The most revered ancient leaders carried scepters. This leader carries a snow shovel.

Enter Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, NJ and the hero of Blizzard 2010.

I admit, I read every one of Cory Booker’s tweets during this storm cleanup, and I am truly amazed at his leadership and personal effectiveness. Not only was he out there, literally, in the trenches, but he used twitter to cut out the bureaucracy of government. Government became accessible, and actually helpful.

Cory’s tweets did three things that Newark needed desperately:

• Immediate Response to Crisis – People tweeted for help, and Cory Booker responded. Someone said they can’t get out and they need diapers. An hour later, he showed up at their doorstep with diapers. Each night, Cory Booker was up until the wee hours of the morning, helping dig out people’s cars, emergency vehicles, NJ Transit buses, whoever was stuck. He also spent a lot of time on his cell phone, talking to Newark residents, and sending over help. This kind of leadership today is very rare.
• Encouragement – Cory Booker wrote things like, “Extraordinary challenges call for extraordinary effort, its the only way to get extraordinary results. Please help someone out today.” Wherever he went, he encouraged volunteers, and this was incredible. People really came out and helped pure strangers dig out of the snow. I don’t even live in Newark, but I feel the sense of unity he created.
• Appreciation – Cory Booker didn’t forget to give credit where credit was due. He tweeted things like, “So grateful for the hard work of police officer who has been with me much of last 2 days. He is a superstar. Go Det. John Olivera” and “Here in the South Ward – grateful for residents on Aldine coming out past midnight to help. We have great ppl in Brick City.”

This was truly amazing leadership.

NYC got a lot of negative press for the time it took sanitation crews to get to all its streets. But as Cory Booker points out, in a tweet, “People far 2 rough on @mikebloomberg – still fighting 2 clear snow in NWK & we are 1/29th size of NYC.”

So Newark wasn’t plowed any faster, but the fact that Cory Booker was on the streets shoveling, calling people, and tweeting to the public made all the difference in the world.

Bloomberg came out of this storm at first defensive, and then threw his own crews “under the bus” (pun intended), saying, “We did not do as good a job as we wanted to do, or as the city has the right to expect.” Bloomberg, however, said the time to grill sanitation bosses on what went wrong is not at hand – that comes once all the streets are cleared.

But Cory Booker came out a hero.

From beginning to end, he was there, he was responsive, and he made people feel taken care of. Just shows you what real leadership and twitter can do.

What did you think about Cory Booker’s tweets?

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