0:00

Hi, everyone, it's Sophia and welcome

0:02

back to Work in Progress. Today's

0:15

guest is a personal hero

0:17

of mine and is almost a poster

0:19

child for overcoming adversity and the power

0:22

of the human spirit. He's a community leader

0:24

and educator, a former mayor, a Truman

0:27

Scholarship recipient, essayist, and more

0:29

recently an author, as well

0:32

as Special Advisor for Economic Mobility

0:34

and Opportunity for the State of California.

0:37

I am so honored today to sit down with

0:39

Michael Derrick Tubbs. Michael has broken

0:42

records in broken ground pretty much everywhere he's

0:44

gone in his life, from his start growing up in

0:46

poverty in South Stockton, to the national

0:48

debate competition stage in Cincinnati, to Stanford

0:51

University, and back to Stockton once more,

0:53

where he served as both the youngest

0:55

council member and the

0:57

youngest mayor in the city's history. Recently,

1:00

Michael published his memoir The Deeper the

1:02

Roots, which is already receiving glowing

1:04

praise from publications and figures all over

1:06

the country, including Work

1:08

in Progress guest Dr Ibramex

1:11

Kendy. I'm looking forward to talking with

1:13

Michael Tubbs, not only about what he's

1:15

overcome on a personal level, but also

1:17

what he's helped his community, his city,

1:19

and his state overcome

1:22

and dream of and what we can all do

1:24

to push forward toward a better future. Let's

1:26

get started. Hi,

1:40

Michael, so good to see you. It's

1:43

so nice to see you. How are you. I

1:46

am good, like

1:48

content, happy, tired, but

1:50

really good. Yeah, that's

1:52

tired. Have to do with having a new baby. Yeah,

1:55

two kids, other two and also just

1:58

so much going on. There's

2:00

also so much happening in the world and so much

2:02

you feel like you have to respond to and so much. It's

2:06

a lot of good and it's a lot of work. But

2:08

but noble plates. Yeah,

2:10

I feel that. I wonder if

2:12

you've been experiencing, you know, your

2:14

own version of what I have. I've I've found

2:17

that my my anxiety

2:20

has been feeling high

2:22

lately. But it's it's that specific

2:25

kind of thing where the energy almost

2:27

of you've just been called to the principal's office. I

2:29

have this feeling of I've done something wrong

2:32

because I feel like I can't possibly

2:34

do enough in response to

2:37

what's going on in the world right now. And

2:40

I've always I've always

2:42

felt called to be a doer,

2:44

a solver, a helper, a person who shows

2:46

up, And lately I feel like I'm

2:49

I feel like I'm falling behind because

2:51

there's so much, and I'm worried

2:53

that I'm not doing enough for that I don't know enough.

2:56

And I wonder if you,

2:59

as a person who I look got as such a helper

3:01

and such a problem solver and such a leader,

3:04

if you're feeling some of that kind of you

3:07

know, pandemic and social

3:10

crisis anxiety as well. Yeah,

3:12

I think my manifest almost

3:15

in a sort of is it futile?

3:18

Like? Is it is everything I'm doing worth

3:20

it? Right? Like? And I think particularly

3:23

it's been more cute since the

3:25

baby, because so much like me, like babies need

3:27

attention and babies need time. It's like, well, the

3:30

time I spend doing a I could be spent like

3:32

playing with my daughter, I could be spent just

3:34

being fully present with my with my son. I

3:37

think particularly this last sort of a couple

3:39

of weeks with the child

3:41

tax credit, and it might

3:43

be cut out of legislation

3:46

and thinking of all the work and efforts

3:48

spent to get a majority, and so

3:50

it's hard and I have to remind myself that

3:52

this is, this is part of

3:54

their complexities and messiness of

3:57

democracy, but also of humanity

4:00

in sort of just being really grounded

4:02

and and understanding that um,

4:05

I'm only accountable for that which I can

4:08

do, UM,

4:10

and have to trust everyone's been what

4:12

they can do, and that my pastor

4:14

always says, you can't pour out of

4:16

an empty cup, so that you have to

4:18

just make sure you're doing

4:21

ta care ofselves. You could actually not

4:24

be half of you try to help a

4:26

million things, but be all of you.

4:28

So now, but so yeah, I think it's

4:31

been more of a like where's the

4:33

light at the end of the tunnel, sort of fasil,

4:35

Like you're on this journey and you know there's a destination

4:37

and you know you're moving in the right right direction, but you're

4:40

at the part of the tunnel where it's just dark and

4:42

you're tired, you don't

4:44

see it. And I think that's kind

4:46

of what I feel mostly

4:48

now. It's

4:51

interesting to me that thing that you said, balancing

4:54

for you fatherhood with

4:58

showing up and you

5:00

can't pour from an empty cup. I think

5:03

honestly part of where

5:05

it comes from a bit for me is in

5:07

my own version of family building.

5:10

You know, I

5:13

have been such a

5:15

an individual focused on the collective for so

5:17

long, and um,

5:20

really, after some

5:23

experiences, you know, at the earlier part

5:25

of this decade I find myself in was

5:27

like, I'm good on my own. I show

5:30

up for other people. I've got my

5:32

my friends who I love, and this is just what we do.

5:34

And now I'm I'm entering

5:37

into this new stage in my life and you

5:39

know, getting ready to get married

5:41

and think about what family looks like. And

5:43

I have another person who I show up for every

5:45

day, and so

5:48

I am less available, and

5:50

I am not reading the news

5:52

for the four to five hours a day

5:55

that I was. I'm only in it between

5:57

being on set and being you know, at

5:59

home, I'm only in it for maybe

6:01

an hour and a half or two hours a day. And I have

6:04

this panic that I'm not doing enough.

6:07

And two of the things actually that have been really

6:09

helpful for me to remember our

6:11

lessons I've learned from other activists who

6:14

remind me that we're in a relay. You

6:16

know, we're passing the baton all

6:18

the time. You're not meant to carry it all

6:21

the time. And

6:24

I just watched Patrice

6:26

Colors give a talk discussing

6:28

how every time we enter into these

6:30

eras of immense progress,

6:32

there is a backswing, you know, the agencies

6:35

of power realized they're being challenged

6:37

by the people, and we so far outnumber them

6:40

that they get really vicious in the pushing

6:43

towards the past. And

6:46

it helps me to remember that it's cyclical,

6:50

that this is something we have seen

6:52

before. Granted we haven't

6:54

seen it with the power of digital disinformation

6:56

and foreign nations meddling in elections,

6:59

and um the

7:02

the pr machine behind policing

7:05

in the carcerale system in quite

7:07

this way. You know, even here in l

7:09

A, we see you know, our our d a getting

7:12

blamed for policies that he literally doesn't

7:15

enact or have control of at

7:17

all. He's like, that's actually not

7:19

my jurisdiction, but you guys are saying it's my fault,

7:21

and you want to recall me for stuff that other people are

7:24

responsible for here because people

7:26

are scared that he's progressive. So so it's it's

7:28

it's good to understand how it happens,

7:30

these these sorts of machinations of historically

7:34

abusive power. But it's hard to

7:36

just feel like a little person who's trying

7:38

to stand up, you know, being the David

7:40

did the goliathe You're like, come on, when do we

7:43

When did the David's win? Yeah?

7:45

And And honestly, the most

7:47

intent of those feelings happened

7:50

when I lost reelection, because

7:54

even with the disinformation, even

7:56

with all the craziness and the lies, I just

7:59

thought that as I was doing the right thing, because

8:02

we're making progress, because I had

8:04

did it. I wasn't my first campaign,

8:06

so I knew how to win campaign. You have to raise the

8:08

most money. Check. You have to have the most endorsements.

8:11

Check. You have to knock on the most doors.

8:13

Check, you have the most volunteers. Check.

8:16

So doing all that and then reducing

8:18

homicides like objectively

8:22

good stuff and still losing

8:25

it just felt so fundamentally unjust.

8:27

And I remember being very sort

8:29

of angry, um and embarrassed,

8:32

and thinking was the last my entire

8:34

twenties were spent in the sexiness

8:36

of local governments? Did I just throw away

8:38

my my my twenties for

8:40

for for what? Remember? After

8:42

like a lot of prayer and thinking and meditation,

8:45

and I think a lot of insights you shared became

8:49

clear to me and people would ask me, or

8:51

what did you learn or what what? What? Lessons do

8:53

you have from from from

8:55

the loss, And the biggest one was

8:58

that I recognized that aggrest

9:00

comes at a price, and if you're

9:02

going to really push things forward, the

9:04

stats quo is not the status quo because it just happened.

9:07

The stats quotas the stats quo with intent, meaning

9:10

that there's gonna be a pushback. And being

9:12

so young and winning

9:14

city council, winning mayor winning

9:17

all these policy fights, I was just like, well, maybe

9:19

that's maybe I figured it out, maybe

9:22

I've cracked the code, and it's

9:24

just a starts reminder that when you do this

9:26

work, you have to be built

9:28

in sort of resilience for then ever

9:30

they pushback and

9:33

the and I think what's what was telling for

9:35

me, and I talked about a little bit in the book, was that the

9:37

fact that I was shocked, the fact that

9:39

I was hurt because I was fundamentally

9:42

did not anticipate that

9:44

as even an option. And I realized that

9:47

naivety was very dangerous

9:49

and it was good to have lost. So

9:51

now in continuing these fights, I have much

9:53

more clear eye. It only comes with experience.

9:56

I don't know, this winning streak is not forever,

9:58

Oh no, like it's just like this, losing

10:01

is not forever, right, and these are temporary

10:03

states. We have to be really focused on the goal. But

10:06

would've learned that if I had one again. I'm

10:08

like, oh, you guys, come on, it's not that hard. You just

10:10

have to talk to people that work. It's

10:12

like, yes, you have can do that, but there's

10:15

going to be some kindlic and it's not going to

10:17

be linear. And that was such a great lesson.

10:19

And it's after being angry and upset. After

10:22

about a week, I was okay, still a little

10:24

bit hurt, very embarrassed, but I

10:26

have some clarity. Um that's to what's

10:28

next. And I think I've learned at least

10:30

part of what I'm supposed to learn from that experience.

10:33

Yeah. I think when you forget

10:37

the size of the system you existence,

10:40

that's when you have that naivete

10:42

like last year, really

10:45

going hard and I

10:47

think I've always gone hard on politics, but really

10:49

going hard about um,

10:51

the authoritarian and fascist risk

10:54

democracy that is Trump is um.

10:57

I became a target for Breitbart

11:01

and suddenly I was like, WHOA

11:03

why am I getting shadow band

11:05

on Instagram? And why am I receiving thousands

11:08

of death threats a day? Not like a couple

11:10

of day, which I'm used to like thousands and thousands.

11:14

You know, I've got like guys from the U. S. Marine

11:16

Corps who are oath keepers, like telling

11:18

me they're going to hunt me down on a pack and

11:20

you know, make me pay, like really scary

11:24

shit. And

11:27

some people framed it to me, which

11:29

is kind of insane um but sort

11:32

of a way where you have to think again about these sort

11:34

of perspectives. They were like, well,

11:36

you know, you're really messaging

11:39

effectively against that

11:41

kind of state sponsored violence

11:43

when that violence comes for you. And

11:48

it was my realization much like you had

11:50

to go, oh, I am a man who's been running

11:53

progressively against the system. I

11:55

went, oh, I am

11:57

I am progressively messaging

12:00

against fascism, and fascism

12:03

wants to step on my neck. Whoa.

12:06

And it just wasn't I

12:08

didn't have the perspective. And a friend

12:11

of mine, similarly, you know,

12:13

the people I went to for counsel, said you

12:15

have to understand that when you have a microphone

12:17

to five million people a day across you know, three

12:19

social channels, you're a threat, babe.

12:22

And I was like, oh man, here I am

12:24

just thinking. I'm like in it

12:26

to win it with all my all my friends on the

12:28

front lines. I forgot.

12:31

I forgot what my ability

12:35

to grab a megaphone might mean to the people

12:37

who don't want people like us to have a megaphone.

12:40

And it really

12:42

made me have to sit and take stock and

12:45

think about how how

12:47

do I continue to work in a system when I see

12:49

how dangerous the system is, and

12:54

when I have very rational

12:56

individual fear, but I have an

12:58

even greater desire for collect deliberation.

13:01

How do we learn to balance bigger

13:04

things? How how when

13:07

we step outside of our I'm just

13:09

one and we realize how

13:11

big these these sort

13:13

of battles between light and dark are, how

13:16

do we take ownership in that space? And

13:19

for me, I found some fuel

13:22

in looking at history and

13:26

and in knowing you and

13:28

knowing your story, and and diving

13:30

deeper in your story in your book. And this

13:32

might feel like a stretch, but it's a question I've really been

13:34

thinking about as I've been wondering

13:37

about each of our individual but

13:39

you know, in the same bucket journeys

13:42

over the last couple of years, in particular,

13:45

I wondered, did you take stock looking

13:48

back even at your own

13:50

life, because I think

13:52

of your story. You know you, you began

13:55

and South Stockton. You grew up in

13:57

a single parent household. You've

13:59

talked about growing up through the difficulty

14:01

of poverty and and the looming

14:04

malaise of your father's incarceration, and

14:06

and did you did you look back at your childhood

14:09

and as the man you

14:11

are today say, oh, everything

14:13

in my life set me up to lead for people

14:16

like me. Did that

14:18

give you fuel when you were in the

14:21

moment of inspecting

14:25

during your own reckoning? Yeah?

14:27

No. I remember my

14:31

first or second city council meeting.

14:33

I was tween two years old ent City council

14:36

twenty to Michael, and

14:38

I was terrified. I was scared as

14:40

hill. I was like, I don't want to get up here and look stupid.

14:42

I don't want to sound stupid. I want to

14:44

be embarrassing. I don't want anyone to see actually

14:47

he's a fraud. And then I

14:49

remember sort of waiting for

14:51

someone else to speak. We were talking about

14:53

policing, incarceration. As waiting, I was

14:55

going to wait for the elder councilman to speak,

14:58

and no one did, so I remember

15:00

clicking the button and saying, well, actually,

15:03

I think we have to be very focused, like

15:05

it's like the whole, the whole spill. And

15:07

in my colleagues agreed with me, and

15:11

I was like, oh, courage, be yet courage

15:13

and accale. And I realized

15:15

back then that sort of

15:17

my experiences gave me a unique

15:20

insight and that it wasn't enough for

15:22

me to be there as a representative

15:24

if nothing was changing, if the conversation wasn't

15:26

different. And then when I

15:28

became mayor, I was adamant

15:31

that, particularly being the youngest

15:33

and the first, that we had

15:36

to it had to be different, like government

15:38

should look different, governing should like different.

15:40

Priorities took different because I'm different, and

15:42

I I think that's where you gave me the courage

15:44

to do like basic income and to do the

15:47

work of reducing like I think all that

15:49

just stemmed from

15:52

I trust my people and and and these

15:54

are the experiences I had so so and actually

15:57

writing the book, it also was

15:59

helpful to sort of, you know, I haven't been around

16:01

that not long. It was helpful the chart

16:04

even for thirty years, how all

16:07

the setbacks and disappointments were

16:09

almost like slingshots

16:11

that were stretching for even

16:13

further, propelling and

16:16

so then cause I finished the book in October, then

16:18

November I lost three elections, so I to write again,

16:21

and going back and reading it was also helpful.

16:23

I say, well, look like you didn't get this

16:25

fellowship and like what happened next she was

16:27

on city council. You didn't into this school, end

16:30

up loving going to Stanford. You didn't get I

16:32

have thought about all the times I messed up or

16:34

something that happened, and I was like it sucked

16:36

at the moment. It was actually just a stretching

16:39

function to prepare to go further and I can

16:41

even imagine so so slide also

16:43

really helped. But the last thing,

16:46

I'll say connect to the first thing we started

16:48

with. But I also I'm

16:50

trying to learn not to put as much pressure on

16:52

myself because I realized now

16:55

I'm so much

16:57

happier because I don't have

16:59

I put so much pressure on myself to

17:01

be not just a representative for the

17:03

city, but it representative for entire generation.

17:07

I'm represented for an entire point of view. I just

17:09

felt like I had to like, like, if

17:11

I don't do it, no one else like me may ever

17:13

get may not ever get this position. Again, I realized

17:15

I was just just be more gentle with myself

17:18

because I was just so much to carry and when

17:20

manifesting how I interact with my friends and

17:22

how to dreamt of my family and even how I interact

17:24

with the people I want to serve, because inside I had just

17:26

all this anxiety fear

17:29

like well, if it doesn't work or if you fail, what

17:31

if nothing changes? And it just

17:33

created a lot of extra stress

17:35

on top of the stress of doing what you said

17:38

into the challenging dominant paradigms.

17:40

M H. I wonder

17:42

why that is that we have such

17:45

a tendency to put pressure on ourselves in that

17:47

way, because you

17:50

would never do it to your friends. You

17:52

know, we celebrate our friends wins, even if their

17:54

baby wins. We're like, look at

17:57

you, you did it. And then with ourselves

18:00

like if I don't solve this crisis,

18:02

I have failed. We we forget

18:05

that our incremental contributions add

18:08

up to the sum of our life. You know, I'm

18:12

really fascinated by your early story, and of

18:14

course it doesn't surprise me one bit that we just like jumped

18:17

into the present. It was like, tell me exactly what's on

18:19

your heart and soul right now? Of course, but

18:21

normally I start with people, and I do begin

18:25

at their beginning, because there

18:27

are plenty of people who can, you know, see

18:29

you on today's pot and go, oh my god, I love Michael

18:32

Tubbs, or they'll go, hey, I've heard about that guy,

18:34

or who is that guy? You know, wherever they fall on

18:36

the spectrum of awareness. And I

18:39

always like people to meet you and

18:42

all of our guests as they began, and

18:45

I would love for you to offer our

18:47

listeners a bit of an overview of you

18:50

know, young, young

18:53

Mr Michael Tubbs. You know how you grew up

18:55

in and how

18:58

your perspective began to be shaped by what was

19:00

around you, um in

19:02

your city. I think it's I

19:04

think it'll it'll help connect the dots of how

19:07

did this man become a city council member at

19:09

the young age of twenty two. So will

19:11

you paint a little bit of that picture for the folks

19:13

at home. Yeah, so, first

19:16

and foremost, Stockton, California. Born

19:18

and raised in stock In California. That's home. Even

19:21

to live in stock anymore, that's still home. It's

19:23

still so much part of sort of who

19:26

I am and who I become. It's a

19:28

it's a challenging place, but a beautiful

19:30

place. Um and my mother,

19:33

my aunto my grandmother. There were like three

19:37

I called like the three walls of mothers like that, all

19:39

three of them equally made it their charged

19:42

a parent because my mother was sixteen when

19:44

she had when she was printing with me in seventeen

19:46

when I was born, and my father he

19:49

was in all attention for so then when I was

19:51

born and has been car straded for twenty

19:54

six or three years. I've been alive, including

19:56

ever since I was six years old. So

19:59

the part of it, I mean, part

20:01

of it's like it's a difficulty, but part

20:04

of it was also just a phenomenal

20:06

effort that my mama, hunting

20:08

grandmother put in. And I realized

20:11

now as a parent what they did that was

20:13

so special is that

20:15

they literally gave up their life for me

20:17

and my cousins and my little brother. They just

20:19

ceased to have It

20:22

was work, kids, work, There was no because

20:24

I think about myself and I'm like, okay, after this event,

20:27

so I need someone to watch the kids for this time. I have to go

20:29

here, I need to travel there, And they had none

20:31

of that their life there, they made it their

20:33

whole focus and mission of life was the parent

20:36

and they did such a phenomenal job. And

20:39

I feel in many ways my kids

20:41

are so in a better material

20:44

position than then I was in, for sure,

20:46

but I still in terms

20:48

of internal balance I have with myself now, part of it

20:51

is like, man, am

20:53

I like I can't give up

20:55

everything and just like make

20:57

them my life. I was like, man, that's that really helped

20:59

me. Um and

21:02

I went to public schools, and

21:05

I guess early on really

21:08

recognized that for a lot of people

21:10

just had expectations of me and

21:12

my ability or who I would become just

21:15

based off the fact that I didn't have my father

21:17

wasn't present, or just based off the fact that

21:19

my mom was young, or just based off the fact that I

21:21

was black, or just based on the fact that's

21:24

from South Stopping. And

21:26

I noticed that some people would

21:28

like internalized that and sort

21:30

of act out in ways that fulfilled are

21:32

confirmed those low expectations, and

21:36

I just resolved to do the exact

21:40

opposite, but to the hundredth degree and

21:42

just making like proving wrong, poop were wrong,

21:45

Phop, We're wrong. And a lot of that came from my mom, and

21:48

then I also my grandmother was like

21:50

a spiritual bullwark. So I spent a lot

21:52

of time in church that I was like a child preacher essentially

21:54

for the time I was like seven to

21:57

fifteen. And I mean, I think that also was

21:59

a great experience, but it

22:02

also put a lot of pressure or because I feel

22:04

like, Okay, if I want to be in front of congregation, I

22:06

do everything perfectly. I can't make

22:09

I can't. You know, it's there's so much pressure

22:11

and so much like you need to be the

22:14

example, you need to be the one

22:16

people like I want to follow his lead.

22:18

But I think that leadership

22:20

and that I built in the in the opportunity

22:22

to be in front of congregation speak really helped

22:24

preparing me for for us later. So longer story

22:27

short, ended up going to Stanford and

22:29

that's when my life it was like a slingshot.

22:32

That's just when my life just took off because

22:35

it was the first time in my life, which sounds really

22:37

basic, but it's true. It was the first time in my life

22:40

where all the basics

22:42

were taken care of with no stress, like

22:46

I knew I was only eat

22:48

three times a day, no stress, like

22:51

there was no constant economic

22:53

stress and anxiety over how you gonna pay this mortgage?

22:55

How you gonna pay these lights? Because you work? Actually I was

22:58

help. It was just just all that was off the table.

23:00

So all I have to do was write papers

23:02

and read books. And my classmates

23:04

would be so stressed, and I would be like, yeah,

23:08

this is such a privilege, Like all we have to

23:10

do is read a book, and even

23:13

if you fail, this class will get a job because

23:15

you're at Stanford. Like this is I said, you guys, this is

23:17

not pressure. This is so easy. And

23:20

I think from there that's when I also recognized

23:22

that my classmates

23:25

were smart, but they weren't

23:27

necessarily smarter than the people I grew up with, and

23:29

stopped it, Like my classmates worked hard, but

23:32

they didn't necessarily work hard. Like it

23:34

just really dissuaded me of all

23:36

these notions I had going in that I was successful

23:39

because I was special because I worked

23:41

hard and I was exceptional and

23:43

and I do everything right

23:45

and and that's why I'm successful. And I pulled

23:48

myself up on my bootstraps and I

23:50

got to college and met people who smoked

23:53

all day every day, who did

23:56

hard drugs, who just didn't

23:59

do their home, like we're still successful, And I was

24:01

like wait, or who were very lazy? You

24:03

know, it's like wait, and they're

24:05

successful too. And that's really where

24:07

I began to think about sort of Okay, well,

24:10

why do I have to work twice as hard to get

24:12

to the same place as someone who doesn't have to work at all

24:14

because their parents happens to be on the bird of trust fee

24:17

And that is and that's what droving a

24:19

policy. So I spent all my time in college

24:22

focus on policy policy,

24:24

where how did how did this happen? Like

24:27

if it's not an act of God? Where

24:29

are the actual rules on the books? And then

24:32

interned in the White House and the President Obama and

24:35

while they're one of my cousins, Danielle

24:37

James, was murdered at a house party. And

24:40

it was really that sort of juxtaposition

24:45

between like being at Stanford

24:47

and the White House like the height

24:49

of American success and feeling

24:51

very powerless to do anything to help my family

24:54

that it's like, well, what's

24:56

even the point of me being here? What's

24:59

like is everything meg I mentioned earlier,

25:01

what's the point? Like, is there any that do

25:04

I do I need to care about the

25:06

world? Can I just be out for me? If

25:08

this if it's gonna be pain and suffering anyway, like,

25:10

why not enjoy? Why not grab these

25:12

moments of joy and individual success?

25:15

I think going back home, I made

25:18

the crazy decision of the twenty one year old

25:21

that during my senior in college, I'm gonna

25:23

run for office. And it was really to

25:25

work out feelings of survivors guilt. Um.

25:28

It was really to channel

25:31

that pain and that anger in a way,

25:33

that way to be self destructive or hinduistics.

25:36

And the older I get, the

25:39

more I'm like trying to rationalize, are

25:41

you sure? But year

25:44

I was like, no, this one I'm supposed to do. I feel it like

25:46

this is exactly what I'm supposed to do. And

25:49

long story short, I referen city council.

25:52

UM, end up winning and spend my twenties

25:55

in local government. I'm trying to

25:57

make my hometown better. I love

26:00

it. So there's a couple of things that

26:03

jump out at me. This notion

26:05

that you talk about when

26:08

you were at school looking around one

26:11

of the things that fascinates me, especially

26:14

in reading the works of all

26:16

of the civil rights giants who

26:18

have come before us. Who's you know, shoulders

26:21

we stand on and who we study to try

26:23

to build on in our own generation

26:26

is that some of us are granted the

26:28

permission to experiment and

26:31

make mistakes and like be

26:34

wild kids, and some

26:37

of us are not. And

26:40

when you talk about what you

26:43

witnessed, you know, getting to Stanford and

26:45

going, oh, wait a minute, like that

26:47

guy smokes weed all day, that guy parties

26:49

hard on the weekends. Like in

26:52

in certain social circles,

26:54

those things are seen as fine, and

26:56

in other circles, you know, God

26:58

forbid you ever have weed on you. You're going

27:00

to get a charge and be in the system for the rest of your

27:03

life and maybe be jailed, um

27:05

for decades for something that people

27:07

are now you know, selling and hips,

27:09

your packaging. Um. None

27:11

of that is lost on me, you know, the difference

27:13

in how we experience.

27:16

And I've also seen you

27:18

know a lot of people from those

27:21

worlds, you know, the Stanfords, the Harvard's,

27:24

the grad schools that

27:26

are fancy, the people who wind up working

27:28

on Wall Street, who really get upset

27:31

when we have conversations about privilege.

27:35

And one of the ways

27:37

I like to think about it is stress

27:40

is stress, right, Like what you're going through affects

27:42

your body. You stepping

27:46

out of Stockton and into Stanford had

27:48

a larger per view worldview

27:52

on the stressors that affect people like

27:55

you mentioned, how are we going to pay this mortgage?

27:57

How are we going to keep these lights on? Who's going to carry extra

27:59

show? So you get to a world where people

28:01

are only stressed about how am I going to make my

28:04

grades? Do this paper live up to all the

28:06

expectations I have on this campus? And you're like,

28:08

that's it, and and

28:11

I have had to think about that in my own world.

28:14

I grew up in a household where it's like the American

28:16

dream, immigrant story, right, Like, my dad moved

28:18

to the US, he went to school here,

28:20

he hustled hard, he started a business, he became

28:23

an employer of a hell of a lot of people. He

28:25

is an immigrant success story. So

28:27

I grew up in a household where we weren't

28:30

like loaded, but I didn't worry

28:32

about where my next meal was coming from

28:34

or if my parents were going to keep the lights on. And

28:39

now when I am experiencing

28:41

the stress of the expectations of my world,

28:44

my career, what everyone expects

28:46

of me, what I'm supposed to do, what I'm supposed

28:48

to be, the kind of leader I'm supposed to be I'm always supposed to

28:50

be Available'm always supposed to be happy. I'm supposed

28:52

to know all my lines and everybody else's. And do you

28:55

know medical procedure, rehearsals,

28:57

um during my lunch breaks, And like all of

28:59

these things, I'm stressed. And

29:03

the way I think about it when

29:05

I check in with my

29:08

own relative privilege, I

29:10

don't dismiss my stress. But

29:13

what I do remind myself

29:15

of is, you know what these

29:18

are champagne problems. I

29:20

am so lucky to

29:23

have stress from my dreams

29:25

coming true on my plate m and

29:28

so I acknowledge what my body is

29:30

experiencing. But I always

29:32

try to be deeply grateful about

29:37

the perspective of

29:39

stress I am not going

29:41

through. How can we be more gracious

29:44

with each other? And

29:46

I believe if we come from that place of

29:48

more graciousness for the experience of our

29:50

friends and neighbors and community members, then

29:55

we get into how do we create

29:58

not only sound or treatment, but between me,

30:00

you and each of us, how

30:02

do we get into shaping

30:05

policy to create graciousness

30:08

for communities? Because that's what I think of his

30:10

policy. You know you said it. Everybody

30:12

goes you do really unsexy long

30:14

term political work. And I think that's why

30:16

progressives lose sometimes because everybody

30:19

expects the own the progress

30:21

to come as fast as like Ted cruizes

30:23

ship talking tweets. But

30:26

the garbage comes fast and hot

30:28

because it's easy to turn over. Progress

30:31

is long and it requires dedication,

30:33

you know. Garbage

30:35

politics are like trashy one night stands

30:38

on bad late night TV. And and

30:40

progressive love is

30:43

like committing to getting married. Man,

30:45

It's long and you've got to do the work. And

30:48

so I'm I'm

30:50

curious about how you might

30:54

frame if

30:56

we think about about it as love, how

30:59

do you frame the study of policy

31:02

for people listening? Because your policy

31:04

has so clearly always been rooted in

31:07

loving commitment, and I want

31:10

other people to to

31:12

experience that inspiration to take that

31:14

charge um for policy

31:16

in their own communities. Yeah, and and

31:19

first let me just say, um, I

31:21

love the way in which you talked about grace um

31:24

and grace being sort of a worldview

31:27

and also manifests itself in policy. I

31:30

used to tell my staff all the time, they'd be annoyed

31:32

with me, like give grace, Let's give

31:34

some grace, some grace,

31:38

it was a very annoying Yes, they should have had typos

31:40

and the thing when I deal with the issue, but let's just give

31:43

grace. They're not terrible people, um

31:45

even some of our adversaries. But no, I think for

31:47

me sort of love

31:50

is what animates the

31:52

kind of how I think about policy. But it

31:55

really comes from like not

31:57

like an anemic love,

31:59

but like the love you describe, like the love that's

32:01

a verb, the love of

32:04

humanity that leads

32:07

to anger at mistreatment of humanity,

32:09

like that, like the love of all people. So

32:13

that injustice just really makes

32:15

me up, like I'm frowning now, like makes me upset,

32:17

And it's also perplexing, like why

32:20

would we want to live in a world with so

32:23

with poverty when we actually

32:25

don't have to have poverty? Like love

32:27

is what animates to work for basic

32:29

income, because like I would love to see everyone

32:32

have the opportunity to

32:34

provide the basics, Like I would love

32:37

for people who have the ability to dream. I

32:39

would love for people to have the opportunity. I

32:41

love what you said earlier. It's not about not having

32:44

stress, because everyone has stress. It's

32:46

about the source of that stress. And I would love for

32:48

people to be stressed about their dreams

32:51

coming true and the responsibility that comes

32:53

with that, Like that just sounds like such

32:55

an incredible world to

32:57

be in. And I think sort of that that ethos

33:00

comes from my faith tradition. I just remember growing

33:02

up and Sunday School and hearing

33:04

like God is loved and hearing that

33:07

you should love your neighbor like yourself. And

33:09

I'm a super practical person, so I took

33:12

that phase value. It's like, like, I

33:15

should love my neighbor as myself.

33:17

So what's good for me is good, it's good for you,

33:20

and so about my How I tried to govern

33:22

when I was mayored, and my world

33:24

view remains the same as that. I just want

33:26

everyone, regardless of

33:29

effort, to have the same opportunities

33:31

I have and didn't let their effort dictate

33:33

what happens with that opportunity. I

33:36

want every kid to

33:38

have the ability to get the great education that

33:40

my kids will receive, regardless

33:43

of what their parents do for a living. I want everybody

33:47

to have the opportunity to

33:51

go to a great school and that they're

33:53

all given a great preparatory

33:56

training and they have qualified teacher. Like I, I

33:58

just really think what's good enough for me, it's good

34:00

for everyone. It sounds very basic. That's really

34:03

how I would read policy briefs,

34:05

how I would govern, how a composty ideas.

34:07

It's like, well, what would I want and

34:10

how to extend that same And the last

34:12

thing I say is, and this has come up

34:14

repeatedly, particularly all

34:16

the basic incomparliti start happening, is

34:19

I have to say the same thing over and over. So if you have

34:22

to tell people that, are you surprised

34:25

by the findings, I'm like, no,

34:27

because people are people, and we can't

34:29

think of people as the most extreme

34:32

case that people we've met, which

34:34

is true, but they're they're anomaly.

34:36

There's like you on both ends. I think

34:38

we want people we like really

34:41

govern and think of our

34:44

country and our world as polar

34:46

exceptionals like exceptionally great

34:49

people who come from

34:51

nothing and through blah blah blah blah, and

34:53

then exceptionally bad people who

34:55

are creating harm and don't want to work

34:57

and just still and just take. And

35:00

we make those two poles the

35:03

center of our political discussion, say either people

35:05

are this or that, when that's like literally

35:08

the extremes. Most of us are like in

35:11

the middle where people who

35:14

are going to spend money on our kids. Who what

35:18

a decent house? Yeah, money

35:20

to go out to eat means

35:23

by our kids. Some things. It's

35:26

that fun on the weekends like we like, and

35:29

people get on my nerves. Were like, that's so weak

35:32

and the needing. But I think that's the harder, harder

35:34

work because it makes us think about sort

35:36

of why do we have a society

35:38

or why do we have a world where

35:41

those things aren't happening beyond individual's

35:43

efforts, beyond individual ability.

35:46

And that's much more harder conversation

35:49

and just saying well, people work

35:51

hard like my dad did, they'll be fine.

35:53

Or people made different choices that my dad did,

35:55

they wouldn't be in jail. It's like that's so simple,

35:57

so reductionistic. But it was love that

36:00

really got me to think about, No, there

36:02

has to be something deeper here, like this, this,

36:04

this, That explanation doesn't make sense.

36:07

No, it really doesn't. And I think

36:10

when we consider

36:13

how to come back

36:15

to the middle where everyone lives. Look,

36:17

you can be an exceptional person and have

36:19

a bad day. You

36:21

can be an exceptional person

36:23

who screws up and gets

36:26

arrested. I know a lot of exceptional

36:28

people who have gotten arrested just because

36:31

I read the news, you know, and

36:34

and vice versa. There's

36:36

a lot of people who have been written off who

36:38

have proved that they're capable

36:41

of exceptional things. And

36:44

I'm curious. You

36:46

know, we talk a lot about your

36:49

work as a city councilman and becoming mayor, and I

36:51

really want to get into all the u b I work

36:54

that you helped to pilot, and for folks at

36:56

home, you know that's a reference to universal basic

36:58

income. But but before

37:01

we moved into that,

37:04

I am really curious what it was like for you.

37:07

You know, you mentioned that while you were at Stanford,

37:09

you interned in President Obama's

37:11

White House. What

37:14

did that enable you to see?

37:17

Because there's a man who

37:19

ran on this idea

37:22

that we can show

37:24

up for each other, who had a lot

37:26

of really visionary goals,

37:28

and who has met with a lot of railroading,

37:31

and you know, who also is of human

37:33

who can't be perfect on every issue all

37:35

the time, but transformational

37:38

for the nation undoubtedly. What

37:42

what did you learn within

37:44

that space that you

37:47

took with you as you then went home to

37:49

forge your early political career. Yeah,

37:53

it's really a couple of things. Um

37:56

Number one, like, my first vote was

37:59

for President Obama. My I

38:01

had like seven Obama hoping change

38:04

shirts. I was Obama organizing

38:07

fellow so entering in our White House this was

38:09

such a wow, wow

38:12

wow. And while there I learned Number

38:14

one, this isn't

38:17

really basic, but it was revolutionary to me. Government

38:20

is not like some impersonal institutional

38:23

bureaucracy. Government is people.

38:25

And I would see sort of decisions

38:28

being made one way or another depending

38:31

on what happened the night before or depending

38:33

on this someone had their coffee this morning, You're depending

38:36

on where's people attention? It was. I would

38:38

see grants and applications

38:40

and resources go just

38:42

two people that have a relationship with someone in the building,

38:45

because I mean, there's no it's

38:48

very subjective. In many cases, there's no way anyone

38:50

can know everything. So it's like, okay, who are the cities

38:53

and mayors the people that are top of mind and how to be

38:55

support them because it's hard to help everyone. And that was

38:58

that was that was game change, Like, oh my god, is all

39:00

people in relationships that seemed much

39:02

more doable

39:05

than this like big and personal institution

39:07

that exists. It's ubiquitous.

39:10

But I can't quite get in. I don't

39:12

quite know who is government. It's it's a it's

39:14

a building. It's like, no, it's people. And that was

39:16

revolutionary. And the second thing, and

39:18

you mentioned this earlier, just

39:21

the pace of change. I

39:24

was there in two thousand and ten, and I remember

39:26

so vividly where sort

39:29

of the Tea Party

39:31

had just taken the House, which

39:33

is which is funny because back then that was

39:35

like the worst political thing ever, like, oh my gosh,

39:38

the Tea Party and those I would take

39:40

the Tea Party over insurrectionists every

39:44

day and the week. The Tea Party seems weak

39:46

in anemic compared to this, these

39:48

crazy insurrectionists. And then he had

39:50

to make a deal where he extended

39:53

the bush air At tax cuts in

39:55

exchange for extending unemployment

39:57

insurance. And I

40:00

remember the interns interms, we think we know

40:02

everything, so we're debating the marriage like we have

40:04

any saying the decision. And

40:06

I remember being torned because it was like those

40:09

bushingur At tax cuts like that was contributing

40:11

to our deficit. It was like I wasn't going

40:13

to regular people. It was just against everything

40:16

he had ran on and hope and change.

40:18

But then remember unemployment insurance. I thought of like

40:21

family members in Stockton who have been laid off

40:23

during the recession who really

40:25

needed that unemployment check for the winner. And

40:29

that's why I realized that, Wow, politics is so

40:32

messy and so pragmatic,

40:34

and your values are pure, but the outcomes

40:36

oftentimes aren't. And that was just a huge

40:38

realization as a twenty year old, because

40:41

before I was like, I was starting to get disillusion

40:44

like, man, it's not working, Like we still have all these

40:46

problems. He's been in office for two years and

40:48

we still have all these things that haven't

40:50

been done. And it's like now I'm like,

40:52

wow, he did a lot in two

40:55

years, and thank god he did because they were't

40:57

gonna let him do anything. As progress comes

40:59

at the right, at some point it's like that's enough. Pastor

41:02

britanniis related though. Those are two biggest

41:05

things, and you know, and the last thing I learned

41:07

was that oftentimes the people who make decisions

41:11

come from very insular worlds. They

41:14

oftentimes they all go not just the same

41:16

colleges, the same dawn boarding

41:18

school, the same damn high school.

41:21

Like so there's nothing wrong with that, but in

41:23

particular worldview, a particular like

41:25

habitutes around it that really

41:28

sees the rest of the country through a prism

41:31

of a paper or a prism

41:33

of a briefing versus like

41:36

actual real people, like the people

41:38

making decisions oftentimes have

41:41

no real direct contact with

41:43

anyone or no real relationship with

41:46

anyone actually impacted by same policy.

41:49

I solved that I couldn't

41:51

believe. I was like, wait, like, I wouldn't

41:54

dare make a decision on this issue without least

41:56

talking to somebody who's

41:58

affected by this issue, because I hadn't know. But

42:00

I would see that all the time. It's like, well, what's

42:02

the reports say, or what's the recommendation or what's

42:05

the easiest thing? And it's like that's

42:07

wow. Yeah, it's crazy to think

42:09

that that we can all just be reduced

42:12

to statistics. You

42:14

know, statistics helped me make

42:17

sense of my feelings a lot where

42:19

I'm like, Okay, what does the math say? Because emotions

42:22

are not mathematical and math is not emotional.

42:25

But I think the math has to be the

42:27

doorway through which we then meet people. And

42:30

a lot of people stop at the door, and

42:33

you know, you're you're very

42:36

polite when you say it's fine that all these people

42:38

go to the same boarding schools. I'm like, funk, no, it

42:40

isn't. But I will say it's not to criticize

42:43

the school, the educational institution,

42:45

the opportunity, that's not it. The

42:48

person who phrased it the best that I ever

42:50

heard. I listened to Oprah interview this

42:52

woman's sister, Joan, who's like this, you

42:55

know, you know, it's just like an icon of

42:58

feminist leadership out of the have the church,

43:00

which seems like a paradox, but it's true.

43:03

And she talked about wanting

43:06

to usher in, you know, an age of female

43:08

leadership, and Oprah

43:11

pushed back. I was like, but the church is

43:13

a patriarchy, Like how does this work? And

43:15

she said it so beautifully. I was like, God, I

43:17

can't wait to be ninety two and wax poetic

43:19

in five words right, because I'm

43:22

very long winded at this point. She

43:25

just said, you can't have which

43:28

we currently do, the men. You can't have

43:31

people with fifty of the information

43:34

making a percent of the decisions. Women

43:38

have the other fifty of the information.

43:41

So imagine what what community

43:44

is living on the poverty line the information

43:46

they hold that the that the communities

43:48

who go to prep schools just don't have. It's

43:51

not a criticism of either side if

43:53

you can recognize that everyone's

43:55

information in totality can

43:58

be the key. I love

44:00

that, and that was actually inside I was trying to articulate

44:03

with my three points, was that sort of you have

44:06

people making decisions for everyone

44:09

with very very

44:11

very diluted, specific

44:15

micro information and

44:18

the way that the sisters saying it's brilliant.

44:20

I'm still that so thank you. I love it. I

44:23

just I constantly make the point and go, I gotta give

44:25

credit to this lady, But I just

44:28

I love it. It really Um.

44:31

It codified something I understood to be true,

44:34

but I didn't quite know how to explain either.

44:36

When you you think about what you learned

44:38

about politics just being

44:41

people and how imperfect that can be. UM

44:44

and certainly these reduced perspectives

44:46

in many of those rooms, how

44:49

did you then bring all that home, that that

44:51

more personalized understanding of a system

44:54

and and then run for city

44:57

council and then decide to run for mayor? Like

44:59

what is that journey? Yeah? Well,

45:04

perfect, coming back and

45:07

realizing that people were getting because

45:09

that was at the time Senator Booker was mayor

45:11

of Newark, and Newark was gonna all

45:13

this love, and I thought there was some like mathematical

45:17

equation that showed that investment

45:19

in new work was the best way to invest in atleast

45:22

eight, nine, ten reasons which

45:24

may or may not be true. But it was all because

45:26

the Korey Booker like. People liked Korey Booker,

45:29

and people wanted to be a part of what he was doing. And I realized

45:31

that although not a

45:33

perfect way for change for sure,

45:36

that at least in the political system, the right leader

45:38

could excite and motivate people to look

45:40

at a situation a city

45:42

a different way. And that's what sort

45:44

of made me think running for office

45:47

and stoff and could do something because I felt

45:49

even if I don't know anything, I could bring

45:51

in people who know something and sort of also

45:53

bringing some of that community wisdom, and we could govern and

45:57

do some things. And just in

46:00

often was interesting because it's small, much

46:02

smaller than the entire country. That

46:04

was like easier to organize and

46:07

like, Okay, I need there's

46:09

seven people in the city council to see council sets

46:11

policy for the city. I need three

46:13

other people to agree with me, and we get anything

46:15

we want done. I was like, so I

46:17

set out to build relationships to make sure anytime

46:20

I had an idea, whether there

46:22

was a Republican, my councils three Republicans,

46:24

three Democrats, but I was city counselor and

46:27

four Republicans and two Democrats. When I was mayored,

46:29

it was like, well, I seem to always have four votes. And then

46:32

so it was just it helped me really organize

46:34

and make this my macro

46:36

issue of how you trained stocked and really small. Well,

46:39

you need four votes. Put to do anything,

46:41

you need four votes, And that was helpful.

46:44

And then it also taught

46:46

me like I don't have all the information, and particularly

46:48

you're in office, because everything is filtered. You're

46:51

so busy, your attention divided, you don't get

46:53

you get the report, and you have to make a decision based on some

46:56

some some something you read. So I

46:58

was very addative about building relationship community

47:00

members and community groups and building sort of community

47:03

power and a feedback loop. So I

47:05

just wasn't hearing from city staff. I was also hearing

47:07

from community and it wasn't still a hundred

47:10

percent, but had more of the information and

47:13

a lot of those community folks really

47:15

shaped my priorities. Um the Star.

47:17

When I was writing for city council, all

47:19

the consultants said, only talk about the city's

47:22

fiscal bankruptcy. That's what people care about. And

47:24

you're twenty one years old, so don't take pictures for kids,

47:26

Like, no, one needs to be with my younger age. Been

47:29

talking to community folks, They're

47:31

like, oh, we've been the bankruptcy. Yeah,

47:33

there were. The city's financial bankruptcy

47:36

wasn't even top five issue for them.

47:38

There was talking about absence of leadership,

47:40

all these very big issues of crime and violence,

47:43

et cetera. And then they all love the

47:45

fact that I was young. The

47:47

older, the older. The person was more than

47:49

love the fact that I was between one years old, and they're like, no, we

47:51

want you to be We love the fact you're young. We need

47:53

some young blood in there. And

47:56

so we had people who have been in there, hadn't been

47:58

fixing the problem. Hello, So we

48:00

had pictures with me and kids. We were talking

48:02

me and talked about the bankruptcy and all of the city.

48:04

We talked about more of a moral or leadership

48:07

bankruptcy where the top vote getter. That came

48:10

from listening to community and then when I was on city

48:12

council, I had all these grand plans

48:14

and spreadsheets and dogs

48:17

and talk to the community. They said, listen, closed

48:19

down this liquor store across the street, we

48:22

need a health clinic and open up a bank,

48:25

and those are all like big things, but

48:28

I don't aren't the key issues. We

48:30

need to do this, we need to do that. But

48:32

listening to them, we did those things, all

48:35

those things they have been trying for like fifty years to

48:37

do them. And we also did some of the other

48:39

stuff I wanted to do that I thought was more

48:41

structural. And then after

48:43

doing that for three and a half years, the

48:46

police chief and the head of

48:48

the Chamber of Converse approached me

48:51

same tubs, we want you to run from Mayor. I

48:54

was like me, because

48:57

I expect my folks to be like

49:00

times. You should run from maryor. Everyone tells

49:02

you that, you know, you're cool, you're smart, you can talk, you should

49:04

be married, you should be president. But I was like, not

49:06

the business council and not the

49:08

police chief. So when they had that conversation

49:11

with me, I thought to myself,

49:14

there's a winning formula here. If

49:16

I got the two most unlikely people

49:19

to say times you need to run where you run,

49:22

like begging me to run, like we need

49:24

you to run. And not because

49:26

they didn't know me, but because they did. They had seen

49:28

me worked for four years, and I was not just

49:31

as crazy as I am now talking just talking

49:34

very much the same as I talked today. And

49:36

they were like, you know, like we don't agree with you

49:39

on everything, but we do agree

49:41

that you're that you'd be the best person for mayor for the city. We really

49:43

want you. And that's what made me run

49:45

from here. But I was terrified. I had we

49:48

talked about sort of stupid mistakes. I had

49:50

just been arrested for a d u I while on

49:52

city council two years previous. I was

49:54

like, if I run, you know that's

49:57

gonna come up. And black man

49:59

committed on there's a mug shot, Like

50:01

do I really want that heat like restaurant?

50:05

Right? So how did you get over that? That's

50:08

a really interesting point. We said this earlier.

50:10

Lots of exceptional people have bad days,

50:14

and if we look

50:16

at the rates of DUIs across this country,

50:18

lots of people think, oh, I'll just have a

50:20

drink at dinner, I'll be fine by the time I drive home.

50:23

Clearly not true for so

50:26

many of our neighbors. How

50:28

do you reckon with that? How did you reckon with

50:31

that both as a city council member

50:33

and then approaching your run for mayor? How

50:35

do you how do you explain to people? Yeah,

50:37

well, well when it happened, I

50:40

was I

50:43

was just so embarrassed,

50:47

still embarrassing now, like even now cringe,

50:49

like, yeah, do I mention it? So

50:52

embarrassed? Um? And

50:55

part of it was because I've

50:57

always tell myself, I always talked my so

51:00

I would never end up like my dad. I would never

51:02

be in car sort, I would never be in

51:04

jail, I will never get in trouble with the law,

51:07

I would never fulfill these stereotypes, etcetera.

51:09

And then to actually do it, it's like, oh my

51:12

gosh, and but terrible

51:15

decision. But what was helpful and when I learned

51:17

from it was what you said earlier.

51:19

And it's Bryance Stevenson says this all this time,

51:22

all the time, Like, imagine we lived in the society

51:25

where we recognize that we were all more

51:27

than the worst thing we've ever done, which

51:30

which doesn't mean no accountability. Like

51:32

I still had to go to my d U I classes I still

51:34

have still paying high insurance. No, I

51:36

think I just stopped my last high

51:38

insurance payment last year, back to normal

51:41

insurance payments. I UM, I

51:43

couldn't drive for two months. I had to have

51:46

my mom take me to city

51:48

council meetings because I couldn't

51:51

drive. How embarrassing, right, actually just being constantly

51:53

reminded of that. But I also

51:55

recognized that we spent a lot of time

51:58

telling people what happens when you do every thing

52:00

right, But it's not enough time spent

52:02

talking about what I was when you mess up, like you shouldn't

52:05

mess up, but as a human being,

52:07

you probably will, and how do you actually

52:10

gettned? How do you actually

52:12

repent? So I was very adamant I

52:14

can make any excuses, all

52:17

right, People like you were set up? I was like, I was not set

52:19

up. I set myself up. I shouldn't have drank

52:21

and I shouldn't have drove like that, Like that that is the

52:23

setup. It to me, there was no plot to get

52:26

me, and even if there was, I I

52:28

still made the choice right, um,

52:31

And I was actually sorry though, I actually

52:33

was so sorry. I'm so embarrassed

52:36

for the city. I was just embarrassed. I was

52:38

like cringing, and and I had

52:41

I thought that that mistake would preclude

52:43

me from Why would run

52:46

from it's only even two years and run for a different office?

52:48

The mayor has so much But

52:50

in talking to people and

52:53

seeing the support and

52:56

also recognizing that a big part

52:58

of service and of service leadership

53:03

is being selfless, right, And I

53:05

recognized that my

53:08

fear of running was

53:10

centered on me and

53:13

centered on my feelings, and center

53:15

on me not waiting to have to relive

53:17

that painful moment, or me not having

53:19

to explain it over and over again,

53:22

or me not waiting to see me on my

53:25

mug shot on TV or

53:27

in the mail on Facebook.

53:30

And I recognize that as

53:33

a leader, you

53:35

have to think about us,

53:38

we them, right, And

53:41

I was like, well, what happens

53:43

if I don't run? Look at the people who are running?

53:45

And you mean to tell me a little

53:47

bit of perch feelings are You're in because you made

53:49

a stupid decisions and stop you from serving

53:52

all these people you plan to love who are asking

53:54

you to step up and serve. And that's

53:56

where how the decision was made, and and and my worst

53:58

suspicions where it comes from I

54:01

remember I talking about this in the book. I remember working

54:03

out and I hate working out, so the fact that I

54:05

was at the gym was a stretch. I was already uncomfortable

54:08

and I was already feeling insecure. And

54:10

then I'm looking up at the damn TV

54:12

and you know, gyms have like twenty TVs, all

54:15

the TVs. You just

54:17

see my bugs shot and I'm like, I

54:20

just want to shrink. I'm like, and I

54:22

sent them and it's like Michael Tubbs

54:24

takes because I was I was working with folks

54:26

who are formally incarcerated to help with

54:29

criminal justice policy. It's like, who does

54:31

Michael Tubbs listen to? And it showed

54:33

my face in the mug shot and after it's

54:36

like he has, uh he

54:38

listened to Yeah, sympathy

54:43

anxiety for you, And oh my god. It

54:46

was the one thing I was at home, Sophia. I was literally

54:48

at the gym. I hate the gym. I felt

54:50

very self conscious already being at the gym then,

54:53

so anyway that it happened

54:56

and it sucked, but I was in right

54:59

like it's but it was like okay,

55:02

And I was like okay, and isn't

55:04

that interesting? You're like Oh, this is so horrible.

55:06

But wait, the world's not ending. I

55:10

just keep going. I keep going on this treadmill. And

55:12

then I also keep going in this race, like what I

55:14

left, I got I don't even

55:17

ask me that, but

55:19

no, And then like it

55:21

became not one, do you why? But I have

55:24

four d U I s or had? It

55:26

became so silly. And then

55:28

I recognized and what we talked about earlier,

55:31

that part of it was that was a real threat. That

55:34

part of it was like the forces that be,

55:36

the people who are used to contry to be politics.

55:39

I didn't know what to do with the young

55:42

activists from the South Side, with

55:44

the dad in prison who went to Stanford, who

55:47

has all the business support, the

55:49

police chief support in

55:51

the act, like they're like, what, you

55:54

couldn't divide and conquer the way you usually would

55:56

in the political system, because like everyone, it's

55:58

really a really huge, big tent. Wow.

56:02

So there's so many questions I had

56:04

about that moment in your life.

56:07

I mean, what what did it feel

56:09

like to win? And I

56:12

know it's important to acknowledge what you're saying.

56:14

You had support from every vertical

56:17

in the city, so

56:19

I understand that it didn't it probably wasn't

56:21

a total shock, but but

56:24

to win by such a staggering percentage

56:26

and to be so young, like what did that feel

56:28

like? I mean, particularly

56:32

in the primary, use

56:34

it was like nine people and I want the primary

56:36

by like nine points. And I

56:38

was the only person being attacked because the people

56:41

the second and third place candidate, I

56:44

showed a consulted it made a hat to

56:46

knock me out the first round

56:49

and then they would just figure out and how they run against

56:51

each other in general, but let's get Tabs out. We both

56:53

went him out. So I was shocked

56:57

because at that time for the primary,

56:59

it was of sure if I was going to make it to the top

57:01

two. It was its like he might, he might

57:03

not. And and you

57:06

know, just always naysayers like well Stoft

57:09

has never had a black mayor, why do you think

57:11

you'll be the first, Or there's never been

57:13

a mayor this young at any city

57:15

of over a hundred thousand people, what makes you think

57:17

you're going to be the one. Or or you

57:20

didn't kiss this ring, or you voted this way,

57:22

And so there was

57:24

really and then there's I mean politics

57:26

about power. There's also people very angry that

57:29

I was even running like how dare you think you could

57:31

run? So that felt so like

57:34

wow, like wow,

57:37

once again I listened to that little small

57:39

voice that was like you should do this, And it

57:41

felt scary and it felt crazy

57:44

and it seems inevitable

57:46

now, but it wasn't then. And also

57:48

because when I ran, it was either run for mayor

57:51

or run for city council, Like my seat wasn't safe

57:53

for if I lost, I was done. If

57:55

I lost, I had no seat. Some

57:58

people are like, why would you take such such a rid You

58:00

could run in four more years or eight more years.

58:02

You're young. So it felt so

58:05

validating. And then when I won in

58:07

the general, we knew we were going to win,

58:09

but by the margin send me two percent.

58:12

On the same night Donald Trump was elected,

58:14

I just felt like wow.

58:18

I felt so proud for my mama,

58:20

unto my grandmother. I felt so

58:22

proud for the

58:25

city. I just I just felt like, wow,

58:28

we have turned the page. And it also I felt a

58:30

little bit overwhelmed. I was like, oh my gosh,

58:32

all these people's hopes and expectations and

58:35

this is not Beverly Hills, this is this is

58:37

this is like real structural

58:40

issues, real challenges and and being

58:44

on city council before I also knew the limitation

58:46

of the office. I was like, I can't even solve all this,

58:48

like like all this stuff I'm not sure

58:50

I'm need to be able to get to and

58:52

also thinking about imagine coming back

58:55

one day and being the mayor of Los

58:57

Angeles, are passing be there like like imagine

59:00

like just the feeling you have, like can you

59:02

remember the fair? You remember

59:06

the community sitting there, and you're thinking about, Okay,

59:08

how do I take care of those things? So it's also like

59:10

our favorite word today, it was a love thing to

59:13

like, wow, I love my city

59:15

so deeply, but my city also loves

59:17

me and and the people trust

59:19

me. So it was it was such a overwhelming

59:24

feeling, a pride, a

59:26

little bit of fear, a

59:28

lot of excitement and

59:31

sort of confirmation

59:33

like Okay, that was

59:35

the right decision. How

59:38

when you when you achieve something

59:40

like that, and to your point, now you're responsible

59:43

for your whole city, how

59:45

do you set your priorities as mayor? And

59:47

what were yours? Yeah?

59:50

I um, it's

59:52

tough because it's an elected

59:55

position, so it has to be community

59:57

priorities, but communities that have complete

1:00:00

information so it's like okay, or

1:00:02

what would be a priority actually

1:00:04

may not be the most important thing for the solvency

1:00:07

and the safety of the city.

1:00:10

UM. So I tried to do a nexus between

1:00:12

sort of what was

1:00:14

doable, which isn't the sexy stuff.

1:00:17

It also want to be aspirational. So definitely

1:00:20

crime, education and

1:00:23

poverty, which sort of my my three things,

1:00:25

knowing that we could have the most direct

1:00:28

impact on crime and education UM

1:00:30

as a mayor of a city, and poverty we would

1:00:32

have to try experiments, we have to try different

1:00:34

things. But that was like my

1:00:37

root cause analysis of the of the issue. And then

1:00:39

also just this unsexy

1:00:41

stuff of being our fiscal house in order and

1:00:44

making sure we had a reserve policy, and making

1:00:46

sure we had finances and

1:00:48

and and and and making sure that

1:00:51

we were that money was being

1:00:53

spent in a way it was supposed

1:00:55

to. Because no one cares but me. I

1:00:58

was so proud to be chure of the audit Committee

1:01:00

when I was on city council. So I was like auditing

1:01:03

the books and new where things were, how are these

1:01:05

are being spanning? Me corrected like one

1:01:08

material deficiencies and anyway,

1:01:11

no one cares, so I care that's

1:01:13

the stuff I love. Do you know what I think? Somebody

1:01:15

asked me once, because obviously we're all

1:01:17

very involved in political activism, somebody

1:01:19

said, okay, well, let's say, Boom, snap

1:01:22

your fingers. Tomorrow you're the president. What's the first thing

1:01:24

you do? And I said, I would do a fiscal audit of the

1:01:26

entire United States budget and every state budget

1:01:28

in the country. And everyone was like what.

1:01:31

I was like, oh, yeah, I'd bring in the friends of auditors

1:01:33

who like Sue Movie Studios. That's

1:01:35

what I would do. Where is the money?

1:01:38

Where's the money? We have so much money?

1:01:40

Why don't we spend it on people? What are we doing? And

1:01:42

everyone was like, oh ship. So

1:01:44

when you're like I was on the audit committee, I'm like,

1:01:47

how did the numbers look? I love

1:01:49

that stuff. I want to know. Yeah,

1:01:52

and it's and I think this is not even ask

1:01:54

your question. But I also

1:01:56

recognized from doing that work that the

1:01:59

answer isn't all is more money, like

1:02:01

the spend like I took it all the time.

1:02:04

I'm good for more money, but let's make sure we're spending

1:02:06

what we have and we spend that in

1:02:08

a way that's good. And then if it's not enough. Let's

1:02:10

get more money. But right now you can and tell me what

1:02:13

the delta is. You came and tell me how much more we need. You

1:02:15

just saying we need more. I can't sell that, especially

1:02:19

because clearly it's not just about more, it's about

1:02:21

the fact that we're just setting a bunch of it on fire.

1:02:24

So like, let's take away the matchbook. Maybe

1:02:26

that's where we start. Well, let's make let's make

1:02:28

you spend the money. I see. It's so annoyed

1:02:30

when we would have surplus

1:02:33

and oftentimes because they would

1:02:35

budget, but they would budget for staff

1:02:37

positions that they knew they weren't for the hire, but they

1:02:39

just have that extra money and then they

1:02:42

would carry over to the next year and they just become part

1:02:44

of budgets. So that's like away folks

1:02:46

are able to increase their budgets. In local government,

1:02:48

it's it's crazy, like there's all these things

1:02:50

people do. It's gonna spend the money we have alloc

1:02:53

this year, this year, especially

1:02:56

when you're supposed to go to people stuff.

1:02:58

Oh that's wild, that's wild. So I

1:03:01

want to ask, when you talk about spending

1:03:03

the money and getting the

1:03:05

money spent on people, how

1:03:08

did you make a ubi

1:03:11

happen. Yeah, well

1:03:13

you mentioned sort of priorities, poverty

1:03:16

being where I had a team of fellows,

1:03:19

and I'm a nerd, so I

1:03:21

don't it sounds like I just talk and I just do

1:03:23

things, but I do actually read and think before, not

1:03:25

before I speak before, I do at least think

1:03:28

and read. And I said, research,

1:03:30

how can we how can we in poverty?

1:03:32

I just went in poverty, like we in poverty.

1:03:35

We're good. They're like what, I'm like, seriously looked

1:03:37

up how to end poverty? And I told them, I said,

1:03:39

I want a policy, not a program. But

1:03:42

I know about career to college.

1:03:44

I get that werena do that stuff too, But what's the policy?

1:03:47

And they came back to this idea of guaranteed income. But

1:03:50

it was like in two thousand seventeen and a lot

1:03:52

of guarantee income things happen. We're

1:03:54

happening abroad at like one

1:03:56

dollar, two dollar, three dollar a day increment.

1:04:00

So I remember reading about basic

1:04:02

income in college. I knew Dr King was a proponent,

1:04:04

and I've always was curious as to why

1:04:08

have we not like right want to talk about

1:04:10

it. So then when they came back to that, I said, okay,

1:04:12

but you guys, I'm hearing everything's

1:04:14

like internationally, like I get people

1:04:17

are in poverty, but I'm not sure three dollars a day

1:04:19

in stock that's gonn't do. Like I can't

1:04:22

roll out like that for my folks, so that they're like no,

1:04:24

no, no, no, no, would be bigger here, I said, but no, one's

1:04:26

doing it bigger. Everything is like three dollars a day,

1:04:28

a dollar a day in micro financing

1:04:30

and stuff. I said, We'll go do some

1:04:32

more research. And then

1:04:35

the next week I was at a meeting

1:04:37

with my friend Nattie Foster from the eCOM

1:04:39

Security Project and she said, um,

1:04:42

hey, may have you heard a guaranteed income?

1:04:44

I said, oh, yeah, we were, I'm familiar

1:04:46

with it. And then she said, we're looking

1:04:49

for a city to partner where to pilot a guaranteed

1:04:51

income. And I said, oh, yeah, you

1:04:53

know, I have a task force. We have a task force

1:04:55

seriously looking at this and figuring out how to be

1:04:57

implement it, like really trying to sell her like we're thing

1:05:00

and about it. We end up working together

1:05:02

and it gave. It's just a politically different time. And in

1:05:05

Stockton was just recovering

1:05:07

from bankruptcy. So that's why that all this stuff

1:05:09

was so important. And I knew we did not have like we

1:05:12

just did not have money extra money

1:05:14

we could pay for what we could pay for. And

1:05:16

then they said, you know what we're doing philanthropically, so they

1:05:18

put in a million dollars and we're like, well, with a million

1:05:20

dollars, we can't serve everyone, but

1:05:23

we get to a hundred twenty five people and build the evidence

1:05:25

case and later groundwork for a policy. Um,

1:05:28

so that's what we did. So we And it's funny

1:05:30

now because the group I

1:05:32

started called MERIST for Guarantey Income every

1:05:35

marriage and Guaranteed Income pilot. Now it's like it's

1:05:37

not not noteworthy now people a getting like annoyed

1:05:39

that over another basic income pilot.

1:05:42

But back then, no

1:05:44

one was doing it. So it was like, Wow,

1:05:47

it was a little bit scary because I'm

1:05:49

not an economist, and I had all these economists

1:05:51

like trying to battle wrap me on Twitter or writing

1:05:53

op eds about how stupid idea

1:05:56

it was. I had, um,

1:05:58

folks, even leaders and Democratic Party,

1:06:01

We're saying that's not the way to go. And

1:06:03

I would like, I know, I'm not smarter than all these

1:06:05

people, maybe some of them, but not all of them. So if

1:06:08

I'm missing something or are they missed, like

1:06:10

what? What? What? How? Does everyone think

1:06:12

this is a bad idea? And I'm like, hmm, I

1:06:15

think this could work. And in doing so,

1:06:17

I realized what we've been talking about a lot on

1:06:19

this podcast that part

1:06:21

of my fundamental belief is that if government

1:06:24

is nothing but people, the most

1:06:26

important investment that government can make is

1:06:28

in people like that, that's

1:06:30

that's how we governed, or how we should govern

1:06:33

I saw this stat yesterday that went over

1:06:35

the newly approved defense budget.

1:06:38

You know, it's like seven hundred and sixty billion

1:06:40

dollars, and it just shows

1:06:43

like childcare would

1:06:45

be fifty billion a year, healthcare

1:06:47

increases would be a hundred and twenty billions. We

1:06:50

have the money, and people

1:06:52

say we can't spend it. And so it doesn't

1:06:54

surprise me that economists

1:06:56

were saying, well, you can't spend money this way. It's

1:06:58

like, well, says who and why

1:07:01

we actually have the money to pay for all of these

1:07:03

things. And and it was so inspiring,

1:07:05

as you know, and Angelino,

1:07:08

and also as a fan of yours, to

1:07:11

watch what you were doing with the UBI pilot

1:07:13

program in Stockton, because

1:07:16

it has papered the data

1:07:19

for UBI programs all over the place,

1:07:21

and it references what you said earlier. If

1:07:24

you can take out

1:07:26

of the bucket of stress that people experience,

1:07:29

the stressors over survival,

1:07:32

people can then apply stress to pressure

1:07:34

test their dreams. They can apply stress

1:07:37

to pressure test small businesses. They

1:07:39

can apply stress to open community

1:07:41

centers, they can do other

1:07:44

things. And and

1:07:46

that I find to be so inspiring.

1:07:48

It was your work that got me, you

1:07:50

know, out there advocating in the public

1:07:53

for the for the Compton Pledge, you

1:07:55

know, to to get a UBI program and Compton,

1:07:58

and people said like, you didn't grow up and Compton,

1:08:00

what do you care? And I was like, yeah, but I went to USC,

1:08:02

I bordered Compton. These are

1:08:04

my neighbors. I don't care if I actually

1:08:07

live next door to people or not. I want

1:08:10

people to have room to dream instead

1:08:13

of lives of worry. And

1:08:15

we should want that for all of

1:08:17

us. That should be the tenant of

1:08:20

our of our life,

1:08:22

of our of our communities, of our activism.

1:08:25

Why wouldn't I want you to have

1:08:27

better? Why?

1:08:30

And you see what l A is doing now too.

1:08:34

L A City and County So l A City

1:08:36

is doing a thirty five million dollar basically

1:08:39

compilt for a thousand families. In l

1:08:41

A County is doing a forty million dollar

1:08:44

program for a thousand families. And

1:08:47

and and I think for listeners,

1:08:50

what what I hope people take from

1:08:52

it is that they get

1:08:54

encouraged, begets courage. And it

1:08:56

started really small like that. The issue

1:08:59

was like poverty, how

1:09:01

do you solve party? And that's extremely

1:09:03

overwhelming, And we

1:09:06

said, we can't solve poverty, but

1:09:08

let's try a basic income for a hundred

1:09:10

and twenty five people. Yeah, And

1:09:13

starting there has led to the wonderful

1:09:16

Compton fledge. The things in l

1:09:18

A like literally pilots

1:09:21

being led by marriage and eighty guaranteed income

1:09:23

heights in this country in a child

1:09:26

tax credit, which is a guaranteed income for

1:09:28

families with children. But it literally started with

1:09:31

a hundred and it started with no right

1:09:33

answer. It started without knowing if

1:09:35

it would work or not. It started with

1:09:38

the risk of looking dumb. And I tell

1:09:40

people all the time that part of leadership

1:09:42

or part of making change is you

1:09:44

have to be will. You have to find things you're so

1:09:46

passionate about you're willing to be wrong

1:09:48

for them, like I might. I care

1:09:51

about this issue, so this is my answer,

1:09:53

and if I get it wrong, I'll iterate for it. And I think

1:09:55

often times we have

1:09:57

all this pressure to be right and that

1:10:00

paralyzes us so we do nothing. And then

1:10:02

what you said, I'm going to steal and

1:10:04

I'm gonna make sure I got it right. You said I

1:10:07

want people to live lives of dreams

1:10:10

and not lives of worry, And

1:10:13

that was actually Sophia,

1:10:16

I mean emotional thinking about it. Now. That's

1:10:19

what I learned the most from

1:10:21

basic income work, from doing this work,

1:10:24

is that because you know, you grew up

1:10:26

in poverty if I was a child, right like

1:10:28

I wasn't the adult and poverty. And

1:10:31

I've never even though mayor don't make a lot of

1:10:34

money, I never worried about like

1:10:36

everything was on the auto pay, you

1:10:38

know. So so when

1:10:41

I would see other people in my age, other

1:10:43

people in my community, who said, by

1:10:46

the sheer luck of

1:10:48

being one of the hundred twenty five people

1:10:51

given five undred dollars a month, I am now a better

1:10:53

parent, I am now healthier.

1:10:56

I'm now able to stay home and

1:10:59

not have to go to work during COVID like it

1:11:01

was inspiring. It also been very sad, like

1:11:04

how we divulge as

1:11:07

a society where it's

1:11:09

acceptable for us to have the means

1:11:11

to solve a problem, but

1:11:14

we're fine with it not being solved in

1:11:17

a problem that would make the

1:11:19

solution to make all of our lives better. Because

1:11:21

if you're dreaming about starting

1:11:23

a small business, that might be the small

1:11:25

business that employs me or exactly.

1:11:30

And that's what people miss. They say, Well, people shouldn't

1:11:32

have handouts, you should work harder. If

1:11:34

we do a little, we get a

1:11:37

lot. If we invest in families,

1:11:39

they invest eightfold in the economy. If

1:11:42

we paid women equally, our GDP would

1:11:44

grow by twelve whole ask points. We are

1:11:46

missing one point for trillion dollars

1:11:49

out of the U. S economy because we subjugate women.

1:11:51

Hello, Like if we

1:11:54

put in we return in

1:11:56

multiples. And and that's the

1:11:59

thing I wish we were lear on. But but what it

1:12:01

is is it's fearmongering for change. The same

1:12:03

people who wanted to publish

1:12:05

your mug shot from your worst day. I want

1:12:07

to say that people are

1:12:10

in poverty because they're not working hard enough.

1:12:12

Because they don't want us to know that poverty is

1:12:14

a designed system, and

1:12:17

it's on us to figure

1:12:19

out how to dream bigger for each

1:12:21

other. I know that

1:12:24

if other people around me are doing well, I

1:12:26

will do well. I know that when

1:12:29

I do well, I want to make sure other people do so

1:12:31

when I get an opportunity, I figure out how

1:12:33

I can hold the door open for as many people I love

1:12:35

as possible. And you're doing well

1:12:38

doesn't mean I have to do bad. Exactly.

1:12:40

You doing well has no material

1:12:42

well being on my success.

1:12:45

I felt you like you're doing good doesn't hurt

1:12:47

me. But we've been cultured to think there's

1:12:49

a finite bucket of resources because

1:12:52

the people who control the buckets don't want us

1:12:54

to know that while they keep our bucket the same size,

1:12:56

their buckets are growing, and their buckets are

1:12:58

growing because they invent because

1:13:00

they literally look at things as long

1:13:03

term investments. And and that's

1:13:05

why for my folks,

1:13:07

I've gotten to be on the side of basic income

1:13:10

who come from that world. It's been literally that conversation

1:13:12

what you said, it's like you guys, take

1:13:15

the if you don't give the humanitarian arguments

1:13:17

enough for you, think a bunch of investing,

1:13:20

like think about like you put six

1:13:23

thousand dollars in something and you

1:13:25

get all this stuff from it, like why would

1:13:27

you not? Could we pay for it anyway?

1:13:30

On the back end for not investing, we pay for it in

1:13:32

hospital bills, incarceration, cause

1:13:35

lost productivity, we pay for

1:13:37

it, and sort of problems

1:13:39

that probably haven't been solved yet because the answer

1:13:41

is with someone who's working two jobs

1:13:44

and driving tests and driving uber

1:13:46

and has no time to think. The

1:13:49

cure for cancer is probably with someone who's like doing

1:13:51

domestic work at someone's house right now, who

1:13:53

is brilliant but just can never have the

1:13:55

time even think and try because she has to work

1:13:59

for me, your existence. And then

1:14:01

I think the last thing I'll say I put back

1:14:03

point on this all day is

1:14:06

that I do think we're we all

1:14:09

are deserving more

1:14:12

than just a bare minimum eat meager

1:14:14

existence. But so sick

1:14:16

of a living wage. God, I'm sick

1:14:18

of that term. Let's and we're out here advocating

1:14:21

for it. People deserve to make a living wage. Fuck

1:14:23

a living wage. I want people to make a thriving

1:14:27

wage. I want people

1:14:29

to make a dreaming wage.

1:14:31

I want people to be able

1:14:33

to do more than work, eat

1:14:36

and sleep. What about as

1:14:38

you said, taking your family out on the weekends.

1:14:40

What about going to a museum

1:14:42

to learn something? I think about, you know, the era

1:14:44

and my dad came up in when

1:14:48

there weren't trillion dollar tax cuts

1:14:50

for the super wealthy and the irony. Like

1:14:52

people always yell at me, they're like, you're a new you're

1:14:55

one of those people. I'm like, bro, I'm not like

1:14:57

the super wealthy or in a class you can't even have

1:14:59

bet money people have. That's who we're talking

1:15:01

about when we say tax the rich. Like and by

1:15:03

the way, if I was rich, Like, if I had money

1:15:06

like those people, I would be happy to pay my taxes.

1:15:08

What are you talking about? It's like

1:15:11

I think people get the difference between like one

1:15:13

per cent and point zero one. They

1:15:16

don't get it. And and

1:15:18

it's interesting to me to

1:15:21

look at the landscape because like when I you know, my dad

1:15:23

talks about how when he was my age,

1:15:26

you know, CEO has made something like a

1:15:28

hundred and twenty five times what their

1:15:31

average worker made. And look,

1:15:33

if you're the CEO of a company that employs

1:15:36

eight million people, like, I get it. You have

1:15:38

a big job. But now

1:15:41

CEOs make like hundred

1:15:43

times what the average worker makes,

1:15:45

and the average worker still makes what they were making when

1:15:47

the CEO only made a hundred and twenty five times

1:15:49

what they made or sixty times or whatever. And

1:15:52

I'm like, that's why you used to be

1:15:54

able to be middle class and have like a

1:15:57

cottage on a lake somewhere and to callers

1:16:00

and like a decent existence.

1:16:02

And now CEOs have three

1:16:04

jets and everybody else is like living in

1:16:06

multi family homes trying to figure out like who gets

1:16:09

to take the car on a Saturday. And

1:16:11

I think there's just a way that we could equalize

1:16:13

it a little more. I'm not saying don't

1:16:15

be successful. I'm not saying don't be a CEO.

1:16:17

I'm not even saying don't be rich. I'm

1:16:19

saying don't be like an

1:16:22

aristocrat turning your employees

1:16:24

into like, you know, Marie

1:16:26

Antoinette, you're a peasants who

1:16:28

are suffering while you're like throwing

1:16:31

food away because it's funny to you, like what

1:16:34

are we doing? How did we get here?

1:16:36

And it's also what's and

1:16:38

people say people are self interested? So I'm

1:16:41

just confused because if I had that much

1:16:43

money, I would look at history and recognize

1:16:46

that's just not sustainable that all

1:16:48

those stories in very badly. They

1:16:50

end in some sort of revolution.

1:16:52

They like people. Just what you're saying

1:16:55

is you would remember that the guillotine happened,

1:16:57

and you would yet

1:16:59

fixed thing, like maybe

1:17:01

I don't need I'm cool with one,

1:17:04

Like yeah, yeah, maybe one is enough.

1:17:06

When you're in the bees, I think you're good.

1:17:08

Like you know, Elon Musk is out here

1:17:10

trying to say that, you know, texting people's

1:17:13

wealth is ridiculous. I'm like, bro, you have a trillion

1:17:15

dollars. You're not even gonna miss

1:17:17

it. You can't even do anything

1:17:19

without like no, it's too crazy

1:17:23

making more money on it. So like why

1:17:25

these guys think they want to colonize space? And

1:17:28

I'm sitting here thinking like, first

1:17:30

of all, maybe look at history and stop colonizing.

1:17:32

Second of all, you're telling me you want to go

1:17:34

to Mars. So what you're saying is you want

1:17:37

to go to prison. You will never

1:17:39

go outside, you will never hug

1:17:41

a tree, you will never smell fresh

1:17:43

air, there will be no ocean, there

1:17:45

will be nothing that makes this planet magical.

1:17:48

What you're telling me is you just want

1:17:50

to build yourself a prison cell. I know it's

1:17:52

gonna look like an art museum, but you're

1:17:54

still going to be in prison. And

1:17:57

you don't even know. You've never experienced

1:18:00

it. You've never visited someone who's been stuck in

1:18:02

the carcerole system. You've never been

1:18:04

without, so you don't know that you're

1:18:06

building a self for yourself.

1:18:09

You think it's a dream and it's just going

1:18:12

to be a nightmare. Why don't you fix the planet we live

1:18:14

on? Why don't you support the people

1:18:16

who live here? Why don't why don't you campaign

1:18:19

for clean air and water so that our children

1:18:22

can go outside and breathe? Like,

1:18:25

how have we missed the plot so much?

1:18:28

And it but think of the irony right

1:18:30

like and said like wow, like

1:18:33

you are. It's it's almost

1:18:35

like a fable. It's almost like some like story

1:18:38

where it's hard growing up where you

1:18:41

take take, take, and you get get get

1:18:44

in the place you're leaving

1:18:46

is so correceive. So you build for yourself

1:18:48

in a different place, something

1:18:51

that's actually imprisoning you. Because the issue

1:18:54

wasn't the people or the earth. It was like your

1:18:56

greed and your insatial appetite for more,

1:18:59

well, and how bifurcated you became from

1:19:02

your own society, like, yeah, of course you think

1:19:04

you want to move to another planet if you don't go outside

1:19:06

and meet people. Ever, if

1:19:08

you're only surrounded by whatever

1:19:11

your version of your prep school friends, you only

1:19:13

have a tiny piece of the information. What

1:19:16

if you suck out? What if you

1:19:18

went out in the world and chose to seek out other people's

1:19:21

experiences and perspectives. What if you spent

1:19:23

time with families and stocks in or Compton. What if

1:19:25

you what if you went to the

1:19:28

indigenous community spaces

1:19:33

in Utah or Arizona and learned

1:19:35

with these people who don't have internet connectivity

1:19:38

or addresses, need the

1:19:40

people who literally deserve to be here,

1:19:42

most who we have segmented the

1:19:44

worst in our society. What if

1:19:46

they had access to healthcare? What if they had

1:19:48

access to actual voting rights?

1:19:51

What if? What if that's who the

1:19:53

most powerful people in our society?

1:19:56

We're focused on what could we do then? And

1:20:01

you know, people ask, and

1:20:04

you know, the bright bart people yell about like

1:20:06

what do you know? And and you know, what's

1:20:08

not lost on me is people in my

1:20:10

industry, we exist

1:20:12

in a system. If I make

1:20:15

money, my whole team makes money. Whatever

1:20:17

money I make, I keep twenty of it

1:20:20

because everybody eats when I eat, including

1:20:22

the United States government. By the way, I pay way

1:20:25

more taccess than Elon Muskin. It's not lost

1:20:27

on me. But but that's true. Like

1:20:30

when when when I make money, this

1:20:32

person and this person and this person, everybody gets

1:20:34

a percentage, everybody gets a cut, and

1:20:37

a beautiful existence and survival is

1:20:39

possible on that. And so when

1:20:41

I look at people who have who who would

1:20:44

sob if they had my bank account tomorrow,

1:20:47

they'd be like, what happened to my life? I

1:20:50

consider myself to be so privileged. I'm so

1:20:52

proud of what I've built and made by

1:20:54

myself with my hands and I

1:20:57

and I look at them and I'm like, what about the team? You could

1:20:59

be supporting and you'd still be so rich, you'd

1:21:01

still have planes, you'd still be good,

1:21:04

Like, you know, I

1:21:07

had somebody on I came home yesterday

1:21:09

from my job in Toronto and this guy

1:21:11

next to me was like so surprised that

1:21:13

you know. I was in the aisle seat in road twenty four

1:21:16

and I was like, bro, yeah,

1:21:19

you know, holiday fights are expensive. What do you want

1:21:21

from me? And he was just laughing. You thought

1:21:24

it was so funny, and I thought,

1:21:26

you know, I'm okay,

1:21:30

I feel great. I I

1:21:33

know I'm not by any means perfect

1:21:35

or I don't know everything, but but I

1:21:37

see programs like the one you enacted.

1:21:39

I see things we can do when we show up

1:21:41

together. I've seen what

1:21:44

I'm capable of. Rather than saying like, well,

1:21:46

I could write a check this big for a charity this

1:21:48

year, what if I donate my birthday

1:21:50

to that charity and we raised ten times

1:21:53

as much money? You know, what if

1:21:55

we do things as a team. And

1:21:57

everything I've ever done as a team has brought me immense

1:22:00

joy. And when I get too stuck

1:22:02

in being just little me, by myself individual

1:22:05

in the world, I feel isolated

1:22:07

and sad, and I lose the plot a little bit.

1:22:10

So I don't know. I think, if, if, if any

1:22:12

of us can encourage um,

1:22:15

you know, dreams over worry, community

1:22:17

over self, we're doing

1:22:20

something really special. And and

1:22:23

yeah, I know that it can put a target on your back. I

1:22:25

mean, I know that everything you did

1:22:27

as mayor made a lot of people try

1:22:29

to come for you and and run a lot

1:22:31

of weirdness against you and um

1:22:34

and that you did experience that loss. But look,

1:22:36

what it's led to. You know, even you're

1:22:38

sitting now as a special advisor

1:22:41

to Governor Newsom, you're working on issues for the state.

1:22:44

You proved something in your hometown

1:22:48

that one of the you know, fifty states

1:22:50

in our country said, oh, we need that guy on our

1:22:52

team. So so the

1:22:55

sling shot the loss into the

1:22:57

bigger propulsion. What

1:23:00

is that bigger propulsion for you? Now? What

1:23:02

is this new phase? Now? Yeah,

1:23:04

I think it's really sort of unburdened

1:23:07

by what's been or sort of political

1:23:10

limitations. Is really a

1:23:12

beautiful word. Wow, It's

1:23:15

really just UM using

1:23:17

all the tools from media, UM

1:23:20

to storytelling, to policy,

1:23:23

to UM innovation, to

1:23:25

to create a world that has opportunity

1:23:27

for everyone in that sees and affirms

1:23:30

everyone's basic human dignity. UM.

1:23:33

So it's just I'm able to do so

1:23:35

much more now because I have this complete control

1:23:37

over my time. So I could do stuff with

1:23:40

narrative. I could work with other merrits

1:23:42

and other cities. I could help the governor, I could

1:23:44

help companies, I can go

1:23:47

places like, there's so much more I can

1:23:49

do because I don't have to do the pot

1:23:51

holes, I don't have to do the I

1:23:53

T system I don't have to do the

1:23:56

audience, so everything that makes sense looking backwards

1:23:59

and looking backwards, it's almost

1:24:01

a year to the date, I'm still

1:24:03

I'm not happy at the way I lost, but

1:24:07

I am happy for what the

1:24:10

loss taught me in sort of all

1:24:12

the really just

1:24:14

blessings that have come my way since,

1:24:17

and the real opportunity and also

1:24:19

the real affirmation and validation that

1:24:21

the issue wasn't with sort of the work.

1:24:24

The issue wasn't with performance,

1:24:26

That wasn't it, And that it was also

1:24:28

a reminder that my purpose

1:24:31

is bigger than the title, and my purpose

1:24:33

is not tied to a position, like the

1:24:35

positions and the opportunities are

1:24:37

a means to an end, but the end

1:24:40

is really the purpose and to never lose sight of that. So

1:24:42

I'm gonna learned that at thirty and that

1:24:44

like at sixty or seventy well,

1:24:47

and it makes me excited for where you're going, especially

1:24:51

seeing that purpose and having that lesson

1:24:54

at the moment you did you know you mentioned earlier

1:24:57

it was while you were writing your book, and I mean

1:25:00

it. I assume everyone's sitting listening,

1:25:02

you know, at home or on their community is like very

1:25:05

ready to read your book. Look

1:25:07

it up, folks. It's called The Deeper the Roots.

1:25:09

It was published just this November.

1:25:12

I mean, writing it while in

1:25:14

such an immense phase of growth and a

1:25:16

phase that came with a reckoning as well. What

1:25:20

was that, Like, what what motivated

1:25:22

you to write it when you did, and

1:25:26

and how does it feel to have it in the world now. Yeah,

1:25:29

well it's gonna sound really basic, But what motivated

1:25:31

me to write it was the birth

1:25:33

of my first child. A first child because

1:25:36

child care is expensive, and I was like, well, I'll

1:25:38

make this much as mayor, you make this munches as a high

1:25:40

school counselor. I

1:25:43

don't see where the actually to one two

1:25:45

thousand a month for child hare's gonna come from, Like I

1:25:48

really do it. And

1:25:52

I was like, oh ha, but have this book deal and

1:25:54

if I write this book, I get my advance

1:25:57

and that'd be enough to pay for child So

1:25:59

I was really what started it. And but then while

1:26:02

writing it, it just allowed me

1:26:04

to reflect on my

1:26:06

parents and it was just a very a great

1:26:08

space. And I wrote most of it in which

1:26:12

is just such a crazy year but for me,

1:26:14

one of the most still years I've had. I

1:26:16

was home, I was governing and leading

1:26:18

into a pandemic. But I wasn't flying everywhere I

1:26:21

was home. I was every night I was in

1:26:23

my bed, you know. And that that

1:26:25

never because I was sixteen years old,

1:26:28

had had that. So it provided

1:26:30

some real sort of forcing function

1:26:33

to think about what I want

1:26:35

my children to know, think about

1:26:37

the city, connect dots. But then

1:26:39

in October the book was done. It

1:26:41

was a good book, most of it as

1:26:44

is was written in October. But then when I

1:26:46

lost it unlocked something else because

1:26:49

that first directory of the book

1:26:52

was tough upbringing a

1:26:54

couple of mistakes in the middle. But everything's

1:26:57

good. This isn't when this is the when

1:26:59

you do that, you do this, you do this is where you end

1:27:02

of the high note, And that's not

1:27:04

life. That might be a movie, but that's

1:27:06

not life. So

1:27:10

losing it's like, oh shoot, this is not a

1:27:12

fairy This is a not a fairytale

1:27:14

ending. It ends with an uncertainty,

1:27:18

with a confidence that better is

1:27:20

coming. But before I knew what this year

1:27:22

would hold, it's before I knew I have special advisors

1:27:25

to the governors. Before I knew sixty

1:27:27

mayors would be doing basic it was

1:27:29

last November. All I knew was that

1:27:31

I lost. I need to figure out what was next, and

1:27:34

writing from that kind of point

1:27:36

of view in perspective, I think sort

1:27:38

of reading it now, I'm like wow.

1:27:42

If for nothing else, the loss just made the

1:27:44

book feel to me much more real and

1:27:46

much more like ship. This

1:27:49

is hard work. And you can

1:27:51

do all that and still lose. And how you keep

1:27:53

your confidence? You can do all that and still lose, and how you

1:27:55

keep your faith? How do you do with loss?

1:27:58

It's easy to say everything works out out for good

1:28:00

or well when it went back and you don't

1:28:02

know what the good is yet and how you talk. So it was very

1:28:06

cheap therapy. Honestly, it's

1:28:09

getting me time and

1:28:11

and and think um and

1:28:14

also this a process like that missed a side

1:28:16

and right, I was like, oh yeah, maybe I should realize

1:28:18

this. Oh yeah, maybe when maybe when the entire

1:28:21

city council voting gets me on

1:28:23

masks at man Nates, maybe that should be a red

1:28:25

flag. And it should have been, because I was gonna say,

1:28:28

Council, I had only lost one

1:28:30

vote in eight years, and

1:28:32

I don't put things on the gender if I if I don't

1:28:34

have the votes. So when every

1:28:37

single person vote against it, I was married. I

1:28:39

should have said something wrong, but instead I was

1:28:42

like, oh, they're scared of COVID like like

1:28:45

but then riding and I was like, no, that was an inflection

1:28:48

point. That was a time you should have thought it called

1:28:50

the campaign tea know, like, something's weird going on? Are

1:28:52

we sure do need to pivot strategy?

1:28:55

But so that, I think the clarity of

1:28:57

looking backwards was very helpful.

1:29:00

It's interesting because that kind of clarity that

1:29:02

you mentioned really,

1:29:05

um, makes me think about

1:29:09

the backside. We were referencing, you know, what we've

1:29:11

seen, Um, we're

1:29:13

seeing it after defeating Trump, and were

1:29:16

watching what's happening, you know, the Virginia election

1:29:18

and what might be coming in the midterms, and and

1:29:21

the way that this this right

1:29:24

wing disinformation machine seems to like

1:29:26

keep it coming, whereas progress

1:29:29

proving progress is slower

1:29:32

because it actually requires legwork,

1:29:34

it's not just you know, viral

1:29:38

tweets. Um. I'm

1:29:41

curious what

1:29:44

you think is

1:29:46

important for us to remember as

1:29:48

we move forward, because there's so many

1:29:50

lessons in your book about

1:29:53

not giving up, about how

1:29:57

we can illuminate ourselves and our

1:29:59

community. And I

1:30:02

just wonder what

1:30:04

do you see when you talk about those

1:30:06

inflection points those lessons. How

1:30:09

do you think we need to better

1:30:11

talk to each other to keep our you

1:30:14

know, our foot on the gas towards

1:30:17

better rather than going backwards.

1:30:19

Yeah, my grandma used to always say,

1:30:22

I didn't understand it, and I'm still understanding

1:30:24

it now, it's like it older. But she would always say,

1:30:26

don't get weary and well doing for

1:30:29

in due season, you will reap a harvest

1:30:32

when you if you fain not um

1:30:34

and and it's just a reminder that

1:30:38

I didn't say when. It just says in due

1:30:40

season, like when it's time. And also

1:30:42

this idea that you

1:30:45

can't faint like it like. And I think

1:30:48

that last clause if you fain not is

1:30:50

an admission that fainting

1:30:52

or quitting makes sense, that fainting

1:30:55

and quitting is a logical response to

1:30:58

waiting for a harvest. But but you'll this

1:31:00

out if you quit, So that's always

1:31:02

been helpful. And I think number two, just

1:31:05

learning from those value experiences. I

1:31:07

think sort of you

1:31:10

could get to the mountaintop, but without the

1:31:12

perspective gain from the valley, don't really

1:31:14

appreciate sort of you

1:31:16

don't have the skills to climb to get to the mountain,

1:31:18

You don't appreciate it once you get there. So I think, regardless

1:31:21

of what happens in twenty two or etcetera,

1:31:23

let's take stock and not just be angry about

1:31:26

what happened, right excited about what happened, but let's

1:31:28

learn what can we learn? What

1:31:30

can we do better? What? What's the lesson

1:31:32

here to prepare us for for what's next?

1:31:36

How do you as you look forward to think about

1:31:39

what you want your new mission

1:31:42

to be? You know, what are the marching

1:31:44

orders you're giving to yourself? How how

1:31:47

do you want to go into the next year inspiring

1:31:49

other people the next year?

1:31:51

I want to be laser focused on having

1:31:54

a through line between everything I do about

1:31:56

just uplifting human dignity, about

1:31:59

giving people the courage to dream about the world

1:32:01

where everyone has enough

1:32:04

to dream about the world where we

1:32:06

don't have to have pervasive

1:32:09

poverty, we don't have to have endemic

1:32:11

homelessness, we don't have to have ubiquitous

1:32:14

white supremacy and racism like oh,

1:32:17

and just remind people that that's what we deserve,

1:32:20

that yes, we're fighting for it, but we're not fighting

1:32:22

for it to prove that we deserve it. We're

1:32:25

fighting for it because we do deserve it, and

1:32:27

and that um, there

1:32:30

is an entitlement to dignity,

1:32:32

there is an entitlement to self determination,

1:32:35

there is an entitlement to live fully human

1:32:37

and reminding people we're not fighting for things

1:32:40

that we don't deserve, for things that are crazy.

1:32:42

We're fighting for what's ours, our birthright,

1:32:45

our gift for being born on this very beautiful

1:32:47

but messy planet. I

1:32:50

love that. I love that. I like

1:32:53

the idea of a

1:32:56

true and positive

1:32:59

entitlement that feels

1:33:01

like something we need to learn how to claim. Yeah,

1:33:04

because we also think of in timements is backing, but

1:33:06

now we are entiled to some things life,

1:33:08

liberty in the pursuit of happiness. That's what they

1:33:10

wrote all those years ago, not believing dignity,

1:33:14

respect, opportunity.

1:33:18

Yeah, I'm

1:33:20

really curious. So much of who

1:33:24

you are is centered

1:33:26

on this idea of progress

1:33:28

and the kind of progress that honors who

1:33:31

people are, where they've been, all of

1:33:33

the facets of themselves. And you

1:33:36

know, I started this podcast to

1:33:39

meditate on and enquire how

1:33:42

to work on and within

1:33:44

our own potential for progress. So

1:33:48

I wonder, especially

1:33:50

as we're now you know, wrapping up a

1:33:52

year and a big year. What

1:33:56

feels like a work in progress

1:33:58

in your life for you in this

1:34:01

moment of reflection, Yeah,

1:34:03

the biggest work in progress for

1:34:05

me is sort of showing

1:34:08

up fully in

1:34:11

all the different hats I wear as

1:34:13

a father, as a husband, as

1:34:16

a friend, as a son, has

1:34:18

um the leader,

1:34:21

as an advisor, as a strategist,

1:34:25

as you know, how do I make

1:34:28

sure I'm showing up in my best self

1:34:31

in all those different roles. It's

1:34:33

still a work in progress. Um.

1:34:37

And in the book, I end with one

1:34:39

of my favorite scriptures that says um basically

1:34:41

about being a work in progress. It says, I'm confident

1:34:44

that he who began a good

1:34:46

work in me will continue that work

1:34:48

until completion. And that's

1:34:51

absolutely um, sort of where

1:34:53

I am. And Yeah,

1:34:56

so I'm confident that sort

1:34:58

of the Michael tells you here

1:35:00

now will be even wiser and better in

1:35:02

two, with more

1:35:04

lessons and more insights and hopefully

1:35:08

a more humanity and more

1:35:10

of the language to articulate

1:35:12

that that humanity. Yeah,

1:35:14

it's beautiful. It

1:35:17

makes me hopeful for what's

1:35:20

to come if we can

1:35:22

center that kind of wholeness in our conversations.

1:35:25

As you said to to

1:35:27

create a rising tide that lifts all ships

1:35:30

to serve and center

1:35:34

are stricken communities, are communities

1:35:36

and poverty, you know, our

1:35:38

black and brown communities, women,

1:35:41

all of the people who have always been pressed

1:35:44

into margins. If they can

1:35:46

be the people for whom we create

1:35:49

our most inclusive policy,

1:35:54

life gets better for all of us, for

1:35:57

everybody. And you

1:35:59

have helped lead a charge that has

1:36:02

clarified how to do that in

1:36:04

a way that centers that entitlement

1:36:09

to the pursuit of

1:36:11

life, liberty, and happiness. And

1:36:14

you've proven that it's possible both

1:36:17

as a moral core and also as

1:36:19

a fiscal policy, which

1:36:21

is what is required. And

1:36:24

and I'm deeply grateful, you

1:36:27

know, for your charge, for

1:36:29

your example, for your book, my God,

1:36:32

and and for the work that you continue to do,

1:36:34

because my hope is that it will it

1:36:38

will help to get the yelling that often happens

1:36:40

in the margins on those extremes we talked

1:36:42

about earlier, to calm down and

1:36:44

bring people to meet for

1:36:49

a sane conversation about

1:36:51

how to serve our community's best. Thank

1:36:55

you, thank

1:36:58

you, and thank you for coming on today,

1:37:00

and you know, blessing us with your time

1:37:02

and your words. And your ideas. It's um, it's

1:37:06

a conversation I will continue to cherish.

1:37:08

So thank you.