Newark Mayor's Greatest Challenge: Inspiring Others to Lead

About this sponsorship: In honor of the 60th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary’s historic ascent of Mount Everest, Patch and Grape-Nuts are teaming up to highlight those who inspire people around them to climb their own mountains.

As the mayor of Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, Cory Booker says he understands the importance of leadership. But he especially acknowledges the importance of inspiring and engaging local leaders to assist in achieving community goals.

Q. PATCH: What is the biggest challenge you’ve taken on?  

A. BOOKER: Leading Newark is the greatest challenge of my life, but it’s not a policy challenge. 

I’m proud we’ve notched victories — fought to improve education, create jobs and cut crime. But the challenge has been the key to every advancement: It’s getting people to engage, to act, to believe that we as individuals, and collectively, can make a difference. 

America’s greatest achievements have always been driven by the engagement and action of its citizens, not just the leaders we read about in history books but the thousands of everyday people whose acts of kindness and courage moved our country forward.

I’ve come to believe that our greatest leaders are those who are capable of convincing others that they can and must lead — that each of us, where we are, through our actions, can be the change that we seek. 

So the challenge is getting people beyond what I call a state of sedentary agitation – where people are upset about the world as it is, sometimes blaming others, but failing to take responsibility and do something about it.

I’m excited about Newark, because over the last seven years, I’ve seen an increase in the amount of activism, engagement and leadership — from the grassroots to the people who work with me in city government.

I see in Newark that no problem is beyond our means to solve. It isn’t a question of can we, it is a question of will; will we manifest the collective will to meet the problem and overcome it.  Newark is rising now, because the people have willed it so.

But there’s still so much more work to do here — and all over our country — and there are too many people who too quickly surrender to cynicism. So we continue to work to meet this challenge.

Q. How did you meet these challenges?

A. Frankly, it quickly became clear to me that my powers as mayor were limited. I realized that no one person or administration could fix long-entrenched problems.

For example, I could run an efficient police department, but unless I joined with others throughout the community, we wouldn’t be all that successful in cutting crime.

We had to involve more people in order to achieve results. We had to awaken a greater sense of responsibility. So in crime fighting we did just that. We found that when people came together and did the things that others weren’t doing, they would get results that others weren’t getting.

Working with nonprofits and activists, we launched a community court and the state’s first veterans’ and youth courts. Working with ex-offenders and policy leaders from across the political spectrum, we invested heavily in community and employment-focused, ex-offender re-entry programs.

And working with companies, philanthropists and community members, we raised millions of dollars to pay for public safety cameras and acoustic gunshot detection systems to create one of the most technologically advanced anti-crime networks anywhere. 

We also sought help from academics, outside law enforcement agencies and a diverse group of community members to launch the Newark Violence Reduction Initiative, which micro-targets violent crime factors and seeks to intervene before it’s too late.

All of this, taken together, has led to a 17 percent drop in murders, a 27 percent drop in shooting incidents, and a 26 percent drop in auto thefts since I took office seven years ago.

It is progress, but it is not enough, and I most certainly cannot take credit. Credit goes to our brave police officers, and notably the wide range of partners who have stepped up and taken responsibility for making our community safer.

However, I know that there are still too many people on the sidelines. Take for instance the thousands of kids on waiting lists for mentors. Many of these kids are at-risk boys, who without intervention now, might become the criminals of the future.

This makes real the historic truth that the problem is not “the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

Q. Did you succeed?

A. The simplest answer is that we are succeeding, but it is work that will never be done. We have made our streets safer and our government more efficient. And Newark is growing again, experiencing the largest economic development boom in more than a generation — the first two new downtown hotels in 40 years, the first new office towers in 20 years and more than a third of the multifamily and commercial development in the state happening in our city.

That means new jobs for our residents. For the first time in 60 years, our population is actually growing instead of shrinking.

That does not, however, mean that the fight is nearly done. Newark was in decline for decades, and it will be years more before we retain — or surpass — the fullness of our past glory. But change will not be automatic or inevitable. It will always rely on the persistent and unyielding engagement of citizen leaders, who are unwilling to have our community’s limits set by outside circumstance.

The positive changes made in our community will forever be determined by the size of our dreams and the level of commitment we have to make them real.

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