Vegan Senator Cory Booker: “In This Moral Moment, We Must Choose to Be Agents of Justice”

This week, vegan New Jersey Senator Cory Booker has been advocating for meaningful change to systemic racism following the worldwide protests in response to the death of 46-year-old George Floyd, a Black man killed by Minneapolis police. “Our rightful outrage over George Floyd’s murder must result in meaningful action and real change,” Booker posted on Instagram. “In this moral moment, we must choose to be agents of justice.”

In an interview on MSNBC, Booker shared his concerns about the lack of urgency for change when it comes to institutionalized racism in the country’s health-care and criminal justice systems. “This kind of racism, this kind of bigotry is so institutionalized that it puts so many of our fellow countrymen and women at risk every day,” Booker said. “We have deep problems in our country, and what is heartbreaking to me is the utter lack of urgency to do something about it, and we know that there are practical things we can do to create deeper accountability, transparency, and quite frankly, policing in this country.”

In the wake of the events, Booker has been working with his team to draft new legislation to achieve better transparency and accountability into police misconduct and is currently fighting to pass anti-lynching legislation that makes lynching a federal crime.