Great to hear and raises interesting thoughts on how social media can be used in politics and to get things accomplished: A mayor who lets residents notify him through twitter when they needed their streets plowed and he instantly notified the plows.......and when they couldn't get around fast enough, the mayor went over with his own shovel to dig them out! And when one resident tweeted Cory Booker, saying his sister couldn’t get out to buy diapers, an hour later, Booker showed up, with a bag of Pampers!
Wow! This mayor actually is a public servant! Obviously not the sort of thing a single person could accomplish in every city(many cities would be just too large) or even in this one city all the time. Just refreshing to hear of a man in a public position who is willing to do such a thing, generally we only hear about power-hungry, ego driven selfish people who occupy public positions (the kind who don't feel they owe you anything once they're elected).
More details from the Time article:
The mayor was out clearing snow until 3 a.m. on Dec. 28 before heading back out three hours later after a few winks. "This is one of those times you're just pushing," Booker told TIME while riding around Newark early Tuesday evening, anxiously awaiting a Twitter response from a Newark resident who said her 82-year-old grandmother was shut in by snow. A few minutes earlier, Booker, who played football at Stanford, helped dig out a New Jersey transit bus. "It's an endurance test." This is not the first time Booker has responded to distressed citizens on Twitter. He shoveled the driveway of an elderly man last New Year's Eve after the man's daughter tweeted about his predicament. He also hit the streets during snowstorms last February.
When Booker first started tweeting a few years ago, some older Newark residents complained that his online obsession was a narcissistic waste of time. And while it's fair to wonder if all those unplowed Newark streets serve as an indictment of his administration, it's hard to knock his Twitter habit now. The media-savvy Booker knows his Twitter transparency is winning political points. (The mayor of one of America's most troubled cities, he has starred in two documentaries about his life, picked a jokey fight with Conan O'Brien that landed him on the Tonight Show, and is a darling of the East Coast elite.) Look at Cory go! But for a mayor who sometimes gets accused of being a dilettante with ambitions beyond Newark, he deserves credit for doing the dirty work that many politicians avoid. (Plus, Booker's national profile helped the city secure a $100 million education grant from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. His hobnobbing is delivering the goods for his constituents, who re-elected him in May.)
Booker's Twitter tactics have raised the bar for other local officials, and beg the question: In the aftermath of the snowpocalypse, are other northeastern officials grabbing a shovel and smart phone, and following Booker's lead? It certainly doesn't look like it."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2039945,00.html#ixzz19X00AGMo
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