you, Lee, we on the liberal and progressive side of Black leadership have no generic bias against a Republican mayor governing our Black/Latino majority cities. After all, we’re pluralistic and pragmatic in our approach to American politics, not ideological or xenophobic….

But a Black Mayor aligned with and indeed controlled by the kind of conservative Republican circles that now control President Bush’s White House and represented by the Manhattan Institute, and Republican circles celebrated by Negro-phobic and feminist-phobic pundits like George Will is a very different matter altogether, Lee. Without doubt, these kinds of Republicans aim to reverse the equalitarian-advancement and opportunity-expanding uses of modern governance to what it was before the rise of the New Deal under FDR.

Of course, Cory Booker is perhaps the shrewdest of those we might call the New Wave Black Conservatives, Lee, for unlike the Old Guard Black Conservatives who first surfaced in the middle-‘70s and got institutionalized during Reagan/Bush Republican Administrations (e.g., Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Glenn Loury, Robert Woodson, Clarence Thomas, etc.), Booker knows the necessity of packaging his critique of the mainline Black civil rights and city leadership through his own version of liberal civil rights discourse. Booker knows that the nasty hardline anti-civil rights conservative discourse practiced by Old Guard Black Conservatives like Shelby Steele wouldn’t let him get-off-first-base among Black voters in Newark, Lee.

I gained some insight into Booker’s success in masking his essentially rightist Republican conservatism in populist-leaning liberal civil rights language (e.g., attacking inefficient city bureaucrats, attacking wasteful expenditures, critiquing corrupt usage of patronage practices, critiquing failures that still exist in education regimes for working-class Black kids, etc.) through a telephone call I received this week from a former Harvard graduate student…. She’s now working in New York City but keeps ties with her professional childhood buddies who live in Newark, and along with them she’s been involved in Booker’s campaign. He’s a “new face,” so to speak, and has been skillful at appealing to the new generation of Black professionals in the Newark area in terms of his populist-tilted critique of the old guard in Newark….

Now, there is no doubt that important limitations are associated with the Sharpe James Mayoralty, Lee, and one of those limitations relate to the fact that the new generation of professionals…have not been cultivated by Newark’s political class old guard represented by Mayor James. As a result there’s a leadership vacuum because Black community minded activist professionals feel that they have no-place-to-go.

Cory Booker, as a shrewd, well-educated Black professional newcomer to Newark politics (Yale Law degree), recognized this leadership vacuum…. He’s functioning as an errand boy Black politician for conservative Republican power-class penetration of governing control of Black Newark, Lee. From where I sit, this is ominous and as many key middle-class and professional-class African-American citizens in Newark as we can reach must be alerted to what Cory Booker and his campaign stands for.

Feel free to circulate the materials as you wish.

Warmest,

Martin Kilson

Dr. Kilson retired from Harvard’s Department of Government three years ago. He is completing 22 years of work on the two-volume study, The Making of Black Intellectuals, to be published next year.

So …. Corey is to be rejected solely because George Will likes him and he may have Republican leanings?

He's amazing and I genuinely think he's going to be President one day: he's got the fire, smarts, and charisma. God willing, he's also going to get the opportunity.

I love the fact that the Dems are highlighting him more and he's been raising his profile. If he succeeds in Newark, and I think he will, he's going to have a hella platform to run on.

Funny…Baraka didn't have anything to say about WHY the taxes were raised: Sharpe James selling vacant land for $1 to his cronies when it was worth way more, failing to collect taxes, settling for a measely $450M from the Port Authority…

He also didn't say anything about James and the previous council trying to set up a $80M slush fund before they were voted out. But, oh that's right! His son, Ras Baraka, was on the council at that time and was in on it!

But all of that was A-OK with Baraka because James and those City Council members were “black enough”.

Just sharing various perspectives. I've made no comment on my opinions.

I may be going out on a limb by saying this but it seems to me that if you keep posting a variation of the same (not various) persepctive, you've made a comment. From each of the “various perspectives” you posted it seems as though Booker's major failing is having George Will talk him up and not being an ultra liberal. Interesting that neither “perspective” pointed to anything concrete to support this. Sounds like sour grapes to me.

Instead of writing unsupported missives, I think it would be more helpful if they rolled up their sleeves and helped Booker out – Something tells me he would be open to listening to their “perspective.”

Yo, @OurBrickCity is $9 for all five episodes. Much better price than a movie. And much better than most movies. Here's the link. http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/…

http://www.67riots.rutgers.edu/

From: FRUIT OF THE POISONED TREE:The Hard Right's Plan to Capture Newark NJ

See whole piece here: http://blackcommentator.com/poisoned_tree_pr.html

The billionaires who fund the American Hard Right are salivating over the prospect of seizing control of City Hall in Newark,New Jersey, May 14. They have found their champion: Cory Booker, Black mayoral candidate from the city's Central Ward, a cynical pretender who attempts to position himself as the common people's defender while locked in the deep embrace of institutes and foundations that bankroll virtually every assault on social and economic justice in America. His benefactors sponsor anti-affirmative action referendums, press for near-total disinvestment in the public sector, savage what's left of the social safety net, and are attempting to turn public education over to private suppliers. Along the way, Booker's soul mates are busy ravaging the environment and trampling civil liberties everywhere they find them.

Booker owes his growing national prominence to this crowd, whose influence has provided the 32 year-old with a campaign war chest rivaling that of four-term incumbent Sharpe James. Never has a Newark election been more closely watched by the super-rich and their political network. Booker is their Black Hope for electoral legitimacy. Although only a first-term councilman from a medium-sized city, the former Rhodes scholar is already at the top of the Right's list of New Black Leaders.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this series and look forward to the next two episodes. I have been smitten with Corey Booker every since I first became aware of him. I hope the people will really help him in this endeavor to make Newark a better place to live.

Great Mayor!