Cory Booker Challenges America’s Disneyfied History
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CHARLESTON, S.C.—In the basement of Mother Emanuel, Cory Booker’s eyes turned red. The senator from New Jersey and 2020 Democratic candidate had just addressed a small crowd that had gathered in the church sanctuary upstairs. “The act of anti-Latino, anti-immigrant hatred we witnessed this weekend did not start with the hand that pulled the trigger,” Booker told the room. “To love our country in this moment means that we have to step outside our comfort zones and confront ourselves.”
But the families of the murdered that Booker has faced over and over again, first as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and later as a U.S. senator, are never interested in high-mindedness, he told me. Nobody who’s grieving wants to hear a beautiful turn of phrase. There’s nothing an exasperated TV appearance can do for their pain.
“Your words don’t matter,” Booker told me, sitting in the pastor’s office at Mother Emanuel, one room over from where, four summers ago, a white supremacist killed nine people, including
