"This is an anemic step, but at least it's stopping us from going in the wrong direction," Sen. Cory Booker said. | Getty Sen. Booker offers reality check on criminal justice reform The New Jersey Democrat tells black activists that the outlook for this year isn’t good. But he says there’s still hope.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) offered a grim assessment of sentencing reform’s chances this year to a group of young African-American activists this week, but told them he’s gotten a pledge from Hillary Clinton to push aggressively on the issue if she wins in November.

Supporters of the current criminal-justice reform package are counting on the House to pass the measure this month, offering momentum for a lame-duck vote in the Senate. But with Donald Trump promoting a “law and order” message, Republicans are increasingly skittish about looking soft on crime. Meanwhile, the left is starting to shift some of its focus toward trying again for a more aggressive bill next year, under potentially better political circumstances.


Booker said the compromise he hashed out with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has a “20 percent chance of passing this Congress. Maybe even lower."

The bill would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for federal drug offenders, with retroactive changes that would cut existing sentences for those deemed nonviolent, and give judges more flexibility to tailor punishments.

Speaking in the lobby of his office on Wednesday, Booker urged activists from Black Youth Project 100 and the National Black Justice Coalition to help build support for more substantial changes to sentencing laws. He said he’s repeatedly pressed the subject with Clinton during her pursuit for the White House.

“Literally the conversation when she called me up to tell me I was not going to be her vice president, the first thing I talked to her after that was, ‘I need criminal justice reform,’ and her pledging to me that she would do that,” Booker said. “From jump we've got to get back into the trenches, because we may control the Senate."

They pressed Booker to try to get rid of the new mandatory minimums for some crimes, including domestic violence and transporting weapons of mass destruction, in the current package, which would reduce them for other drug offenses that have contributed to the mass incarceration that has disproportionately affected people of color. Booker said he still wants to see the current measure pass.

"This is a bill that I would hope, if you guys could make your choice as activists, that you would come to the same conclusion that I would. This is an anemic step, but at least it's stopping us from going in the wrong direction, and it would liberate men and women, period. Poor folks and people of color," Booker said.

That’s not the conclusion they came to.

“Our job is to agitate to make sure that we don't just move something because it's movable, and we create something that's going to be as transformative as possible,” said Charlene Carruthers, national director for BYP 100, which is trying to combine the energy of the street protests in Ferguson and Baltimore with the concrete policy proposals of a more traditional advocacy organization. About two dozen activists met with more than 20 members’ offices — including aides to House Speaker Paul Ryan and three other Republicans — during the group’s first lobby day on Wednesday.

BYP 100 was founded three years ago, in the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the death of Trayvon Martin and, its leaders note, the same week that founders of the Black Lives Matter Network created the eponymous hashtag that has become shorthand for the broader protest movement against police violence.

But BYP 100, which partially focuses on defunding police forces, increasingly bristles at associations with “Black Lives Matter,” although it has helped raise their profile. Over a year-long process, it joined other organizations to spearhead a comprehensive Vision for Black Lives Platform that was endorsed by about 50 groups this summer (including the Black Lives Matter Network).

On Wednesday, Booker appeared to win their hearts if not their minds with his eagerness to collaborate and have them work with his communications team. He gave “some props” to Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who declined to stand for the national anthem to protest police violence against people of color, for igniting the conversation. He said that even with more Democrats in the Senate, new mandatory minimums would likely have to be part of any compromise to appease conservatives.

"So this is the political reality. But you all are activists, you should say, ‘I don't give a damn about realpolitik, I want to reimagine the future,’” Booker said.

That wasn’t the attitude they encountered in the office of Rep. Bobby Scott’, who encouraged BYP 100 to get behind his more ambitious measure — even though they object to its new funding for police training, body cameras and pensions.

“We’re just challenging legislators to think about what’s going on with public safety beyond policing,” said Janaé Bonsu, BYP 100’s public policy chair. That money, she argued, should go instead to education, health and other programs to help poor blacks who’ve suffered from centuries of discrimination.

“You’re not going to be able to change the police force without putting some money into training,” Scott said, during a session broadcast on Facebook Live that at times grew contentious as he urged them to develop more electoral power at the state and local levels.

Scott, whose office tried to get the movement to mobilize against Grassley’s bill last year, expressed some frustration that they were attacking his measure.

"They had a 150-page bill, one paragraph they had problems with. I think if you listen to them, they agreed with just about everything else,” Scott said in an interview, noting that his bill was stalled, while the other measure could hit the floor next week. “They have to discuss bills that are coming up, and they have to take a position pro or con.”

Scott nonetheless participated in a sweltering news conference on the Capitol Triangle late Wednesday afternoon. Complete with talking points and glossy booklets, the lobby day marked a conventional approach to persuasion meant to help a group with a radical vision — to abolish the police — build relationships with traditional politicians. BYP 100’s leadership cast Wednesday as something of a trial run, a chance for the activists to get a taste of federal lobbying and get to know members ahead of the real work after the elections.

“We want members to understand that ‘black lives matter’ is absolutely not just a hashtag. The Movement for Black Lives is not just a gathering of people who are passionate about things, but that we are actually going to work on the local state and federal level,” said Katrina Rogers, who traveled from New Orleans to join about two dozen other BYP 100 members on the Hill on Wednesday. “When you ask us to compromise, we want you to know that you're asking us to take a loss on things that are important to us."

The group is also still committed to more “disruptive” forms of protest: five activists, clad in Fund Black Futures T-shirts, staged a silent protest during a House Budget Committee hearing. When they unveiled signs calling to “Defund Police,” a Capitol Police officer asked them to put away the signs or face arrest. They left the room, as a delegation from Sri Lanka snapped cellphone photos.

And not all the meetings resulted in much productive dialogue. During a meeting in Ryan’s Capitol suite, the speaker’s assistant for policy Ted McCann just talked in “circles,” said Isaiah Wilson of the National Black Justice Coalition. Still, that the group got a meeting is notable: “We appreciate the opportunity to hear their views," said a Ryan spokesman.

While they won’t compromise as an organization, BYP 100’s leaders understood that their actual progress would likely be incremental.

"Although we didn't convert anyone to say ‘Yeah! You know, abolish police, right?’” said Bonsu, laughing. "One day, hopefully, we'll get there."

