A Light in the Darkness: Senator Cory Booker Delivers 25-Hour Speech on the Senate Floor
Image Courtesy of C-Span
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker took the Senate floor last Monday with the intention of “getting in some good trouble,” as Civil Rights leader John Lewis said. Over the course of 25 hours and 5 minutes, breaking the record for the longest speech delivered in the chamber, Booker indicted the Trump administration for inflicting “harm after harm on Americans' safety, financial stability, the foundations of our democracy and any sense of common decency.” He called for a reckoning during this “moral moment,” one in which country would be put over party, and conscience would triumph over political convenience.
As Senator Booker rose, he said that he did so to protest a growing crisis in America, to stand up and speak as heroes such as John Lewis had. Future generations of Americans will look back and ask “Where were you?”, and current generations must ask themselves – in response to Social Security cuts, a plunging economy, trade wars, a financially self-indulgent president, climate catastrophes, and more – “Did we speak up?” To speak, to break the silence of fear and inaction, was Senator Booker’s goal.
During the marathon speech, Senator Booker detailed the “slow erosion of American democracy” through executive overreach, attacks on education and the press, and dismissal of rule of law. He read from 1164 pages of material – facts and stories meticulously prepared by his staff – as well as more than 200 stories from constituents and Americans across the country. Central to his message was the suffering of real people, both Democrat and Republican, inflicted purposefully by an administration that chose billionaires over working people.
Early in his speech, a young staffer pulled away the senator’s chair to prevent the temptation of sitting. For its duration, Booker could not rest, could not eat, could not use the bathroom. His only reprieve came in the form of questions posed by fellow Democrats. When he broke the record previously held by Strom Thurmond, who had filibustered in an attempt to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Democrat Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York posed the question, “Do you know you have just broken the record? Do you know how proud this caucus is of you? Do you know how proud America is of you?”
That previous record had long bothered the senator, he said in an interview with MSNBC. Thurmond had taken the floor to prevent “people like me [African Americans] from being in the Senate.” So Booker shattered the segregationist’s 24-hour and 18-minute record, demanding not the obstruction of justice as Thurmond had but the deliverance of it.
Senator Booker’s speech was a rallying cry for Democrats, whose base has felt abandoned and frustrated by the lack of action taken by their representatives. But he tempered his own speech with acknowledgments of the limitations of a minority party, an acknowledgement of the need for three Senate Republicans to break rank each time the Democrats try to resist the Trump administration. He reminded the people, not so much those in the chamber beside him, but those watching, “the power of the people is greater than the people in power.” As it did in the 1960s, resistance must come from outside the chamber. It must come from we, the people.