May 22, 2025 • 11 mins
Dr. Vanessa Tyler has a one-on-one with Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey about the state of our democracy. They have an honest conversation about the good and the bad regarding the Democratic party, his record-breaking 25-hour speech on the senate floor, and how a resistance to the Trump administration is fueling the future of the party and the country.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So tonight, I rise with the intention of getting in
some good trouble. I rise with the intention of disrupting
the normal business of the United States Senate for as
long as I am physically able.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
New Jersey Senator Corey Booker is about to make history.
The black lawmaker is to begin a twenty five hour
and five minute speech, the longest ever on the Senate floor,
breaking the record of segregationist South Carolina, white Senator Strom Thurmond,
who is filibuster in nineteen fifty seven, was against civil rights.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
The power of the people is greater than the people in.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Power, Passionate Senator from New Jersey, Corey Booker not going
down without a fight. In black Land and now as
a brown person, you just feels so invisible.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Where we're from. Brothers and sisters are welcome you to
this joyful and day and we celebrate freedom. Where we
are cout on the cloud.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
I don't know if someone's heard something, and where we're going.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We the people means all the people.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
The Black Information Network presents Blackland with your host, Vanessa Tyler.
I am so excited to be on with you. Thank
you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
We started talking about a new poll which shows the
majority of Democrats pessimistic about their own party.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Well, I think the most important thing from polls like
that is let us stop thinking about parties and begin
to focus on people. That's the problem we have right
now is this should not be about a Democratic party
in politics. It should be about people and the real
problems that folks are facing. Look when I took to
the floor and stood for the twenty five hours, I
(01:46):
didn't make that about the Democratic Party. I centered the
voices and the real experiences of folks who are not
talked about enough in the Senate and by senators. In fact,
I said during those twenty four hours, the crisis we're
in right now with authoritarian style leader violating our rights,
the Democratic Party is part responsible for paving the way
(02:11):
to this dystopian president in which we're struggling with. And
the way for the Democratic Party to respond to this
moment is to be less concerned with itself and refocus
itself on the people.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Democrats, still shaken by the worst outcome of the presidential election,
Trump told America what he would do, and the Democrats
warned America what he would do. Many in the Democratic
Party is still trying to wrap their heads around. If
President Biden took too long to quit.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
He should not have run again. That Kamala Harris was
an extraordinary candidate. Before she was my vice president, she
was my colleague and the Senate. Before she was my
colleague and the Senate, she was a sister of mine.
I really believe very strongly that the Democratic Party it's
time for new leadership. It's time for a new generation
of leaders to emerge in this country that can begin
(03:02):
to give a vision for who we are and where
we can go that is inspiring, engaging, and ultimately can overcome.
What I'm seeing right now in the White House and
in control of Congress is a party and people that
are far more concerned with millionaires and billionaires and their
wellbeing and their taxes than they are with the struggles
(03:24):
of working Americans, which is where we need to refocus
attention and work.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Can anything be done to stop Trump? You talk about
the billionaires and millionaires, I mean you look at the
plane situation where he may accept a flying palace. What
can be done to stop all this?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Well, we've shown this before in twenty seventeen when he
was going to tear down the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare,
millions of people took to the streets or protesting. We're
demonstrating and put so much pressure that we change the
votes of a number of Republicans, including John McCain with
his famous thumb down. We have a long history in
(04:03):
this nation that shows the power of the people is
greater than the people in power, when we use our power,
when we speak up, when we get on the field
and understand that democracy is not a spectator sport. We've
got to be active and engaged. So the civil rights movement,
the voting rights movement, the Fair Housing Council, fair housing movement. Rather,
(04:24):
there's so many instances in America where Congress didn't want
to pass a law, but people's demand was what got
it passed. As Frederick Douglas said, power concedes nothing without
a demand. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
And so right now there are powerful, wealthy forces against us,
allayed an arraid against us. But I still believe in us.
(04:45):
And that's what we have to do right now. Inspire
more action, more engagement, more voices speaking up to this
moral moment that we're in.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
But where is the resistance.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Well, I'm glad because this last two weeks down in Congress,
I'm seeing more and more people show up. You know,
Hakeem Jeffries and I did a twelve and a half
hour sit in on the Capitol steps.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Here's Leader Jeffries from that sit in on the Capitol
steps with Senator Booker.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
But this, of course is the moment that we find
ourselves in and delighted to be here because this is,
as you vindicated, a moral moment. And this is a
Sunday morning. Normally I can back home in Brooklyn if
I wasn't on the road getting ready for one of
several church services that I would likely attend. But as
(05:36):
we prepare to come back into session tomorrow, this is
a time to choose. And we're either going to choose
side of the American people, or we're going to choose
this cruel budget that Republicans are trying to jam down
approach of the American people.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Senator Booker says, there is resistance. People know they need
to rise up and act, and.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Over one hundred million people engaged with what we were doing.
Tens of thousands of people followed our instruction and wrote
their personal stories about what Medicaid cuts would do. I
spoke in front of a group of beautiful children with disabilities.
They called themselves the little lobbyists who came down here
in their wheelchairs to roll up on Congress people and
(06:21):
share in a powerful, non violent way, what these medicaid
cuts will do to them.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
What about the damage that's already been done, especially as
it pertains to civil rights and more.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Yeah, when you gut the Civil Rights Division of the
Department of Justice, when you gut the educational Civil Rights Department,
in fact, gutting the whole Department of Education, this is
real calm that is being done. Veterans disproportionately make up
federal workers, and tens of thousands of them have been
fired or slated to be fired. We've seen social Security
(06:55):
offices and close customer service to our seniors eroded. Research
for science for diseases have been cut and shuddered. The
damage that's being done is unconscionable. But we the people
have always shown we're not defined by what happens to us.
We're defined by how we choose to respond. So times
are bad, and what Trump is doing is making them worse.
(07:17):
Is driving up people's costs, it's threatening people's health care,
all to give bigger tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.
But we have to understand that in this moment, we
can't just curse the darkness. We have to be light
workers ourselves and pushing back, fighting back, and standing up.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Part of his fight back is his introduction of Sr. Forty,
legislation for a commission to study and develop reparations. I
had to ask reparations for black people in this climate,
in this administration. Senator Booker says, the time is now.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
This is the climate to tell the truth. I mean,
this is the guy who is saying that he wants
people hired by merit, but he's hiring the least qualified
people for the most important jobs, like our secretary of Defense.
He just fired the head of the Library of Congress,
black woman. Yes, And one of the explicit reasons, he said,
(08:10):
was that she was making inappropriate books available for children.
The stupidity of that, the obvious stupidity of that, is
that the Library of Congress doesn't lend books to children,
to kids under eighteen. So he is lying on this
extraordinarily qualified person who happens to be an African American
woman because he's targeting people, and he's targeting our history,
(08:33):
erasing the heroes off of websites, out of military academy libraries.
So if there's ever a time to talk about the
need for a commission that studies the history of our
country and what we can do to heal and redeem
it is now. And so this is a bill that
I've been bringing up time and time again, and I'm
(08:55):
going to continue to be one of those people saying
we need to tell our truth. I'm working with Republican
right now to do a memorial for the horrible Tulsa massacre,
because that's something over a century ago that should have
been a history that should have been told. And thank god,
if people aren't treating this like a democratic Republican issue
that I've got some Republicans are stepping up with me
(09:17):
and saying, absolutely the horrors of that aerial bombing of
a black community, that story should be told, and it
should be taught in our history books, not to make
people feel ashamed, but if anything, to celebrate our strength,
our resiliency, and our ability to even with all of
that hatred and violence, we still have overcome.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
So for those who feel it's already too late, Senator
Booker will always remind Black people about our resilient past.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
To despair is to not let it have the last word.
We are here because under grimmer conditions, under more abuses
of authority, under more situations where powerful people were trying
to discriminate, that people rose up and stopped them. American history,
as James Baldwin said at the end of The Fire
Next Time, and Negro history in particular, is a perpetual
(10:09):
testimony to the achievement of impossible things. Do not give up,
Do not despair. We are not defeated. We can fight,
we can overcome, We can change the course of American history.
How do I know that we've done it before?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And speaking of doing it before or finally, are you
going to put your hat in for president again? No
direct answer. He did run before, back in twenty twenty,
and the Rhodes Scholar, former Newark, New Jersey mayor who's
been in the Senate since twenty thirteen, did not rule
it out entirely. But he may find it hard to
keep his Senate seat in a blue New Jersey that
(10:46):
appears to be moving closer to red.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I am running for reelection in the city of Newark.
I hope people will go to Coreybooker dot com. We'll
contribute to my efforts. I gotta win reelection in twenty
twenty six and I'm hoping folks will help me and
president and one election at a time. We'll deal with
twenty twenty eighth when it comes. But I gotta I'm
going to the people in New Jersey, and I know
they're really targeting me this time, so I'm just gonna
(11:11):
I'm gonna really focus on my reelection.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
We end going back to the Senate floor with his
history making marathon speech. He warrens history. We'll look back
at each and every one of us and ask what
did you do?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
This is a moral moment. It's not left or right,
it's right or wrong.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
It's getting good trouble.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
My friend at a president? Are you four?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I'm Vanessa Tyler. A new episode of Black Lion drops
every week.
So tonight, I rise with the intention of getting in
some good trouble. I rise with the intention of disrupting
the normal business of the United States Senate for as
long as I am physically able.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
New Jersey Senator Corey Booker is about to make history.
The black lawmaker is to begin a twenty five hour
and five minute speech, the longest ever on the Senate floor,
breaking the record of segregationist South Carolina, white Senator Strom Thurmond,
who is filibuster in nineteen fifty seven, was against civil rights.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
The power of the people is greater than the people in.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Power, Passionate Senator from New Jersey, Corey Booker not going
down without a fight. In black Land and now as
a brown person, you just feels so invisible.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Where we're from. Brothers and sisters are welcome you to
this joyful and day and we celebrate freedom. Where we
are cout on the cloud.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
I don't know if someone's heard something, and where we're going.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We the people means all the people.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
The Black Information Network presents Blackland with your host, Vanessa Tyler.
I am so excited to be on with you. Thank
you for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
We started talking about a new poll which shows the
majority of Democrats pessimistic about their own party.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Well, I think the most important thing from polls like
that is let us stop thinking about parties and begin
to focus on people. That's the problem we have right
now is this should not be about a Democratic party
in politics. It should be about people and the real
problems that folks are facing. Look when I took to
the floor and stood for the twenty five hours, I
(01:46):
didn't make that about the Democratic Party. I centered the
voices and the real experiences of folks who are not
talked about enough in the Senate and by senators. In fact,
I said during those twenty four hours, the crisis we're
in right now with authoritarian style leader violating our rights,
the Democratic Party is part responsible for paving the way
(02:11):
to this dystopian president in which we're struggling with. And
the way for the Democratic Party to respond to this
moment is to be less concerned with itself and refocus
itself on the people.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Democrats, still shaken by the worst outcome of the presidential election,
Trump told America what he would do, and the Democrats
warned America what he would do. Many in the Democratic
Party is still trying to wrap their heads around. If
President Biden took too long to quit.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
He should not have run again. That Kamala Harris was
an extraordinary candidate. Before she was my vice president, she
was my colleague and the Senate. Before she was my
colleague and the Senate, she was a sister of mine.
I really believe very strongly that the Democratic Party it's
time for new leadership. It's time for a new generation
of leaders to emerge in this country that can begin
(03:02):
to give a vision for who we are and where
we can go that is inspiring, engaging, and ultimately can overcome.
What I'm seeing right now in the White House and
in control of Congress is a party and people that
are far more concerned with millionaires and billionaires and their
wellbeing and their taxes than they are with the struggles
(03:24):
of working Americans, which is where we need to refocus
attention and work.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Can anything be done to stop Trump? You talk about
the billionaires and millionaires, I mean you look at the
plane situation where he may accept a flying palace. What
can be done to stop all this?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Well, we've shown this before in twenty seventeen when he
was going to tear down the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare,
millions of people took to the streets or protesting. We're
demonstrating and put so much pressure that we change the
votes of a number of Republicans, including John McCain with
his famous thumb down. We have a long history in
(04:03):
this nation that shows the power of the people is
greater than the people in power, when we use our power,
when we speak up, when we get on the field
and understand that democracy is not a spectator sport. We've
got to be active and engaged. So the civil rights movement,
the voting rights movement, the Fair Housing Council, fair housing movement. Rather,
(04:24):
there's so many instances in America where Congress didn't want
to pass a law, but people's demand was what got
it passed. As Frederick Douglas said, power concedes nothing without
a demand. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
And so right now there are powerful, wealthy forces against us,
allayed an arraid against us. But I still believe in us.
(04:45):
And that's what we have to do right now. Inspire
more action, more engagement, more voices speaking up to this
moral moment that we're in.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
But where is the resistance.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Well, I'm glad because this last two weeks down in Congress,
I'm seeing more and more people show up. You know,
Hakeem Jeffries and I did a twelve and a half
hour sit in on the Capitol steps.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Here's Leader Jeffries from that sit in on the Capitol
steps with Senator Booker.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
But this, of course is the moment that we find
ourselves in and delighted to be here because this is,
as you vindicated, a moral moment. And this is a
Sunday morning. Normally I can back home in Brooklyn if
I wasn't on the road getting ready for one of
several church services that I would likely attend. But as
(05:36):
we prepare to come back into session tomorrow, this is
a time to choose. And we're either going to choose
side of the American people, or we're going to choose
this cruel budget that Republicans are trying to jam down
approach of the American people.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Senator Booker says, there is resistance. People know they need
to rise up and act, and.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Over one hundred million people engaged with what we were doing.
Tens of thousands of people followed our instruction and wrote
their personal stories about what Medicaid cuts would do. I
spoke in front of a group of beautiful children with disabilities.
They called themselves the little lobbyists who came down here
in their wheelchairs to roll up on Congress people and
(06:21):
share in a powerful, non violent way, what these medicaid
cuts will do to them.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
What about the damage that's already been done, especially as
it pertains to civil rights and more.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Yeah, when you gut the Civil Rights Division of the
Department of Justice, when you gut the educational Civil Rights Department,
in fact, gutting the whole Department of Education, this is
real calm that is being done. Veterans disproportionately make up
federal workers, and tens of thousands of them have been
fired or slated to be fired. We've seen social Security
(06:55):
offices and close customer service to our seniors eroded. Research
for science for diseases have been cut and shuddered. The
damage that's being done is unconscionable. But we the people
have always shown we're not defined by what happens to us.
We're defined by how we choose to respond. So times
are bad, and what Trump is doing is making them worse.
(07:17):
Is driving up people's costs, it's threatening people's health care,
all to give bigger tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.
But we have to understand that in this moment, we
can't just curse the darkness. We have to be light
workers ourselves and pushing back, fighting back, and standing up.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Part of his fight back is his introduction of Sr. Forty,
legislation for a commission to study and develop reparations. I
had to ask reparations for black people in this climate,
in this administration. Senator Booker says, the time is now.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
This is the climate to tell the truth. I mean,
this is the guy who is saying that he wants
people hired by merit, but he's hiring the least qualified
people for the most important jobs, like our secretary of Defense.
He just fired the head of the Library of Congress,
black woman. Yes, And one of the explicit reasons, he said,
(08:10):
was that she was making inappropriate books available for children.
The stupidity of that, the obvious stupidity of that, is
that the Library of Congress doesn't lend books to children,
to kids under eighteen. So he is lying on this
extraordinarily qualified person who happens to be an African American
woman because he's targeting people, and he's targeting our history,
(08:33):
erasing the heroes off of websites, out of military academy libraries.
So if there's ever a time to talk about the
need for a commission that studies the history of our
country and what we can do to heal and redeem
it is now. And so this is a bill that
I've been bringing up time and time again, and I'm
(08:55):
going to continue to be one of those people saying
we need to tell our truth. I'm working with Republican
right now to do a memorial for the horrible Tulsa massacre,
because that's something over a century ago that should have
been a history that should have been told. And thank god,
if people aren't treating this like a democratic Republican issue
that I've got some Republicans are stepping up with me
(09:17):
and saying, absolutely the horrors of that aerial bombing of
a black community, that story should be told, and it
should be taught in our history books, not to make
people feel ashamed, but if anything, to celebrate our strength,
our resiliency, and our ability to even with all of
that hatred and violence, we still have overcome.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
So for those who feel it's already too late, Senator
Booker will always remind Black people about our resilient past.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
To despair is to not let it have the last word.
We are here because under grimmer conditions, under more abuses
of authority, under more situations where powerful people were trying
to discriminate, that people rose up and stopped them. American history,
as James Baldwin said at the end of The Fire
Next Time, and Negro history in particular, is a perpetual
(10:09):
testimony to the achievement of impossible things. Do not give up,
Do not despair. We are not defeated. We can fight,
we can overcome, We can change the course of American history.
How do I know that we've done it before?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And speaking of doing it before or finally, are you
going to put your hat in for president again? No
direct answer. He did run before, back in twenty twenty,
and the Rhodes Scholar, former Newark, New Jersey mayor who's
been in the Senate since twenty thirteen, did not rule
it out entirely. But he may find it hard to
keep his Senate seat in a blue New Jersey that
(10:46):
appears to be moving closer to red.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I am running for reelection in the city of Newark.
I hope people will go to Coreybooker dot com. We'll
contribute to my efforts. I gotta win reelection in twenty
twenty six and I'm hoping folks will help me and
president and one election at a time. We'll deal with
twenty twenty eighth when it comes. But I gotta I'm
going to the people in New Jersey, and I know
they're really targeting me this time, so I'm just gonna
(11:11):
I'm gonna really focus on my reelection.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
We end going back to the Senate floor with his
history making marathon speech. He warrens history. We'll look back
at each and every one of us and ask what
did you do?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
This is a moral moment. It's not left or right,
it's right or wrong.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
It's getting good trouble.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
My friend at a president? Are you four?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I'm Vanessa Tyler. A new episode of Black Lion drops
every week.
Host
Vanessa Tyler
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