Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) resurfaced a column he wrote at age 22 during a discussion on Twitter about the protests in Ferguson, Mo.
In the column, Booker explains how he felt after the Rodney King decision and how he lost control of his emotions.
Diana, I wrote this at 22. I remember how angry I was. And yes it was more than that. It was pain/hurt. @Diana_Denis pic.twitter.com/1yDxKCtwST
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) November 26, 2014
“I’m a black man. I am 6 feet 3 inches tall and 230 pounds, just like Rodney King. Do I scare you? Am I a threat? Does your fear justify your actions?” Booker wrote while recounting the numerous times he had been seen that way.
He described his realization about how the police view him.
“But late one night, as I walked the streets of Palo Alto, as the police car slowed down while passing me, as his steely glare met me, I realized that to him and to so many others I am and always may be a Nigger: guilty till proven innocent,” he wrote.
Booker also shared a passage written by Martin Luther King Jr. on social unrest on his Facebook page on Wednesday.
That this letter remains so relevant today says so much more than all the jabbering talking heads on 10,000 "news " shows and beyond.America deserves a better discourse on the most important issues of our time.Not lip service,grandstanding or passing the buck.Hopefully there will be more Booker types who will start to make a real difference…
And to think little if nothing has changed and in many ways is even worse. Grieving for America
Nothing has changed. “Equal protection under the law?”
What a huge and unhappy laugh. The 50’s and 60’s riots and deaths were for nothing. sickening.
Plus ça change … Cory Booker’s righteous youthful rage still rings true today.
I must say, at least in the Rodney King case there were charges made, and a trial. What is so shocking and disheartening about the Michael Brown case is that the incident will never be brought to trial; that the grand jury procedure broke with all precedent, the prosecutor essentially acting as defense attorney for the accused; that the perpetrator was atypically called to testify. That’s not how it is supposed to work. This, to me, feels even a greater abrogation of justice than the one that occurred several decades ago. The chance for justice, even (however slim), was stopped in its tracks before a true trial before peers was able to occur.
I can pretty much guarantee that there will be a civil trial.