Cory Booker

Newark faces real challenges. ”

My father was not going to let me sit back and just consume my blessings. He wanted me to contribute, and to do that, you have to be mission-oriented. ”

I'm very knowledgeable of the challenges before me. ”

What most Americans don't realize is a lot of the challenges we're struggling with today are the result of conscious housing policies. ”

Our nation was not founded because we all looked alike, or prayed alike, or descended from the same family tree. But our founders, in their genius, in this, the oldest constitutional democracy, put forth on this earth the idea that all are created equal; that we all have inalienable rights. ”

Democracy is not a spectator sport. It is a difficult, hard, full-contact, participatory endeavor. ”

I live in Brick Towers, a public housing project in Newark's Central Ward. I moved in when the projects were privately owned by a man who the residents and I believed was a grade A slumlord. ”

Kids born into certain ZIP codes will most likely have certain educational outcomes. And we've got to end that. If we end that, we explode economic development. ”

When I do my hiring in the United States Senate, I look at issues of diversity. ”

My family is no different from yours. We may be different from the geography that we come from. Some of you all may pray differently than I do, some of you all may be from a different ethnicity, but we all have the same story. ”