美国国家公共电台 NPR Cory Booker Asked About Struggles With Black Voters: 'Let My Work Speak For Me'

Cory Booker Asked About Struggles With Black Voters: 'Let My Work Speak For Me'

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Inequality in education, employment and the criminal justice system are top of mind for two undecided voters in Newark, N.J. Now, this weekend, those voters had the chance to put questions on those issues directly to Senator Cory Booker. He's one of 12 Democratic candidates who's made it to the stage for tomorrow night's presidential debate. Booker and those voters sat down with our co-host Ari Shapiro as part of NPR's series Off Script.

ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE¹: We met at Vonda's Kitchen. It's a soul food spot in Newark, and while the restaurant is famous for its fried fish and chicken, Senator Booker likes its vegan options. He hasn't eaten animal products in about five years.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

CORY BOOKER: She does brussel sprouts² in a way that is a transformative human experience.

SHAPIRO: Owner and chef Vonda McPherson was in the kitchen when we showed up. Senator Booker says she's a great example of business leadership.

BOOKER: When I was mayor of the city, we were trying to get more local people to be entrepreneurs, and especially women. And this was really one of our great success stories.

SHAPIRO: When we sat down with Booker on Saturday, news reports about Atatiana Jefferson had not surfaced yet. She is a black woman who a police officer shot and killed inside her own home in Texas. Even before that story broke, the voters who sat with us wanted to talk about law enforcement and policing. Diana Candelejo is an economist³ in her late 20s working for a local health care network, and Shanell Dunns is an education consultant⁴ and business owner in her late 40s with five kids and three grandkids. Both are women of color, and both had concerns about police abuses in black and Latino communities. Diana started by asking about accountability.

DIANA CANDELEJO: We see that body cameras, you know, are making police brutality⁵ more salient. I just want to better understand, you know, what are your policies in order to improve our police system here in United States?

BOOKER: So look. This is something I've learned the hard way running a police department here - that police accountability is so critically important in police transparency. And so when I - before I became a senator, I worked with the ACLU here to try to create national models for police transparency. And one of the biggest things we learned - and I learned this from working with the DOJ here in Newark - is that you have even good-intentioned people who just - because we're not doing deep dives on the data, you don't have that kind of objective understanding.

SHAPIRO: If I may, you refer to working with the DOJ, the Justice Department, in Newark, but the police force in Newark came under a consent decree...

CANDELEJO: Right.

SHAPIRO: ...From the Department of Justice because the abuses while you were mayor were so egregious⁶, and that went on for years. This was...

BOOKER: Just to give you a little bit of a counter to that is - I inherited a police department with decades-long problems and patterns and practices, and we were fighting to correct those things, not moving as quickly as we should have. And the DOJ came in, which, at first, I actually - I was like, why do I need the DOJ? When they presented us with the data, we saw that we were not moving fast enough to correct the problems.

SHAPIRO: You were mayor for eight years, and those problems persisted well into your second term.

BOOKER: We actually were making tremendous strides on that, and as the head of the ACLU themselves will tell you - that we were embracing reforms not just in word, but in leadership and presenting national standard best practices by the time I was mayor.

SHANELL DUNNS: So - and so...

SHAPIRO: Shanell?

DUNNS: While I feel like - yeah, we have to have the numbers. We have to do all this research. But if people are literally⁷ dying, you know, at the hands of the police here in the street - and how do you then talk to that parent?

SHAPIRO: Have you had firsthand experience involving the police?

DUNNS: So I mean, sure. I have - I can give you my own experience with my own - my very own son. Thank God that he was able to walk away, but he was definitely in a position where he was in a car, he was stopped for absolutely no reason - dragged him out of the car, handcuffed him, put him in the back of the police car, still not telling him what's going on. And when the officer saw that he went to this private school here in Newark, he changed his actions towards him and literally left my son, my minor⁸ child, on the street at, like, midnight just by his self.

BOOKER: And as a black man who grew up in this country, too, and has...

DUNNS: Right.

BOOKER: ...Stories exactly - very similar to that, I should say, the indignities⁹ that - as a young black person that you faced in my generation, as well as the kids today, is absolutely outrageous¹⁰ and unacceptable.

DUNNS: Yeah.

BOOKER: And so it's more than just data collection. It's more than just body cameras. This has to do with recognizing that implicit¹¹ racial bias¹² is a reality in this country, and unless you start doing everything from training police officers, getting a diverse police force, it means making sure that we have a DOJ under my leadership that will actually investigate these things, hold people accountable, take up cases when local prosecutors¹³ are unwilling¹⁴ to prosecute¹⁵ clear violations¹⁶ of people's civil rights. There has to be a larger vision for how that we do this, and...

DUNNS: What do you say to - so in a lot of my work, I talk to, like, first-time voters, kids that are just turning 18. And those are the things that come up for them - like, the criminal justice reform systems. And when we talk about the presidential candidacy, a lot of times, they say they don't feel like you are the black voice for the black youth. How do you respond to not be able to connect to that demographic?

BOOKER: Well, No. 1, I think we actually do connect to it. Some of our greatest support is from HBCUs to African American young people who are big activists¹⁷ for our campaign. But more than that, look. This is the issue, as you know, as a United States senator - in fact, when I was running for the United States senate, my pollster said, this isn't an issue that pulls in the top five or so of things. Why are you talking about it at every stop? And I go, I'm talking about it because this is a national crisis, and we live in a country that - as Bryan Stevenson says, it treats you better if you're rich and guilty...

DUNNS: Right.

BOOKER: ...Than if you're poor and innocent.

DUNNS: Right.

BOOKER: We live in a country where marijuana - everybody thinks that somehow, we're making some advancements¹⁸. There were more marijuana arrests in 2017 than all violent crime arrests combined, and people in college campuses aren't getting arrested for marijuana. It's people in communities like ours.

DUNNS: Right.

BOOKER: And I know people all over this city who have records for doing things that two of the last three presidents admitted to doing.

DUNNS: Right.

BOOKER: And what's horrible about that that most Americans don't understand is it's a life sentence because now you can't get a job. You can't get a business license¹⁹. You can't get a loan from the bank. And so let my work speak for me. In the United States Senate, I've pushed more than a dozen bills on these issues that span from police accountability all the way to the bill that I actually got passed, the First Step Act, which has already led to the liberation of thousands of people, overwhelmingly black and Latino.

SHAPIRO: The Department of Justice released more than 3,000 federal inmates²⁰ under the First Step Act back in July. Of those who had their sentences reduced, 91% were black, 4% were Hispanic and 4% were white, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. You can watch more of our conversation with Senator Booker and other presidential candidates. Video is up on npr.org/offscript.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 sprouts   

n.新芽，嫩枝( sprout的名词复数 )v.发芽( sprout的第三人称单数 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出

参考例句：

• The wheat sprouts grew perceptibly after the rain. 下了一场雨，麦苗立刻见长。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The sprouts have pushed up the earth. 嫩芽把土顶起来了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

3 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

4 consultant   

n.顾问；会诊医师，专科医生

参考例句：

• He is a consultant on law affairs to the mayor.他是市长的一个法律顾问。
• Originally,Gar had agreed to come up as a consultant.原来，加尔只答应来充当我们的顾问。

5 brutality   

n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮

参考例句：

• The brutality of the crime has appalled the public. 罪行之残暴使公众大为震惊。
• a general who was infamous for his brutality 因残忍而恶名昭彰的将军

6 egregious   

adj.非常的，过分的

参考例句：

• When it comes to blatant lies,there are none more egregious than budget figures.谈到公众谎言，没有比预算数字更令人震惊的。
• What an egregious example was here!现摆着一个多么触目惊心的例子啊。

7 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

8 minor   

adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修

参考例句：

• The young actor was given a minor part in the new play.年轻的男演员在这出新戏里被分派担任一个小角色。
• I gave him a minor share of my wealth.我把小部分财产给了他。

9 indignities   

n.侮辱，轻蔑( indignity的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The soldiers who were captured suffered many indignities at the hands of the enemy. 被俘的士兵在敌人手中受尽侮辱。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• What sort of indignities would he be forced to endure? 他会被迫忍受什么样的侮辱呢？ 来自辞典例句

10 outrageous   

adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的

参考例句：

• Her outrageous behaviour at the party offended everyone.她在聚会上的无礼行为触怒了每一个人。
• Charges for local telephone calls are particularly outrageous.本地电话资费贵得出奇。

11 implicit   

a.暗示的，含蓄的，不明晰的，绝对的

参考例句：

• A soldier must give implicit obedience to his officers. 士兵必须绝对服从他的长官。
• Her silence gave implicit consent. 她的沉默表示默许。

12 bias   

n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见

参考例句：

• They are accusing the teacher of political bias in his marking.他们在指控那名教师打分数有政治偏见。
• He had a bias toward the plan.他对这项计划有偏见。

13 prosecutors   

检举人( prosecutor的名词复数 )； 告发人； 起诉人； 公诉人

参考例句：

• In some places,public prosecutors are elected rather than appointed. 在有些地方，检察官是经选举而非任命产生的。 来自口语例句
• You've been summoned to the Prosecutors' Office, 2 days later. 你在两天以后被宣到了检察官的办公室。

14 unwilling   

adj.不情愿的

参考例句：

• The natives were unwilling to be bent by colonial power.土著居民不愿受殖民势力的摆布。
• His tightfisted employer was unwilling to give him a raise.他那吝啬的雇主不肯给他加薪。

15 prosecute   

vt.告发；进行；vi.告发，起诉，作检察官

参考例句：

• I am trying my best to prosecute my duties.我正在尽力履行我的职责。
• Is there enough evidence to prosecute?有没有起诉的足够证据？

16 violations   

违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸

参考例句：

• This is one of the commonest traffic violations. 这是常见的违反交通规则之例。
• These violations of the code must cease forthwith. 这些违犯法规的行为必须立即停止。

17 activists   

n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His research work was attacked by animal rights activists . 他的研究受到了动物权益维护者的抨击。
• Party activists with lower middle class pedigrees are numerous. 党的激进分子中有很多出身于中产阶级下层。 来自《简明英汉词典》

18 advancements   

n.（级别的）晋升( advancement的名词复数 )；前进；进展；促进

参考例句：

• Today, the pace of life is increasing with technological advancements. 当今， 随着科技进步，生活节奏不断增快。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Great advancements in drought prediction have been made in recent years. 近年来，人们对干旱灾害的预报研究取得了长足的进步。 来自互联网

19 license   

n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许

参考例句：

• The foreign guest has a license on the person.这个外国客人随身携带执照。
• The driver was arrested for having false license plates on his car.司机由于使用假车牌而被捕。

20 inmates   

n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• One of the inmates has escaped. 被收容的人中有一个逃跑了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The inmates were moved to an undisclosed location. 监狱里的囚犯被转移到一个秘密处所。 来自《简明英汉词典》