Political Quotes

“As Senator Booker knows, I did grow up in the State of New Jersey, and growing up in New Jersey, I came from a very working-class family. My family didn't have a lot of money. My dad was a cop. He was a union member. From my earliest days of remembering my mom going to work, she started out as a waitress. And I remember those days, after working these night shifts at these banquets, how tired she was. She would work some long hours. Then she became a secretary, but she also would work as a waitress at the same time. This was just to make ends meet. Eventually, my mother decided that she wanted to become a police officer like my dad, but this was New Jersey in the 1970s, and for a woman to become a cop, it was really, really hard. It was practically unprecedented. My mom had to take a written test and then a physical fitness test. The physical fitness test, it was designed for men. Part of this test required that my mom climb over this 7-foot 2-inch wall. Now, my mother was all of about 4 feet 13 inches tall. To help my mom out in passing this test, my dad built a replica of this wall made out of a door between two pine trees in our backyard. He didn't tell her he made it an inch higher at 7 feet 3 inches, and I would watch my mom go out there after dinner every night and try to get over this thing. Initially, she couldn't reach to the top, and when she finally could, she would usually just fall off into the dirt. But my mom, she wasn't one to give up.…”