2011 Global Leadership Summit Session 2b Notes: Cory Booker #wcagls

In 2006, while still in his thirties, Cory Booker was elected mayor of Newark, New Jersey. With degrees from Stanford University and Oxford University (where he attended as a Rhodes Scholar), he moved to Newark during his final year at Yale Law School. In the years that followed, he lived in a troubled housing complex in the city’s Central Ward, advocated for education reform, served on the City Council, and founded the non-profit organization Newark Now. Unconventional in his approach to urban issues, he represents a new generation of pragmatic urban politicians. Since his election, Newark has seen a significant reduction in crime, doubled the amount of affordable housing under construction, slashed the city budget, and attracted over $100 million in private philanthropy.

Notes

• Before you can truly stand strong, you must understand that you are born of a grand conspiracy of love.
• You have a choice, are you going to grow fat and happy on your ancestors’ struggles or will you use all of your blessings to move forward?
• Everyone is born an original but most die as copies. -Abraham Lincoln
• We are the result of people who did not see the world as others people saw it.  In the midst of slavery, they saw freedom.  They had the courage to stand up and do something about it.
• What you see in the world is less about circumstances but how you see them.
• The world you see outside of you will always be a reflection of what you have inside of you.
• Be the change you want to see.
• The only way to make change in this world is to start with ones self. If it is to be, it’s up to me.
• Before you tell me what you teach and preach. Show me how you live and give.
• In any given set of circumstances – in every moment – you have a choice to accept circumstances as they are or to change them.
• (Cory is probably the most inspiring speaker I’ve ever heard. Seriously.)
• You should do somethin’
• If you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains.
• We stood together in humility before the grandeur of our common history in respect for all those conspirers who came before us… We gathered, holding hands, to pray… I was standing together with others for a cause greater than ourselves.
• e plurbis una?
• Let us now stand up because people stood and fought for us.