[indistinct conversations] good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon and welcome. Here at the unh Franklin Pierce school of law. My name is john and i direct the Rudman Center. The Rudman Center provides curricular, experiential, and Financial Support for law students interested in Public Interest careers. It also serves as the face of the university here in concord by presenting public programming we are happy to be able to partner with the aclu of New Hampshire with an ongoing series of Civil Liberties and the presidency. We are happy to welcome to the law school senator cory booker from the state of new jersey. [applause] senator booker has been a senator since 2013. Before that, he was the mayor of newark, new jersey, from 2006 to 2013. Prior to that, he served on the council in new york. He is a rhodes scholar. He is a graduate of Stanford University and yale law school. Moderating todays event will be genie from the aclu of New Hampshire. Neither the aclu New Hampshire nor the Rudman Center, we are both nonpartisan organizations and neither endorses political candidates. With that, please welcome senator cory booker. [applause] hello, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Sit down, for crying out loud. They have already told me to not go beyond the boundaries of the aclu sign. I am a former football player. Whenever im stationary, i think a linebacker will hit me. I really want to get into a conversation. Understand that im here because literally, americans were willing to stand up for the rights of people who do not necessarily look or pray like them or are even in the same geography. 50 years ago, in fact, it was was a group of activists in a small town in new jersey years ago that made this determination that black families would try to move into northern new jersey suburbs looking for the best public schools, and they said they would stand up and fight for them. They formed a group that would do sting operations in new jersey and they would follow black families around. When the black family was turned around for housing, a white couple would volunteer and say, hey, i would like to buy this house. One of those families was mine. I was two months old in 1969. My parents were denied moving into the house i grew up in. Activists showed up and helped my family by home they were originally denied. On the day of the closing and the real estate office, the white couple did not show up. My dad did and a volunteer lawyer from that group of actors best activists. He stands up and punches my dads lawyer in the face and sics a dog on my dad. As i was growing up in this beautiful town, in this great neighborhood, every time i dad told this story, the dog would get bigger. [laughter] my family has values that your families probably share. University. Stanford 4. 0, 1600 receiving yards. I studied for oxford and law school. For my parents, that was not success. My dad was like, boy, you have more degrees than the month of july, but you are not hot. Life is not about degrees you get but the service you give. Running legal clinics at yale, i decided my life would be about trying to pay back all of the blessings i inherited from activists willing to stand up on the front lines, take punches, be beaten, people willing to stand together for my rights. As my father would remind me, you drink deeply from wells of freedom, liberty, and opportunity. My first job, i decided to move into one of americas lowest neighborhoods. Where we do not mistake wealth with worth. I became a tenants rights lawyer because people had fought for my housing right. I could not pay it back, i had to pay it forward. My career began in no low Income Community fighting for america. I am the only United States senator and the only Person Office thatthis still lives in a black and Brown Community below the poverty line. We fought and made tremendous changes. We made changes in our community. Walk around my block. I try to get reporters to do it with me all the time. Black businesses have opened. Entrepreneurs are successful. Schools are outperforming the suburbs. Supermarkets are food deserts. Tens of thousands of jobs are being created fighting against gentrification by doubling the production of Affordable Housing and making sure everybody has a community to live in. We were able to transform newark in outcomes people thought were not possible. Now the Number One School system in america. Beat the odds schools. Kids born in poverty going on to college. So many changes that when i got down to the senate, i knew what it took to make changes. It is the same thing that has always made change. It is how we made change in newark when i first started taking on slumlords. It is by bringing people together to stand and Work Together to understand we were all called, as king says, a inescapable. A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Of livedto be a voice experiences of the unfinished businesses and start taking on the big fight that were devastating communities across this country and communities in my hometown of newark. Those are things like criminal Justice Reform. Write and let from the democratic side in the senate, led to the liberation of thousands of people from prison. Even the things i did not get past, the dignity of women in prison, that legislation is so strong that now it has picked up by 10 states and passed on the state level. I have one driving concern my entire life. It is that this nation live up to all of its people and say we will be a nation of liberty and justice for all, but these words are still aspirational. That is why i am excited to be here today. I am going to take my seat, but i want to make one interesting point to you. Change does not come from washington, it comes to washington. It wasnt a bunch of men on the senate for that said, hey, fellas, lets get women the right to vote. We did not get civil rights because Strom Thurmond come alongs filibuster incident history, one day came to the floor and said i see the light, let those negro people have rights. No. Why did that lawyer in the 1960s represent black families . He says one night he was sitting at home, march 7, 1964, the movie most americans were watching that night was judgment at nuremberg and this historic night in america broke away to show a bridge in alabama. The Edmund Pettus bridge. Civil rights marchers were marching from selma to montgomery. They get stopped on that bridge by state troopers who would not let them pass. Then this guy on a couch in new jersey, a white man, sees them get viciously beaten. We know the day as bloody sunday. I talked to john lewiss chief of staff today. He was on the bridge. What does one guy on a couch in new jersey do . Does he sit there and be a spectator for democracy . No. He got up on the couch, realized he could not afford a ticket, so he decides to do this Great American tradition i am going to do the best i can with what i have and where i am. Who might need some Legal Support in new jersey, a group of activists in the living room, they put together a sting operation. Four years pass and family coming up in the south so they cannot find housing and northern new jersey and they are being turned away. He said we represented the family and got the men. Do you know the two names on the case file . It was carrie and carolyn booker. Your parents. Im literally sitting here right now because of civil rights activists that i know. I am also here now because it just because a white guy in jersey middleclass and living , comfortably, new that his freedom was intrinsically tied the freedoms of others in america. Because he stood up, i am a senator. Because he stood up im running , to be president for the United States. I could be the first descended of slaves in our country to go to the white house, built by slaves. All of these things are possible not because of who the president was or who senators were, but because of the activism and engagement of the citizenry of this country. People understand patriotism isnt love of country. But you cannot love your country if you do not love your countrymen and women. It is not sentimentality, love is sacrifice. Love is service. What does love look like in public . It looks like justice. Thank you for being hit today so thank you for being here today to have a conversation about [applause] justice. [applause] thank you. We are going to get started with q a. A combination of me having the privilege of asking questions and taking questions from the audience. I want to start with a question, our criminal Justice Reform and race. We have an inherently unjust criminal system in this country where too often, your experience with that system is based on the color of your skin and your income level, as opposed to what you have done. You have committed to extensive criminal Justice Reform and i wanted to give you a chance to lay out what your top reforms would be as president. Anybody who is running for president needs to have earned trust. Have long experiences. This issue you bring up, criminal Justice Reform, is not issue or a cab on my website. It has been my lifes effort. I started in law school when a crime bill passed. I knew it would lead to from the time i was in law school to the mayor of newark, this nation was building a new prison or jail every 10 days. This is not just Racial Disparity and incarceration. Michelle alexander says in her book, this is the new jim crow. It has literally devastated american communities. At villanova, they did a study that shows we have 20 less poverty if our incarceration rates were the same as industrial peers. What is so offensive, and it offend all of us is, i went to college and saw a lot of people using drugs. Know not hear this law school but [laughter] but there is a different standard for different people. There is no difference, blacks, whites, using and dealing drugs, but if youre black, you are almost four times as likely to be incarcerated for it. For people who think we do not incarcerate people for for marijuana usage anymore, in 2017, there were more marijuana arrest than all Violent Crimes combined. Its a lifetime sentence. You may not serve jail time, but now you cannot get a job or a loan from the bank. You cant get many housing opportunities. Your life and economic outcomes have changed. If you have children, their lives are changed forever. We now have more africanamericans because of mass incarceration. More africanamericans under criminal supervision in this country than all the slaves in 1850. Before i talk to you about what i will do as president , this will be a fight. On every level of my career, we talk about being in reforms and in reforms and making big changes. This is not a side issue for me. Incarceration is the cancer on our soul. I will do everything my power to tear down the system and end Racial Disparities. Not just incarceration but the things that lead to incarcerations. We have systems of suspension in our schools that were the same exact infractions, African American boys and girls are so much more likely to have out of School Suspensions which are correlated with challenges with police. We have the system the Racial Disparity from environmental injustice, housing injustices, Racial Disparities in housing that all lead to a criminal Justice System that lead to massive disparities and it has to stop. My career has been based upon this. More than a dozen pieces of legislation i have been pushing and moving as a United States senator speak to that. When i am president of the United States, we have seen other president s line up with new visions of tough on crime, hiring police, all of that stuff that over incarcerate our country. One of the legacies of my presidency will be ending mass incarceration, turning ourselves not into a punitive Justice System but restorative Justice System. I will press you on a couple of specifics there. Legalizing cannabis . The number one bill in the senate is something called the marijuana justice act. Comprehensive bill. I wrote it and lead it. Please do not talk about mana abouthere legalizing marijuana, if not in the same paragraph, you do not talk about expunging peoples record. Im a guy who never drank alcohol. My bill involves im in law school, lets be specific. Do schedule icing deschu edulizing marijuana and calling for a number of other things. Expunging records. Holding states accountable. State laws. I believe, fundamentally, that states legalizing marijuana should not exclude people from getting contracts to sellers. This is an industry that is overwhelmingly white. A lot of folks convicted for doing things that two of the last three president s admitted to doing, cannot even get business opportunities. That is one i called it the marijuana justice bill because it is a lot bigger than legalizing cannabis. Many of the people incarcerated in this country are incarcerated in state prisons and state jails. There is a question of how much can the president actually do to end mass incarceration. How do you incentivize the states to take action . I know you believe that Substance Abuse disorders are medical issues and should be treated medically rather than through cages and incarceration. How do you incentivize states to adopt the same philosophy . Folks here know, one of the things that drove mass incarceration were federal policies that literally incentivize states to change their mandatory minimums, to put in three strikes laws, gave them the money needed to build more prisons. We incentivize a system from the federal level making massive amounts of dollars available to the states that were changing criminal Justice Systems and locking people up. I was the mayor of a city with complicated challenges. We know there are streams of funding. Thank you. [laughter] the casualty of this campaign for me is always my voice. Now i can talk with my inside voice. There are streams of income we can now say and withhold from states that are not doing productive things. In addition to that, my Justice Department i view my civil rights division, i will view them the same way Johnson Administration and the Kennedy Administration did. Making sure the ideals of our country. If you have Racial Disparities and incarceration, there are fundamental problems with that. In the same way the Obama Administration i was a city that did this use the Justice Department to investigate disparities in policing. Newark, new jersey, and i was a black mayor of a black city, we analysesnow the data that we cannot afford to do. They showed us we have massive disparities in the stops we were doing against lack and brown people. In the same way the Obama Administration was leaning into the accountability of policing they help cities like mine do a , better job. We need to do better on disparities and incarceration, education, and the treatment of lgbtq americans. There are many states that have savage inequality on race, orientation, and even religion that have to be addressed. We will go to the audience. Hello, jersey in the house. I grew up in melbourne. Sorry, new yorkers. On a serious nature, the Current Administration is to do everything they can to drive wedges between all of the minority communities in our country, whether they are black communities, brown committees, hispanic communities, Southeast Asian communities, and muslim committees. There is a huge increase in hate crimes across the country, including just last week at a rabbis home during the celebration of hanukkah, a celebration about a time when oppressed people fought back and won. What do you see as strategies we can do to reunite ourselves when people are afraid to speak up when theyre on their own, but realize we can overcome and that is the most critical part . First of all, anybody from jersey is quoting star wars, god bless you, as a scifi fanatic. This is one of the things that is making fear inject our society. We have become so much more for fearbased culture because of a president from immigration policies, which is striking fear into immigrant communities, going to the failure of condemning nazis. Since 9 11, there have been more terrorist attacks driven by rightwing extremists and the majority of those happen of have been white supremacists. One thing first and foremost, if i president of the united am states, im commanderinchief. Martin luther king said, i cannot legislate you to love me but i can pass rules to stop you from lynching me. I cannot pass laws to change your heart, but i can pass laws that can restrain the heartless. Moreed to be doing a lot naming and acknowledging white supremacy, naming and technology antisemitic violence, naming and acknowledging islamic violence, and support it before it happens and better do the things we know and research we know can diffuse these things before they rise up into violent tha ask. Number two is the energy you are putting out in the oval office. This president now is using their platforms to divide the nation against itself, to try and pit americans against americans. You may not want this as president , but i hope you will support me if you do. So much is about policy issues but the thrust of my campaign is creating conditions necessary to make the policy change is possible. This means to stop hate in this country, where we go home from the holidays cannot sit with family members because of the tribalism in our country and the 60 Million People who voted for donald trump are not our enemy. I want to put Mitch Mcconnell back in the back benches, i will do everything i can to make sure that happens. But it doesnt happen by being like the very people we are trying to get out of office. [applause] im running for a town hall in iowa. I am a big guy. Former allamerican football player, titan for stanford. The older i get, the better i was. A big guy stops me to put his arm around and goes, dude, i watched you punch donald trump in the face. And i go, dude, i want you to punch donald trump in the face. And i go, dude, that is a felony. We black guys do not get away with that much. We did not be bull connor because we brought bigger dogs and fire hoses. We beaten because artists of activism called to the best of who we are and inspired people. In birmingham, wind king wrote those letters, he did not write them for the hatemongers of the country who will always be in the minority. He called to the good people doing nothing. And this is a challenge right now in our politics. We think the and is to beat each other. Im a democrat right now that tells you it is not about beating republicans, it is uniting americans with a common cause and common purpose. And that brings me to the last [applause] i am going to use my platforms every day to heal, to inspire a more courageous empathy, to ignite a civic grace. These are all things that are critically important, but you said one thing, though, that i want to be very clear, antisemitism is on a massive rise. The monthly stabbing attacks, we need to call it and name it. It was not either or, it was both of these two things. We in this nation, one of the shames of this country, is how we treat americans with Mental Illness. Thatiggest institutions are housing people with Mental Illness are prisons and our jails. People with Mental Illness are coming in and out prisons and jails never getting the support they need. And by the way, they should never be going there in the first place. If you drill down on the monthly attacks, here is a person that showed so many signs of crisis, of serious Mental Illness, schizophrenia, but we dont have the society to try to treat people that have these medical conditions. That is the civil rights issue. It is a human rights issue. The shameful nest of society that takes people with a Mental Illness and put them in a condition that makes their Mental Illness worse. This is why the last thing i fought to get into that criminal justice was a ban on juvenile solitaire environment confinement in the United States. It has proven it triggers Mental Illness or causes Mental Illness. You are much more likely to commit suicide as a child when that happens. Under my presidency, this is what i mean, the call of a president is to use your constitutional duties, but the other call in the highest office of the land is to use that form platform to inspire that grace and that empathy, to create the necessary preconditions to call good people back into the field, to keep the fight going to affirm the dignity and humanity of all people. [applause] so i want to build on that with an interesting issue, and that is surveillance. Because one of the concerns that have come up is with the rise of white nationalism, there is an increased domestic surveillance. And as a Civil Liberties organization, surveillance is deeply troubling to us. Any surveillance that can be used on a terrorist organization can be used against local protesters. So how do you balance this . How do you balance this pursue of fight of hate crimes while also preserving personal privacy and making sure surveillance is not misused by the government . I am a guy and hope people will watch the movie street fight. If you do not think love is the most powerful force it was nominated for an oscar, unfortunately lost to the march of the dadgum penguins. [laughter] i had my phones tapped. I was a political opponent this might remind you of something that went on in the white house recently where i believe somebody was using their power to violate fundamental rights. This is a tough balance. We went way away from this. Remember, after 9 11, fear is a toxic thing, and people were willing to surrender basic american freedoms in the name of security. But when you do that, you lose both. You lose your freedoms, and you lose your security. And as a guide that has actually had to run stuff, this is an issue. When i decided to put cameras all around newark in public spaces, the aclu of newark complained. We brought in to the table to write the Standard Operating Procedures of what we could do with those cameras. Have to find a balance, but there has to be far better accountability in the federal government than what we see right now. In this context of trump, there are a lot of points that are being made. The fbi recently, their report broughtal out a lot of very bad practices. Fisa courts, i can go through things that disturb me deeply. I go further than this. Privacy on the internet. These devices that we carry around hold our most intimate information. Who can get into that and who cant . If you are not every day wrestling with these thorny issues, then problems are going to happen. My commitment is to find a way to strike that balance. And one of the ways to do this is to invite civil rights organizations to the table to help craft these policies and find that correct balance. You support thirdparty privacy, which is information held by a third party like facebook, google, amazon, and one of the issues that comes up here is how do you prevent companies from sharing data . We had a thirdparty privacy bill here in New Hampshire and had d. C. Lobbyists come in to fight it, because Tech Companies or their money off of private information. Here is the other balance. How do you strike the balance between supporting private business and also preserving personal privacy . We are way out of lack right we are way out of whack right now. And corporations are winning in ways that should outrage americans. I lost in this vote in the senate when Cable Companies who were paying, came to the United States government and said, we want to be able to take your viewing data now and sell that. I am already paying you, and now you are going to take my viewing data and see how much scifi i actually watch . This is outrageous. Corporate power in this country is corrupting our values and our individual rights. I do not know if we will agree on this or not, but i think Campaign Laws are violating our First Amendment rights. When you say a corporation is a human and they can now pump ungodly amounts of money onto our politics, i believe that suppresses my First Amendment rights as a guy who is not a billionaire. So these are balances we now have, and im one of the people calling for regulations of these tech platforms, which i believe are violating the National Security and we need to rebalance this to give individuals better control over your private data. [applause] back to questions. You had your hand up there first. I am eager to talk about a hate crime that has been bothering me for many years. On 24 may 1979, the governor of New Hampshire signed a bill to raise the drinking age, and i suddenly found myself no longer old enough. They felt i should be punished for crimes other people were doing, just the same as if you were going to go to jail for a crime committed by somebody else named cory booker. It is amazing that some people think it is terrible if the president withheld foreign aid as a way to pressure president zelensky into doing something, but it is perfectly ok for congress, that is you, to withhold highway construction money as a way to pressure state legislators and governors into committing a hate crime against people under 21. That it is terrible if the owner of a private Catering Company is free to refuse service at a samesex wedding, but it is perfectly ok to deploy goons in bulletproof vests into the same caterer refusing to serve. I want to talk on the subject of what you are talking about, but i think we run into some problems in this country when we equate things to hate crimes hate crimes that look, i live in new jersey, and we just had a horrible shooting attack on Orthodox Jews in jersey city. You see their manifestoes and things they have written by hatred, and we have to be very careful, because these are now legal definitions, and when we start throwing around these terms, we delete the sense of urgency dealing with actual hate crimes, so i just want to stipulate that. The second thing about federal government doing things to drive down drinking ages, and again, we have a very specially designed republic to affirm states rights, and i think that is what you are getting to, is where is the balance on these things . Sir, i am going to be completely honest with you, i have never thought of drinking age as a policy issue. It has never been on my sort of agenda. I am open to learning more. I do not know the history you talked about in 1979. I was a nineyearold boy trying to figure out how big i could grow my afro. [laughter] sen. Booker and so i will look at these issues and everything like that, but i do worry about that balance, and as an African American in this country, i am uniquely aware that people continue to try to suppress the rights of minorities in this country under the guise of states rights, and we had that battle in the 1960s, where states were trying to do things. We have that battle right now on Voting Rights in this country, where all of these states you feel like it is their prerogative to write voting laws that are suppressing, s i said in north carolina, the laws were narrowly tailored, the judge said, to disenfranchise africanamerican voters. You know my bias right now. I respect states rights, but if you are violating the rights of transgender americans, violating the Voting Rights of all americans, if you are targeting minorities in your state in ways that i believe violate federal law, my Justice Department will uphold the law. I will not do what this of administration is doing, pulling back all civil rights protection from affected groups, and really allowing free reign for states to do things that are violative of what i think are basic american principles established by the bill of rights. Jeanne you mentioned an issue that is actually very pertinent in New Hampshire right now. I know what my cue is. [laughter] my name is polana. So i joined a friend today at the dmv, for those of you who do not know, yesterday at the dmv, New Hampshire started officially offering nonbinary drivers licenses. [cheers and applause] yeah sen. Booker this is actually one of my endorsers. Oh i was pointing to senator waters, who was the cosponsor. Sen. Booker my other endorser. Multiple of my endorsers are here. I went with them, and it was like pure joy as we got this action. We went out to breakfast afterwards, and now i want one on my passport, but that is not an option. I am curious, if elected, would you support nonbinary identities in legal documentations . Sen. Booker yes. If you want a short answer, yes. Again, i had this mother i still remember when roots was coming out, going back to the 1970s, and my mother was one of these mothers i used to get upset about as a child, and now she is a super hero to me, but she said before we watch roots, we will read the book, and one of them is called the invisible man, and when we as a culture render people into invisibility, when you bring people back to the center of affirming their dignity, their identity, you begin to move towards justice far more. So this is not an issue of convenience, no, this is a fundamental issue of justice, and so i want to go one step further, because when i was mayor of the city of newark, i am a guy who and again, john lewis, a guy i am talking about a lot, he had an idea of good trouble, and i knew this was going to cause good trouble. It was 2006, and the Democratic Party leaders had not yet evolved on lgbtq issues, and they were opposed to marriage equality, but even more than that, they passed awful legislation, like the defense of marriage act. So i was one of these, and theres another mayor in california named gavin newsom, who i love to death, he is a dear friend of mine, and we tried to cause good trouble on a mayoral level. I raised a gay pride flag, and i got thunderous hate calls, people who said they would never support me again. I am cantankerous, and i said i have the power to marry people, i will not marry anyone until everyone can get married. My mom calls me up. My first angry call with my mother, cory, you can marry one person. [laughter] sen. Booker this is a victory. What should have everybody upset and gets me emotional about the sheer physical danger of being gay in america, being transgender in america. We just finished a year where 19 black transgender women were murdered because of who they were. We still live in a nation where 30 of lgbtq children report not going to school because of fear. The violence in this country, the bullying, the intimidation, the firings, because in the majority of states in america, you can be fired you can post your wedding pictures online, but you can be fired from your job with no Legal Recourse whatsoever. The reason why, like some other folks over here, that i am an original cosponsor, led the legislation for the equality act, is just as a demonstration that we have so much further to go in order to become a country where the rights of lgbtq are the same as the rights of mine, and so i celebrate these victories, but i do not want to in any way make people have any sense of understanding that we still dont live in a world where every single day where people take their lives into their own hand by just walking down streets, Holding Hands with somebody that they love. [applause] jeanne so that was an incredible legislative victory this year, and we are heading into a legislative session this week, and we are actually facing legislation that is targeting trans student athletes, and this is legislation weve seen in other states that would essentially result in full body cavity searches of young students. It is abhorrent, and it is obviously not coming from within New Hampshire, this is coming from outside. You mention on day one, i will begin restoring justice to trans americans, and im interested how you will combat this narrative where it is not just about legal issues, it is building up a culture that is inclusive. We have been here before. We are back to the fight of whether they should participate equally in sports, in school, whatever it is. So how do you fight that . Sen. Booker again, my job when i was mayor was not just to execute the rules they give me. I will abide by the constitution, and i will do my job as a constitutional officer, your president , but i knew as mayor that part of my job was expanding the moral imagination of the whole country, because the country looks down on urban places like my city, and my whole career was about this idea, in the shadow of greatness of a guy like john lewis, susan b. Anthony, i can go to the great activists, alice paul, a name everybody should know, the first protest in front of the white house ever was a suffrage protest of someone who knew how to get national attention. Alice paul was then arrested, went on hunger strikes. These are my heroes. And so my if you give me, like the people of new jersey did, the honor of representing you as the chief executive, i have the obligation to hold up to the previous ancestors who found ways to get more people onto fighting for the dignity and honor of all people. Anybody who is running for president , i want to know what you have done to do that before. When i was mayor of the city of newark, we got national attention. I said you know what, i am the mayor of this city. There is a disproportionately high number of People Living on food stamps, so i did this incredible odyssey of trying to live on food stamps. I am a horrible cook. I did not know i literally had, in my neighborhood, i have always lived in neighborhoods at or below the poverty line, having my neighbors come in and have mercy on me to teach me things, like, why are you buying canned beans . Buy dry beans, they are cheaper. I lost so much weight, because i was going to bed hungry almost every night. But that testimony had me on National News talking about the absurdity of the amount of money we are giving to families and children that are struggling. People in my Neighborhood Work fulltime jobs, extra shifts, and they need food stamps. When i was a city council person, how could people ignore the clear and present danger of people who live in communities, where children are dying every day . So i went into a place called garden spires and set up a tent, miles away from the healthy wealthy suburbs, and i said to the media, i am going on a hunger strike. As a mayor, i was able to get the country to Pay Attention to, to invest in, to take part in the revolutions in newark, but make me your president , and i understand my obligation is to make, to bring about the best in who we are, we are a good people, we are loving people, but we have to understand. I say this about religion and i am one of these people who say, before you tell me about your religion, first show it to me but we have a civic gospel that we say in our pledges, liberty and justice for all, we have one of the greatest national anthems, and at the end of it, we say home of the brave, when our veterans, disproportionally, when they come home, they are homeless. This president , look at his twitter feed, his nastiness, he has a bravado, his meanness. I am a guy who will break a lot of norms in your presidency as well, but not break in the way he is doing, mean, degrading, dividing, i will do it in the ways i did as a mayor, as a city council person, to challenge us to have a deeper empathy and grace and decency toward each other, because that is our legacy, that is our history, and i believe that is going to be the future of this country, to rise up with that spirit and truly make this a nation that lives up to the greatest words that we sing in our songs and pledges. [applause] jeanne so to live up to that, we would want to add gender identity to federal not discrimination protections, which means getting it through congress. Here is the issue of bipartisanship, right . We can also talk about reproductive rights, issues that are inherently civil rights oriented and have become, unfortunately, inherently partisan. We have had candidates come in and commit to making these sweeping reforms that they themselves cannot achieve, because they have to get it through congress. With the same issue, emotional courage, how do you achieve bipartisanship on issues that have not been for quite some time, like trans rights, like reproductive rights . Sen. Booker two quick points on that. The first is, this is why, if you want to heal this country, you cannot do it in a partisan way. I am very serious about this. King said, you know, darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. I have had people who come up to me and say i want a democrat who can fight fire with fire. I ran a fire department. It is not a good strategy. [laughter] sen. Booker when i got to the senate, i tried to have a dinner or meal with every one of my republican colleagues. I went to dinner with ted cruz. It was hard. [laughter] sen. Booker it was hard to find a restaurant, because i am a vegan, and he is from texas, for crying out loud. He and i passed legislation together. I go to bible study and a rightwing, conservative, chairman of the committee, inhouse offices, and i noticed there was a black girl prominently placed on his shelf. I found that curious. Turns out she is adopted by his daughter. I dont know if i have that right, it might be his son, but my point is i went to him about these horrible challenges about not disaggregating data for homeless kids and foster children, which means we cannot hold people accountable to outcomes, and he got on the bill. We passed it. Criminal Justice Reform, i had Newt Gingrich in my office, Grover Norquist in my office, the Koch Brothers in my office. If i didnt do that, we would not get people liberated. Let me speak very blunt with you when it comes to this party, you want me on the head of the ticket in the next election. Why . Because we have got to ignite the entire Rainbow Coalition of the Democratic Party. If black folks had turned out of at the same levels in 2016 as they did in 2012, we would be talking about president Hillary Clinton right now. In jersey, when i had a special election, Chris Christie did not want it on his election, we did it three weeks earlier, africanamerican turnout between 13 and 14 . When it was the normal election, three weeks later, in november, people up and down the ticket drop down between 9 and 10 . If you do not have an authentic connection to communities of color as a president ial candidate and can ignite record turnouts, you talk about getting the senate back on it goes back to north carolina. Obama was running, we had a democratic senator. Arizona, south carolina, these are states where black and brown constituencies are essential to come out and vote. I believe i am the best person to do everything to do with Civil Liberties, not only education, but dear god, if you want to make sure we have judges on the bench ruth bader ginsburg, someone whose health i pray for everyday. [applause] sen. Booker this gets me back to the point again. One of the most annoying reporters of my life, a guy named cruz, who is sitting right there, and i want to say this, even though the guy and i have come to big head butting, the media is not the enemy of the people. In fact, they are important. So he knows the wild and wacky things i did as the mayor of the city of newark to get legislation, things past that people told me we could not do, and so i became the mayor of newark in a recession, when people were literally leaving, flocking out of our cities, i was running around the country trying to get help, foundations would not return my calls, i am not kidding, they laughed at me when i talked about food deserts, and so the creativity of your next executive, the ability to reimagine things is so important. So as this guy, come up and fact check me afterwards, when i was on the tonight show, the curtain opens up, conan obrien comes on, they kick communities, detroit jokes, chicago violence jokes, he says i think the best health care idea for newark is a bus ticket out of town. So i am like i got you. I went to city hall and filmed a video the next day. I got fake mad and said conan obrien has insulted the city of newark. I basically said conan obrien, you have insulted the city of newark, i hereby ban you from newark airport, you are on the nofly list, try jfk, buddy, and i put it up online. The video goes so viral that i get an avalanche of calls from city hall, including civil libertarians, who did not know it was a joke and getting on me about violating Conan Obriens civil rights. As if we do not have more important people to worry about. Literally, i am not exaggerating, the tsa put a clarification on their website that mayors in america do not have the power to ban people from their airport. It was such a big story that i am now getting earned media for newark that we were never getting before. Everybody is coming, satellite trucks, city hall and i am doing interviews bragging about the dignity of my city. It becomes so big that conan obrien goes on his show, shows my video, it gets millions of earned media, and that he bans me from Burbank Airport which, those of you who fly to the l. A. Area, not a big deal. L. A. X. Is better. It becomes one of the biggest stories of that week. I go back and ban him from the state of new jersey, of course, and then one of my heroes, this person did so much for human rights on planet earth, womens rights, human rights, she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, she filmed her own video, basically she just said cory, conan, give peace a chance, and the next thing you know, the tonight show curtain opens up, the mayor of newark walks on stage, is apologized to by conan obrien, writes money contributions of to charity, and that is not the kicker to the story, now i am a national name. I call foundations, and they return my calls. Developers paid attention to newark, we got construction, supermarkets that laughed at me, i shop there a few weeks ago. This is not a test of who has the best policy plans. I am serious. Why . Because most of the people on stage i work with, and they are brilliant, good people. Democrats attacking democrats really annoys me, because i know the character of most every person running for president , and they are great, righteous people that wake up every day and wanted to get good done. Like most of the others, they will take the best policy ideas from wherever they can get them, and i hope they take them from me if i am not the guy. Do not make this with your head, make the decision with your heart and your gut. Who can best ignite the moral imagination of this country . Who can challenge us to deepen the quality of our mercy . Who can call us to the best of our ideals, where the best fourletter word that can be dropped is not the ones were hearing our president using but is love . That is what my heroes who adorn my walls, that is what they stood for. They called this country out, and people responded. John lewis, who is suffering today, his brilliance was not condemning people. One of the people that beat him, bloody sunday, we know, one of the people came to his Congressional Office with his grandchild and in tears begged him for forgiveness. What did he do . Did he do the bravado, angry retaliation we see in the highest office of our land and now . No. He wept with that man and forgave him, because all of us are people in development, all of us have made mistakes, and we all know we should not be judged by the least of what we have done. This election is about heart and spirit and values and who can best ignite them in our country. [applause] sen. Booker you are a multitasking guy. [laughter] some people would say that. Sen. Booker what does your arm say . The things of you need to think about. Im very concerned about the trump administrations war on journalism. And this served about what is happening to Julian Assange who faces extradition to this country, some wondering what you going to do to defend this man who has done quite a bit to inform us about what our government is doing. Sen. Booker this is one legal case i dont know as much as you clearly do. I dont know all the facts. If he has broken our laws, he should be afforded due process. We have a country that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. Im going to make sure we do justice and talk about the bigger question. The charge of fake news right now, other countries are literally imprisoning people now. We have an attack on journalism making journalists less safe. Were hearing things that totalitarian governments say all the time. This is a crisis in our country and equally challenging to me is the fact that the very strategies of the russians is this misinformation idea to try to get america to the point that they dont know who to trust anymore. And by the way, we all have to take some responsibility. Well have to take responsibility because we are creating a system of fractured media where what gets rewarded and i saw the starledger where people are getting compensated based on the clickthroughs on their stories. What behavior is that incentivizing . We have a real challenge with news information in our country that we need to take seriously now before it becomes even worse than it is and im telling you right now, i worried because in the political context, what does that reward . If i were to yell at donald trump when he was talking, you lie, i might have my best fundraising quarter as a president ial candidate and i make that statement when obama had that happened to him, that guy had his best fundraising quarter. One guy i know was on a show with Newt Gingrich called crossfire. These guys were paid to sit together, but they are human beings and started talking and realized they had so much in common so they decided to last segment of the show was going to be called cease fire and they would talk about the things they agree on. Guess what the producers did . They stopped it because they said ratings go down. You want to hand off to the next show with high ratings. All of us have to take responsibility for what is happening to ideas of truth and information because we are not as divided as our media wants us to be. 90 of americans believe on commonsense gun safety but we cant pass laws. Obamacare, you poll republicans, significant amounts against it. You take obamas name off of it, and poll the individual policies, people love it. I dont buy into that and so im going to do everything i can for due process. The media plays an important role, and we have to start addressing the erosion of our institutions, the erosions of trust and what we are doing towards sensationalism, halftruths and it is not now polluting our most sacred spaces which are the civic discourses essential for a thriving democracy. We will try a couple of quick questions. First week in office, do you repeal the muslim ban . Sen. Booker yes and a lot of other things. Touching on immigration is the issue of detainers where ice asks local lawenforcement to hold someone until they can get there. Would you prevent ice from using local Law Enforcement . Sen. Booker yes. You have your local police doing federal immigration law. You create lack of safety for your community. Immigrant communities, in newark, my local cops used to say they would get support from the immigrant communities. I would make america so much safer around immigration issues. It is making our communities less safe, violating our values, hurting our economy. This president is making us poorer, less safe. Question . Hi, i am doris. Im very grateful for your candidacy. Im hearing you speak from your heart. We have a really strong immigrants Rights Network here in concord. A group of us went to homestead and right now we are trying to get all the candidates to go to the border to see the effect of the mpp remain in mexico and im wondering if you would consider doing that . Sen. Booker if you want to know my core values, theres a bible verse about matthew 25 when i was poor or hungry did you feed me . This is my life. I dont talk about issues unless i put myself out there. I have been to the border multiple times. Beent womeon whoul had denied asylum. Walked across the bridge. Before that, i went into mexico. I went late at night around midnight, we walked over the bridge, and as soon as we got over the bridge, a mexican official jumps out and says you need to go back, it is too dangerous. I dont know if you noticed, im a big guy. I turned around and go back. I want to see what the experience is of someone trying to cross the border. They have people stationed on the bridge to stop me before i could even step in to america. He starts asking me for papers and im complying and also asking him a lot of questions. He seems frustrated by my questions. He says, who are you . I look at him and say my name is cory booker, im a United States senator and he goes you need to talk to Public Relations people and so i happen to have on my phone the head of customs and border who represented things that were not true. I was seeing that people, moms with Young Children at night were being sent back into a town that this guy was told was not safe to walk into, but the vulnerable citizens escaping trauma and challenges are being sent back where now i know they are preyed upon and so i will continue to go. I have gone to help a woman in missouri who was pregnant and we felt was not getting the treatment she needed. I have gone to private prisons. I have been to my own state which has had a lot of controversy. This is something that all americans have to understand and we are doing things that are violating human rights. We are turning our back. If you dont know the st. Louis, it was a ship that came from nazi europe that came to our shores seeking asylum and our country turned it around, and many of those died in the holocaust, and we say it and set said it a lot, never again. One of my best moments as an american is when i went when the muslim ban happened, i heard we got a federal court order because people being detained were not being given counsel and so i jumped in a car, drove up with my team and i was charging in to talk to the Border Patrol but then i walked in and get stopped in my tracks because the whole concourse is full of hundreds and hundreds of americans. Hope is the conviction that despair will not have the last word. There were not going to let the last word of our country be despairing of peoples rights and exterminated against based on the religion. People erupted in cheers, people dancing and singing. It was amazing. A guy named joe donnelly tells me that as people came out of the gate, we were cheering hundreds of people and except for corey, there were no international flights. I have done that and will continue to do that no matter what position i hold or what title i have. As long as i am an american i will not try to preach our values more than i act on them. We are running out of time so we will end with one question which is on reproductive rights. It is january. Anniversary of roe v. Wade is this month. Hyde you repeal the ammendment . Sen. Booker this is an attack on Many Americans and an attack on women and i want to be very specific that from the time i was in college this was an attack on low income communities. The one thing i wanted to know is other president s with National Crises have elevated issues. I will create an office of reproductive freedom in the white house to make sure we coordinate between multiple agencies and protect and make sure humans have control of their own body. All of these things are fundamental rights and i will do everything i can. [applause] thank you, everyone and we want to thank the senator for joining us today. If you dont already, follow the aclu on twitter. We will be having more of these. Thank you so much for coming. [applause] sen. Booker i have 15 minutes to stand up here to try to take any selfies that folks want. [inaudible conversations] i just want to send you love and gratitude. All the best. Love you and god bless you. [indistinct conversations] thank you for your support. We appreciate it. Thank you so much. I saw you want to ask a question. You said you would not support restoring the right to vote. [indiscernible] incarceration. I think this is a distraction libertiesndamental undermining the cause of ending mass incarceration. Lets talk more in a minute. Thank you. [indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations] do you think this is too much . I can cover it up. What do i have to get you to do to call toni johnson . She wants to support you. Thank you. [indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations] they need a federal law where if you are about to be deported that you get a public defender. To some of these immigration courts in texas and seen the way we are doing justice. [indistinct conversations] thank you. Your willingness to walk the talk is impressive. Thank you. [indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations] [indistinct conversations] we are doing things that violate our laws and collective values. It has got to stop. Thank you for going. Again. E yout to go thank you. Thanks so much. Good luck to you. Thank you very much. You go back to the farm . All the time. Its a great place. My uncle back in 1978. I got student tickets. Hes sitting way in back. They do their thing. Years old at the time. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Treee of my friends was a when i was there. Good luck to you. Sitting 20 rows back. Believe it. [indistinct conversations] thank you so much. Thank you. Andapidfire selfies, then we have to run right out. A lot of what you said resonated with me. Im very concerned with the partisan nonsense in washington, d. C. Both sides. Ilhanmaxine waters and omar say 9 11 was some people did something when one of my friends almost died. Her plane got changed last minute. We had people and on the other side of that. Im so sorry. I have to run. These are things that we feel deep in our hearts. This is not a time to deepen divisions. Friendsne of my best in the towers. To try to turn us against fellow americans, weakens us. Im so sorry. I have to run. You,ick thing to instead of attacking President Trump, try to tell the country what you are ogingoing to do. We need to talk about what we are for and not what we are against. We have to run now. We can get you information about it. Just reach out. Im sorry. I dont really use email that much. If you email me, ill connect you. [indistinct conversations] live friday on the cspan networks on cspan, the u. S. House turns at 11 00 a. M. To close out the first session of the 116th congress. At noon eastern, the official opening of the 116th congress. At 1 00 p. M. , cspans campaign 2020 coverage continues with president ial candidate senator Bernie Sanders speaking at the National Motorcycle museum in animal sick, iowa. P. M. , President Trump is in miami. Thespan2, to events from d. C. Circuit court of appeals. Committeerguments and of the judiciary versus mcgahn, looking at whether President Trumps former white House Counsel must comply with a subpoena to testify on the mueller report. The court looks at the merits of the house efforts to unseal documents and testimony from the mueller investigation. At noon, the u. S. Senate returns for the opening of the second session of the 116th congress. At 5 30, more campaign 2020 coverage with president ial candidate senator Amy Klobuchar at a town hall meeting in cedar rapids, iowa. Coming up in an hour, National Employment law projects laura