Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is stuck easy. I'm Sam Fergo, so welcome
Speaker 1: to the show today. I am joined by author and
Speaker 1: former mayor of Stockton, California, Michael Tubbs. Back in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: at age twenty six, with an endorsement from President Obama,
Speaker 1: Tubbs became the youngest mayor of any major city in
Speaker 1: American history. He was also Stockton's first black mayor. The
Speaker 1: city saw a forty percent drop in homicides in twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen and twenty nineteen. He brought in twenty million dollars
Speaker 1: in nonprofit grants to fund a scholarship program to increase
Speaker 1: the number of local high school graduates who attend college,
Speaker 1: and he turned Stockton, which has more than three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people, into the second most fiscally healthy city in California.
Speaker 1: Where he found national media attention, though was as a
Speaker 1: champion for universal basic income. In early twenty nineteen, Tubbs
Speaker 1: created a pilot program for UBI, which gave one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five Stockton residence five hundred dollars a month
Speaker 1: on a prepaid debit card, no strings attached. As NPR reports,
Speaker 1: a study of the period from February twenty nineteen, to
Speaker 1: February twenty twenty determined that full time employment rose among
Speaker 1: those who received the guaranteed income, and that their financial, physical,
Speaker 1: and emotional health improved. The issues of poverty and job
Speaker 1: security are personal ones to Tubs, who grew up in
Speaker 1: Stockton in the nineties, at times facing homelessness. His mother
Speaker 1: worked several jobs to make ends meet while his father
Speaker 1: was sentenced to life in prison. Tubs describes his checkered
Speaker 1: childhood and his new book, The Deeper the Roots, a
Speaker 1: memoir of hope and home. The book is also of
Speaker 1: triumph and tragedy, record breaking highs and back breaking loads.
Speaker 1: We hear about those in this episode, but for context,
Speaker 1: this wasn't always easy for Tubs to share. Growing up,
Speaker 1: his mother would always say, don't tell anybody our business.
Speaker 1: Don't tell people how you live or who you live with.
Speaker 1: Don't tell them how you like basketball and books in
Speaker 1: equal measure, don't tell them about your father in jail.
Speaker 1: Don't tell them. And so today, at age thirty one,
Speaker 1: one father of two, Michael Tubbs, is finally telling the
Speaker 1: story he never thought he would tell his own. Michael Tubbs,
Speaker 1: thank you for being here, Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me how are you doing. I am just filled
Speaker 1: with so much gratitude, particularly in writing a book, you
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time thinking of, yeah, some tough things,
Speaker 1: but all the things I've worked out well for you
Speaker 1: and all the people who have contributed. So it's just
Speaker 1: very thankful, very much in a space of gratitude right now.
Speaker 1: That's curiously close to all is good? And that's the
Speaker 1: response that I know growing up you were told to
Speaker 1: say by your mother. So I want to make sure
Speaker 1: you are you actually good or are you putting this on?
Speaker 1: Because it's a childhood response that you have. It's a
Speaker 1: fair question, fair question, and even if things weren't good,
Speaker 1: I would probably say everything's all right exactly, But we
Speaker 1: can't have that here. We have to be open here.
Speaker 1: But truly, I'm just so thankful and it feels like
Speaker 1: this season of life is one that isn't perfect, but
Speaker 1: one that's really good. Well, can we go back to
Speaker 1: you as a kid and that line between you and
Speaker 1: your mother, because she would say, whether you were participating
Speaker 1: in the math Olympics or losing a basketball game or
Speaker 1: on this Easter Sunday, it was imperative to let people
Speaker 1: know that all was good. And the world we lived in,
Speaker 1: vulnerability was a sign of weakness. How do you regard
Speaker 1: that approach? Now? I get the approach given the circumstances
Speaker 1: in which we lived, in the environment in which we lived,
Speaker 1: and I think growing up in poverty and not the
Speaker 1: safest places all the time, that it was actually logical
Speaker 1: to sort of develop an exterior that looked like unpenetrable,
Speaker 1: because then people wouldn't try to take advantage of you
Speaker 1: environment like that. Oftentimes weakness is preyed upon. So I
Speaker 1: get why she would say that, But it's been something
Speaker 1: I've had to work to when do when I learned
Speaker 1: as an adult, I'm still undoing it a learning and
Speaker 1: definitely don't want to pass that on that extreme to
Speaker 1: my children and want them to feel and to embrace
Speaker 1: those emotions. But that impenetrable shell that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: it was broken that Easter Sunday when you're eleven years
Speaker 1: old in front of the congregation reading from the Book
Speaker 1: of Isaiah. There's this passage that you read that I
Speaker 1: thought maybe we'd start with here if you want to
Speaker 1: read it. He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
Speaker 1: like a root from the parched earth. He had no
Speaker 1: beauty or majesty to catch our eye, nothing in his
Speaker 1: appearance to draw us to him. He was despised and
Speaker 1: rejected by mankind, a man that's suffering, familiar with pain,
Speaker 1: like one from whom you turn your face spurned, and
Speaker 1: we'd held him in no esteem. What happened that morning?
Speaker 1: So that morning I was in church, and everybody goes
Speaker 1: to church on Easter Sunday. Before the pastors to get up,
Speaker 1: I was to quote Isaiah fifty three from memory. So
Speaker 1: as I'm giving it, I actually remember that's like the words,
Speaker 1: and just being overcome by just the loneliness and the
Speaker 1: grief and the injustice, and I just started crying. I
Speaker 1: just felt and I had practiced to memorize it, and
Speaker 1: I had never felt what the words meant. But for
Speaker 1: some reason, by eleven year old self looking out on
Speaker 1: everyone and hearing about this man who was familiar with
Speaker 1: pain and grief and bore our afflictions, and it was
Speaker 1: you just feel it. But then I really felt it.
Speaker 1: So I just started crying. And I think some people
Speaker 1: thought I had forgotten or I had messed up, But
Speaker 1: the story, the life of Jesus just felt so messed up,
Speaker 1: and I just remember just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing
Speaker 1: and taking a little bit of a beat to sort
Speaker 1: of gather myself and to finish. How did you finish? Luckily,
Speaker 1: I actually knew the passage, so I knew the next words.
Speaker 1: So once I got the tears out, I just still
Speaker 1: my sniffling and stumbling, but got through it. When you
Speaker 1: finish it, you go back to the car. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty tense car ride home. Why was that anytime anyone
Speaker 1: sees a kid do anything, it's the best thing ever.
Speaker 1: So everyone in the church was standing up clapping, like
Speaker 1: really proud. My Grandma's beaming, but my mom was like furious,
Speaker 1: And the pastor calls me up and like takes an
Speaker 1: offering for me, like hey, Michael, give this great speech.
Speaker 1: Let's let's support this young man. But then we get
Speaker 1: to the car and my mom's just not happy. She
Speaker 1: didn't say anything. She's dead silent. I knew she was
Speaker 1: upset that I had like, quote unquote messed up, And
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I wasn't. I didn't mess up
Speaker 1: like that story just really, I don't know. He's made
Speaker 1: me cry, but she was just wasn't really happy. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like, I know, ashamed, angry, a little bit embarrassed
Speaker 1: until we got to the house and we got to
Speaker 1: the house and we saw our voicemail light and we
Speaker 1: listened to all these messages and it was all these
Speaker 1: too from the church saying they were so moved. Then
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, wow. Hearing the way you delivered it
Speaker 1: really resonated with me. And that was I think a
Speaker 1: good reminder for both of us that sometimes showing emotion
Speaker 1: and sometimes being vulnerable isn't a bad thing, because I
Speaker 1: actually lead to more connections to the folks who are
Speaker 1: trying to reach. But your tears that morning reminded her
Speaker 1: of her own tears years prior. This is late eighties
Speaker 1: and Stockton, where she's in front of a congregation admitting
Speaker 1: to people that she's pregnant with you. Did she share
Speaker 1: that connection with you that day? She did not show
Speaker 1: that connection with me that day, and I did not
Speaker 1: even make the connection myself. So I sat down to
Speaker 1: write that chapter, which is when the last chapters. I
Speaker 1: wrote the first one, and I remember I was like,
Speaker 1: when start with me speaking that church? But I went
Speaker 1: to start there because so much of our role is speaking.
Speaker 1: But then when I was doing it, I said, to
Speaker 1: be an interesting way to introduced my mom here and why?
Speaker 1: And then I thought like, well, why was she angry?
Speaker 1: And I remember she hadn't experienced speaking at church. So
Speaker 1: actually that juxtaposition between me speaking as a favorite of
Speaker 1: the pastor as the golden child, as this is our
Speaker 1: then the next leader versus when she spoke eleven years previously,
Speaker 1: is because of a deep shame because she was pregnant
Speaker 1: at a wedlocking was incredibly young, she was a high schooler.
Speaker 1: And I reflected and I told her when she read
Speaker 1: that chapter, I said, Mom, that's the first time I
Speaker 1: put it together that you felt so much pressure, particularly
Speaker 1: at the church, for me to be perfect, for me
Speaker 1: to be good because of the shame you were made
Speaker 1: to feel when you were younger. And you're like, no,
Speaker 1: my son's gonna have a chance to be on stage
Speaker 1: just redemption, so it needs to be perfect, Like, no,
Speaker 1: he wasn't a mistake. I didn't make a mistake. And
Speaker 1: I think start of seeing me cry probably brought back
Speaker 1: memories for her about how alone and scared and the
Speaker 1: shame she felt that church, and then also probably brought
Speaker 1: back some demons around. Well, maybe my kid shouldn't be
Speaker 1: up there, or maybe we shouldn't be upfront, maybe we
Speaker 1: should actually be in the back as that afraid sixteen
Speaker 1: year old teenager. She has you with your father, who's seventeen.
Speaker 1: They in high school in Stockton in the late eighties.
Speaker 1: At that time, the city was flooded by the crack
Speaker 1: cocaine market. You write crack, and Stockton couldnet the dealer
Speaker 1: four percent more than they could make in La. Because
Speaker 1: demand far outpaced supply, transnational gangs took root, and a
Speaker 1: reputation for violence and crime began to subsume the city's identity.
Speaker 1: Where does your mother and father fit into this picture? Yeah,
Speaker 1: my mother was always a rebel, but I mean my
Speaker 1: grandmother worked for Sawaquin County. Not rich, but it was
Speaker 1: a county worker, lower middle class. Her stepfather was a
Speaker 1: bus driver, middle class job. You worked for the city.
Speaker 1: Best life. She went to private school up until high school.
Speaker 1: She was in church every Sunday, every Wednesday, like very
Speaker 1: structured life and in respects. And my father also didn't
Speaker 1: come from necessarily poverty. His mom, my grandmother was a
Speaker 1: homemaker and his dad was when of the first black
Speaker 1: fireman for the city, but he also had this rebellious streak,
Speaker 1: and he got involved sort of in gang life out
Speaker 1: of a sense of going to defend his neighborhood or
Speaker 1: his friends against these gangs that were coming in, and
Speaker 1: because of that got involved with gangs and drug trafficking
Speaker 1: at a very young gage, to the point that when
Speaker 1: I was born, he was lading and duven out attention facility.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think my mom was more of a voyeur,
Speaker 1: if you will, to sort of all the crime and
Speaker 1: devastation and drugs that were beginning to explode, while my
Speaker 1: dad was like an active participant. So when you're interviewing
Speaker 1: her for the book, I assume you talked to her
Speaker 1: about your birth, which happens on August second, nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: You're born a month early. Even in childbirth, there is
Speaker 1: some politics at play here. Can you explain those for folks? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What was interesting is that my family we have like
Speaker 1: these lores my wife says that we share all the time,
Speaker 1: and one of them is about my birth. So I
Speaker 1: didn't have to interview her about that because I growed
Speaker 1: up hearing about the circumstances of my birth. So she
Speaker 1: was sixteen years old, pregnant. Her water breaks and she
Speaker 1: goes to the hospital and she's talking about her pain
Speaker 1: level as contractions are increasing, and the doctors and nurses
Speaker 1: don't believe her, like your delusional, you're lying, you're delusional,
Speaker 1: because that hooked up the monitor to her front, but
Speaker 1: she was having back contractions, so they weren't just reading anything.
Speaker 1: But she was in like excruciating pain. So she runs
Speaker 1: to the shower. It turns the shower on and immediately
Speaker 1: I start crowning, and they're like, oh, no, he can't
Speaker 1: come yet. Last time we checked, his lungs weren't fully developed.
Speaker 1: Last time we checked, he had a heart murmur. So
Speaker 1: they had a helicopter ray to take me to Oakland's
Speaker 1: Children's Hospital while I was premature baby. But the political
Speaker 1: part is there's all this research and all this data
Speaker 1: about the black maternal health crisis, nurses and doctors not
Speaker 1: listening to Black women in particular when they describes or
Speaker 1: the pains are having a childbirth, or describe what's happening
Speaker 1: to their bodies or to their babies. And that's why
Speaker 1: I mentioned that in the book. It's like, like, no,
Speaker 1: this is an individual experience. But it's part of the
Speaker 1: structural issue, whether it's my mom or even Serena Williams.
Speaker 1: So there are lures in your family that have been
Speaker 1: passed on. Oh yeah, what does the story passed on?
Speaker 1: When you and your mother get kicked out of your
Speaker 1: grandmother's house. That's a story that's not talked about a lot.
Speaker 1: That's a story I'm sure that which I hadn't included
Speaker 1: in the book. Why is up? I think, like most families,
Speaker 1: my family like said you well on the positive, like
Speaker 1: said you all on the things that are going well,
Speaker 1: to harmonious relationships in life we have now, which are
Speaker 1: also a truth. Right, everything's good, you know, but I
Speaker 1: mean there's still some tension. But my mom unto my
Speaker 1: grandmother see each other every day, so they're like actually
Speaker 1: really really close and everything together. But I thought it
Speaker 1: was an important though, because I love my grandmother and
Speaker 1: I love my mother to talk about sort of when
Speaker 1: we were kicked out the house and talk about being
Speaker 1: housing and secure, and talk about being homeless and talk
Speaker 1: about living in the motel for a month. But it's
Speaker 1: funny even now. I was talking to my mom yesterday
Speaker 1: and she's like, you guys, only moved to a house
Speaker 1: with a pool. She's still stuck on this idea that
Speaker 1: her son needs to have a pool, and it comes
Speaker 1: from when we stayed at the motel six for a month.
Speaker 1: We would sit by the pool and she would they
Speaker 1: were on vacation, and this is a nice pool. And
Speaker 1: one day I'll be old, I'll have a pool in
Speaker 1: my backyard. So my kids won't have to go to
Speaker 1: a hotel they go to a pool, They'll be in
Speaker 1: the pool in their backyard. But yeah, my grandmother kicked
Speaker 1: us out because I mean, my mom was eighteen nineteen
Speaker 1: with two kids under two. I get it. It's stressful
Speaker 1: and it's exhausting, and I can only imagine doing that
Speaker 1: as an eighteen nineteen year old ween. You're still trying
Speaker 1: to figure out yourself. I'm sure my mom wasn't the
Speaker 1: happiest camper. And it finally begin to grain on my
Speaker 1: grandmother and she felt my mom was being disrespectful. So
Speaker 1: she said, Michael can stay with me anytime, no problem,
Speaker 1: but you have to find somewhere else to go. Do
Speaker 1: you have any memory of that, because you're two or
Speaker 1: three at this point. I remember the motel because I
Speaker 1: remember eating cheeses. I remember like one night having this
Speaker 1: cheesets and eating that for dinner. And I think part
Speaker 1: of my memory is also colored by what I've heard
Speaker 1: my mom say over the years, like literally, remember Motel
Speaker 1: six box of cheeses. You do eventually leave the Motel six,
Speaker 1: your mom said, Rent gets a home in Stockton, come
Speaker 1: middle school with your father not present. She starts the
Speaker 1: sense that you are angry, and as you write, her
Speaker 1: focus was to make sure I stayed on the narrow
Speaker 1: path as she defined it. What my mother saw, though,
Speaker 1: was a young man with a smart mouth and an
Speaker 1: attitude problem. Together, your parents decided you should visit your
Speaker 1: father at Mule Creek State Prison. Walk us through that
Speaker 1: moment of entering the prison, because it's one that many
Speaker 1: people are not familiar with. Usually prisons are far from
Speaker 1: where people live. And then you get there and I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a prison, it's not a can't there's just not
Speaker 1: a noise. For every door, there's a bear like it's
Speaker 1: a reminder that your movements are very controlled and you
Speaker 1: don't have free range of motion. So I just remember
Speaker 1: feeling like almost suffocating, like, oh my gouys, I can't
Speaker 1: get out of here. I want to see some sun,
Speaker 1: I want to see some air. And then there's like
Speaker 1: guards everywhere, and the guards treat you as if you've
Speaker 1: broken the law. And then in the visiting rooms it's
Speaker 1: ninety percent ninety plus percent women, either mothers or girlfriends
Speaker 1: or wives or aunts and children. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of like love and happiness. But then when it's time
Speaker 1: to leave, in that separation, it gets like not violent
Speaker 1: in the sense of like prison violence, but violence in
Speaker 1: the sense of like soul violence, like people mean ripped apart,
Speaker 1: and babies are crying and moms are tears down their
Speaker 1: eyes and everyone shrieking, and then everyone's quiet on the
Speaker 1: bus back to the cars. But yeah, I was twelve
Speaker 1: years old. It's my first time I'm going because my
Speaker 1: mom was always asked me that I want ago, Like no,
Speaker 1: that it never sounded fun to me. It never sounded fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I just felt like, why do you want
Speaker 1: her to pitch it it's fun? Well, I mean, while
Speaker 1: I go, Right, I'm like twelve, like a kid like
Speaker 1: eight years old. You want to go visit your dad
Speaker 1: in prison? No, I actually know I'm fine, just your
Speaker 1: casual retelling of it. Where it's like you didn't brand
Speaker 1: it properly because my mom was so nonchlot with everything,
Speaker 1: like you wanna gover to your dad, okay, But this
Speaker 1: time she didn't present it to me as an option.
Speaker 1: She said, tomorrow, wake up at this time and get dressed.
Speaker 1: You're gonna go vis your dad. When you sit face
Speaker 1: to face with him, a twelve year old with a
Speaker 1: father you hadn't had much time with. I know you've
Speaker 1: written about it in the book, but as we're sitting here,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, you're about this distance away from him. How
Speaker 1: did you make sense of that meeting? First, you know,
Speaker 1: as a kid, you have a vivid imagination, and because
Speaker 1: he wasn't present, I was able to create my own
Speaker 1: image of who my dad was and what was that,
Speaker 1: like a superhero. And then when you get to prison
Speaker 1: and you're like you got a prison, You're like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: what if he like looks like a quote unquote criminal?
Speaker 1: What if he looks like a bad person. My first
Speaker 1: reaction when I saw him was the action was kind
Speaker 1: of like me, he looks like neither of those things
Speaker 1: actually looks a little bit like me. And then in
Speaker 1: the conversation with him, I was like this, why are
Speaker 1: you here? Like what happened? And he started talking about
Speaker 1: structures and policy in America and that look, the way
Speaker 1: it's set up there will give you two options, prison
Speaker 1: or death. That has always stuck with me as something
Speaker 1: to prove wrong. Even at that age, I was like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't like those options for us. We don't have
Speaker 1: to fix this, We don't have to make something different,
Speaker 1: not just for me, but for everyone. You thought his
Speaker 1: explanation about these existing structures was not entirely sufficient. What
Speaker 1: did you want him to say? When I asked the
Speaker 1: question I really want to know, like what was the
Speaker 1: crime you commit? I was just looking for a very
Speaker 1: direct answer, like what did you do? What was the crime?
Speaker 1: Like why are you in here? And to his credit,
Speaker 1: I think he took that question and led it to
Speaker 1: a different sort of conversation about society, about the construct,
Speaker 1: about the structure. And it still reverberates in my mind,
Speaker 1: like do we really live in a society or the
Speaker 1: since for some people on the prison or dead? And
Speaker 1: if that's so, why do we live like this? And
Speaker 1: how do we change it? And define these expectations put
Speaker 1: forth by your father? You attend Franklin high school, where
Speaker 1: you win elections for homecoming prints, Black Student Union, and
Speaker 1: student body president. You then apply to join the city's
Speaker 1: Youth Advisory Commission, where you and me with the mayor
Speaker 1: and city council about the needs of the youth in
Speaker 1: the community. You said, of these meetings, I always marveled
Speaker 1: at how ordinary the decision makers were, how they weren't
Speaker 1: that much smarter than me as a teen, or anyone
Speaker 1: else in the community I came into contact with. Still,
Speaker 1: they had both access and power, Their voices mattered. They
Speaker 1: made decisions that we all were forced to live with.
Speaker 1: Having been in politics yourself, now do you still regard
Speaker 1: those decision makers, whether it's at the local level or
Speaker 1: the national level, do you still regard them as ordinary?
Speaker 1: At that time? By ordinary, I meant that there whether
Speaker 1: some innate power or ability that gave them the right
Speaker 1: to lead. They weren't superheroes, right, They weren't like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I want to be this person, or oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, this is the person I want to be
Speaker 1: negate decisions or to your point, they weren't superheroes. And
Speaker 1: now I would say I could think of colleagues I
Speaker 1: worked with, literally some of the worst people that because
Speaker 1: we have political disagreements, But the mayor I beat who
Speaker 1: was indicted by the FBI for crimes against children, like
Speaker 1: some of the worst people who also were elevated to leadership.
Speaker 1: But as a sixteen year old, I didn't have that window.
Speaker 1: I just knew that these people aren't being incredibly thoughtful
Speaker 1: about these decisions, and they aren't that different from me
Speaker 1: or my family or anyone to have such authority and
Speaker 1: such ability to influence how we all lived. That experience
Speaker 1: could have very easily dissuaded you from doing that line
Speaker 1: of work, and yet it seemed to do the opposite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always been motivated and challenged by like, why can't
Speaker 1: I do it? I have the ability. There's no reason
Speaker 1: why I can't do this work. What ability is that?
Speaker 1: I think the ability to bring people together, the ability
Speaker 1: to lead coalitions, the ability to communicate, the ability to
Speaker 1: inspire or to garner actions, to get people excited towards
Speaker 1: moving towards a goal. And I was like, well, I
Speaker 1: can do that. Maybe this is a world in which
Speaker 1: I could play what's the first example of you doing
Speaker 1: what you just said? All three elementary school I was
Speaker 1: always team captain and literally my records on the playground.
Speaker 1: I think I want ninety percent of basketball. I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: I used to pick my teams particulously. No one's let's say,
Speaker 1: eighty five percent of vast majory. I was like, you,
Speaker 1: calm women's hoops though I was like really good out there,
Speaker 1: and not because I was the best player, but I
Speaker 1: actually was good for a couple of years. But I
Speaker 1: always pick the best teams. I'm glad I can get
Speaker 1: you down. And then in sixth grade, I went to
Speaker 1: a mostly white private school and we didn't have anything
Speaker 1: for Black History Months. So I told the principal, when
Speaker 1: need a Black History Month assembly? And the principal said,
Speaker 1: well planet, So at sixth grade, I wrote direct to them,
Speaker 1: planned the whole Black History with assembly at the whole
Speaker 1: school I had to sit through. We created twenty of
Speaker 1: my friends to be in it, wrote their lines, had
Speaker 1: to memorize it, and we did it well. Can we
Speaker 1: go to one early example where I think you fail
Speaker 1: on this. You're on Hamilton's Middle school, probably around the
Speaker 1: time you're talking about, and you run for student body
Speaker 1: vice president and then student body president. You wrote it
Speaker 1: proved too difficult to convince my basketball friends to take
Speaker 1: a break from the games and to go vote, And
Speaker 1: it was even more difficult to get them to understand
Speaker 1: why I would even want to be in both IB
Speaker 1: and student Council. Now, this is a very silly example
Speaker 1: of a young kid wanting to be in student government
Speaker 1: and just trying to get their friends to vote. But
Speaker 1: you couldn't, And I wondered, in looking back, why couldn't
Speaker 1: you Looking back, I couldn't because I didn't convince them
Speaker 1: that I was very serious about it, so it had
Speaker 1: no stakes. Yeah, they're like, even if they didn't want
Speaker 1: to do it, there's things I could have done, like
Speaker 1: take the basketball and said, listen, we're not playing to
Speaker 1: be vote like and they would be like, oh, I
Speaker 1: hate you, but they would have voted or sort. I said,
Speaker 1: you guys, like this really matters to me, so let's
Speaker 1: start the game. Ten minutes later, I really need you
Speaker 1: guys to vote. I gotta be honest. I never really
Speaker 1: liked the kids that were student body incident, but that's
Speaker 1: why I lost because I was different than the student
Speaker 1: body kids. I was like cool Georgians. I was cool
Speaker 1: with everyone. But I think that's what it was and
Speaker 1: I also made it seemed like I didn't care. Every
Speaker 1: day I look forward to there's thirty minutes of lunch.
Speaker 1: You want me to give away ten minutes of that
Speaker 1: to vote for something you don't care about. I'm not voting,
Speaker 1: so it makes perfect sense. But I did as a
Speaker 1: protective mechanism in case I lost, so I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: hurt or I wouldn't show people how much I cared,
Speaker 1: And in doing so, I just became a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you go to college at Stanford and then you
Speaker 1: intern at Google and the White House. There's this day,
Speaker 1: November one, twenty ten, where this political path that you're
Speaker 1: talking about that you're hinting at, it gets clarified what
Speaker 1: happens that morning. So that morning I was in the
Speaker 1: office writing press clips for Valerie Jarrett. My internship was
Speaker 1: working with meriors and councils, so also writing clips about
Speaker 1: what every mayor was doing. Did you like that internship? All?
Speaker 1: I love the internship. I hated at the job. It's
Speaker 1: funny looking back, because it makes so much sense. Why
Speaker 1: because you rolled your eyes when you said it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was my last like choice. I want to do
Speaker 1: policy work. It's like mayors and counsels who cares. But again,
Speaker 1: precursor for the work I would be doing. I spent
Speaker 1: liarly four months, twelve hours a day just working with
Speaker 1: thinking about and thinking like mayors and council members, which
Speaker 1: is just a perfect, perfect preparation for what I ended
Speaker 1: up doing. But I had no idea it's gonna do it.
Speaker 1: So my mom calls me, and she never would call
Speaker 1: me when I was at work because she just respected
Speaker 1: the president the first lady so much. She was I'm
Speaker 1: not going to bother you. And that's big for my
Speaker 1: mom because she text calls, emails, facetimes multiple times a
Speaker 1: day all day. So she calls and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: she's calling, it must be important. So I answer and
Speaker 1: I can hear muffled cries on the other end, And
Speaker 1: as we've talked about at length already, my mom's not
Speaker 1: the most emotional, or she's emotional, but she doesn't emote
Speaker 1: publicly in that way. So I knew something was wrong.
Speaker 1: So I go out to the courtyard and she tells
Speaker 1: him that my cousin, Donnell James a Second have been
Speaker 1: murdered at a house party in Stockton, And it was
Speaker 1: really that juxtaposition. I'm at the White House, I was
Speaker 1: at Google, I'm at Stanford, I'm doing it. I'm successful,
Speaker 1: I made it, and that high and then the low
Speaker 1: of like your cousin being murdered back home, and it
Speaker 1: really got me to think about how was Stockton or
Speaker 1: how was anyone better off because I was successful? Like
Speaker 1: what does this success mean? And can you be successful
Speaker 1: with your family or community really struggling, And that intensified
Speaker 1: feelings of survivor's guilt I already had, and really put
Speaker 1: me in especially as an angsty twin year old, like
Speaker 1: existential crisis, what am I supposed to do here? And
Speaker 1: then in the pain and grief, demanding that there had
Speaker 1: to be meaning from it, like this did not just
Speaker 1: happen that I refused to believe this is a random act.
Speaker 1: There's something here, there's something here. I pray enough and
Speaker 1: listen enough, I'll find out what I was supposed to
Speaker 1: learn from this. But for me, it just felt like
Speaker 1: it would be even more difficult to move on and
Speaker 1: to grieve if it was just random, if it was
Speaker 1: just something that happened, then there was no purpose, There's
Speaker 1: nothing to be gained from it, So that sort of
Speaker 1: began to self examination process that led to me to
Speaker 1: run for city council. Before you do that, as that
Speaker 1: angsty twenty year old in the White House getting that
Speaker 1: kind of phone call, when you hang up the phone,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Took a deep breath like that,
Speaker 1: but the front of my pocket went upstairs, and exactly
Speaker 1: nothing happened. I still remember the exact conversations that happened afterwards.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Lakers and their championship chances. There's
Speaker 1: a day before the midterm election, so talking about the
Speaker 1: tea party and everything felt so stupid and so meaningless
Speaker 1: and pointless until lunchtime. And then lunchtime I got my
Speaker 1: headphones and listen to my music. What was the sad music?
Speaker 1: Tupac pour out some liquor. It was Bone Thugs and
Speaker 1: Harmony Crossroads. It was TI Live in the Sky. Might
Speaker 1: have been some gospel music in there too, And then
Speaker 1: went back in and finished the day. Even the casualness
Speaker 1: in which you share this now it's well, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to process it myself. Are you just very good at
Speaker 1: compartmentalizing as a survival tactic? I had to be in
Speaker 1: terms of compartmentalizing to get what needs to be done
Speaker 1: to kind of move that's next forward. So I mean
Speaker 1: it's a great strength with us a weakness and the liability.
Speaker 1: But I think I my weakness where you compartmentalize, it
Speaker 1: could lead people around you to feel like you're being
Speaker 1: dismissive or that you don't care a or B. It
Speaker 1: can make people think that you're teflon so nothing like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're fine, they're fine, right, So I think it's that
Speaker 1: double edged sword when it's really about a survival and
Speaker 1: defensive mechanism to just keep moving forward, right, and to
Speaker 1: keep the ball rolling. But I think the bigger part
Speaker 1: of it is I found such healing through the work
Speaker 1: of preventing violence, the work of reducing homicides, that work
Speaker 1: of reducing shootings, the work of giving X shooters second
Speaker 1: chances and redemption. I think that leads to the somewhat
Speaker 1: levigy around describing a very traumatic and tragic situation. And
Speaker 1: I think for me s over the decade, I've been
Speaker 1: able to kind of use that energy and use that
Speaker 1: pain and channel it towards something that feels like it's
Speaker 1: reparative and restorative. And I think That's what it makes
Speaker 1: me able to talk about it in such a casual way,
Speaker 1: despite the fact, to your point, it shook my world.
Speaker 1: It was jarring, it was shocking. It took a while.
Speaker 1: Even now still I think about him, or I go
Speaker 1: to his Facebook page and see sort of old pictures
Speaker 1: and stuff and wonder like, who would you have been
Speaker 1: a thirty Right, So it's a process, but I think
Speaker 1: finding ways to change that pain and challenge it to
Speaker 1: purpose has been helpful for me. Well, you certainly channeled
Speaker 1: it into purpose because in twenty twelve, you run for
Speaker 1: Stockton City Council, you're still in college. You win, you
Speaker 1: serve that term. In twenty sixteen you run to become
Speaker 1: the mayor of Stockton, and you win again. You're the
Speaker 1: city's first black mayor and one of the youngest in
Speaker 1: the nation. That teflon like quality that you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Did it serve you well in those early months when
Speaker 1: you first get into office. Yes, and no. Part of
Speaker 1: what led to some backlash against me was that I
Speaker 1: did not emote particularly publicly. You know, I just didn't
Speaker 1: really show what I was feeling if I was affected,
Speaker 1: I heard. I think some people took that as being
Speaker 1: stand offish or arrogant or uppity. Is there an instance
Speaker 1: of that that you're thinking about several I remember one
Speaker 1: time meeting with a group of mothers, Latina mothers in
Speaker 1: Black mothers who had lost their children to gun violence,
Speaker 1: and they were sharing and some were shrieking and some
Speaker 1: were crying, and I was just quiet, and when I spoke,
Speaker 1: I was very measured and said, I appreciate that, thanks
Speaker 1: for sharing them. So sorry your kids will no longer here.
Speaker 1: It's unacceptable. Here's what we're doing, and we've increased detectives,
Speaker 1: we are clearance rates up, we've reduced homicides, etc. And
Speaker 1: then afterwards one of my friends who was an organizer,
Speaker 1: told me that the parents thought that I didn't connect
Speaker 1: with them or that I didn't care, And I was like, huh,
Speaker 1: but there were used, particularly to political leaders, instead of
Speaker 1: talking about solutions, to really commis, commisserate and be performative
Speaker 1: in terms of acting out empathy. And I realized I
Speaker 1: was like, well, yeah, but I mean this conversation is
Speaker 1: tough for me because also some of them my family
Speaker 1: has been murdered as well, So I don't think it's
Speaker 1: appropriate for me as the mayors spend this time commiserating,
Speaker 1: where I should spend this time talking to you about
Speaker 1: what we're doing to prevent these strategies from happening. But
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people, particularly the leadership
Speaker 1: they were used to was sort of leadership that wasn't
Speaker 1: about solutions, but it was really about commissering with you
Speaker 1: about the problem and telling you how difficult the problem is,
Speaker 1: and giving you an outlet to share your pain. But
Speaker 1: I just never found that healthy, so I was always
Speaker 1: trying to redirect it to like, Okay, but this is
Speaker 1: what we're doing. And I think for a lot of
Speaker 1: people that was just different and jarring it. So some
Speaker 1: people wanted more connection or a more empathetic approach that
Speaker 1: was less policy based. I think people were really stuck
Speaker 1: in their experience and I'm just not trained in therapy.
Speaker 1: That just feels like a bad use of everyone's time,
Speaker 1: And to me, it feels like it's exploitative of pain
Speaker 1: and trauma, and I just refused to do that. When
Speaker 1: in politics, have you been pushed to the point of
Speaker 1: showing that emotion that you hold. Is there any point
Speaker 1: in your four years where you felt this is a
Speaker 1: bridge too far? We would have these quarterly meetings with me,
Speaker 1: the US attorney, the police chief, and young men we
Speaker 1: suspected were either perpetrators or future victims of gun crimes.
Speaker 1: And I was the opening speaker, and I would find
Speaker 1: myself getting really emotional because I would talk about my
Speaker 1: dad and I didn't want that to be them, or
Speaker 1: how I don't want their children to grow whenever their
Speaker 1: father is or I talk about don now, so I
Speaker 1: don't want you to end up dead and see your
Speaker 1: face on T shirts and your family doing car washes.
Speaker 1: And I would talk about just being mayor of the
Speaker 1: city and the amount of the funerals I had to
Speaker 1: eulogize of young people, the amount of calls and meetings
Speaker 1: I have with mothers and wives who have lost people,
Speaker 1: and I would find my voice rising or cracking like
Speaker 1: every time, and that's when the emotion would get because
Speaker 1: I was looking at them and they and I could
Speaker 1: see them like, look like this could be the conversation,
Speaker 1: So let me tell you how much this means and
Speaker 1: how much it matters. So then and then talking about
Speaker 1: basic income or anytime we had a debate on the
Speaker 1: diis around anything else to help poor people or marginalized people,
Speaker 1: if there was opposition, I would take that really personally
Speaker 1: and emote more than I generally did. But it's that
Speaker 1: idea of universal basic income and the pilot program you
Speaker 1: launched that catapulted you onto the national stage. In response
Speaker 1: to this positive wave of media attention, a local blog
Speaker 1: called two oh nine Times goes on the offensive. From
Speaker 1: the day you're elected, they launched what they called Michael
Speaker 1: Tubbs Operation Icarus, a reference to the mythological Greek figure
Speaker 1: who melted his wings by flying too close to the sun.
Speaker 1: Beyond the name, it was a calculated four year campaign
Speaker 1: to ensure you were a one term mayor. The blog
Speaker 1: did this by spreading rampant misinformation. They published articles that
Speaker 1: claimed your scholarship programs were missing millions of dollars, that
Speaker 1: you were under investigation from the FBI, that you didn't
Speaker 1: actually live in Stockton. Of course, most of these accusations
Speaker 1: are plainly racist, All of them have proven to be untrue,
Speaker 1: and yet they were effective. After winning your first mayoral
Speaker 1: election in twenty sixteen, width I think seventy percent of
Speaker 1: the vote. You lose in twenty twenty two Republican Kevin
Speaker 1: Lincoln by about twelve percent. My question to you, why
Speaker 1: was this website so effective at eroding public trust and
Speaker 1: a man and mayor they clearly liked. I think part
Speaker 1: of it was in Stockton. So at the time I
Speaker 1: was elected. Also, our large, our only newspaper and it's
Speaker 1: hold of two hundred and fifteen thousand people, laid off
Speaker 1: a third of its staff and was running just national
Speaker 1: stories basically in some local interests or money national stories,
Speaker 1: no real digital presence. A that paper was called the
Speaker 1: Record Record. Yeah. By the time you come into office,
Speaker 1: they only have six employees. Yeah, so six employees for
Speaker 1: the only newspaper for a time three hundred and fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand people, So it was a vacuum. Number two. I
Speaker 1: love Stockton, but the top one hundred metro areas, it's
Speaker 1: number ninety nine in terms of adults with a four
Speaker 1: year degree or higher according to US News and World Report.
Speaker 1: When the most illiterate cities in this country, I think
Speaker 1: the number one forty four out of one fifty, which
Speaker 1: doesn't mean my folks are dumb, but it does mean
Speaker 1: we could be susceptible to misinformation that praise on existing biases,
Speaker 1: that praise on manipulating emotions, and I think sort of
Speaker 1: Starktonians are real solid the earth people. So I think
Speaker 1: for a lot of people it was why would anyone
Speaker 1: spend four years trying to get a mare out? Why
Speaker 1: would they lie? All this can be lies? I think
Speaker 1: it was like what Steve Bannon said about Trump, just
Speaker 1: flood the zone with ship and then you begin to
Speaker 1: wear people down. So it's like, well, maybe some of
Speaker 1: this is true, maybe all of it's not true, but
Speaker 1: maybe there's a kernel of truth somewhere, and it's like
Speaker 1: given the benefit of doubt that creates scenes of discord.
Speaker 1: When you're the first of anything, you're going against a
Speaker 1: century long idea of who has this position, who is
Speaker 1: the mayor, what does the mayor do, how does the
Speaker 1: mayor at what does the mayor look like? So my
Speaker 1: first meeting as a as a city councilperson, the city
Speaker 1: manager met with me and said, I have never seen
Speaker 1: the community so distressed as I've seen the black community
Speaker 1: in Stockton. He said, the outcomes on every measure are terrible,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I've never seen anything like this, and
Speaker 1: he's been in citygovering for thirty five years. So there's
Speaker 1: also a latent racism and also an anti blackness that
Speaker 1: permeanates in the city of Stockton, which I think made
Speaker 1: easier for those lines to stick because those lines were
Speaker 1: rooted to sort of anti black biases like I'm a criminal,
Speaker 1: I am lazy, I'm illegitimate, I don't actually live in
Speaker 1: the city. I actually did not win the election. And
Speaker 1: I mean you do that on social media. I mean
Speaker 1: because we were which is funny because I'm young, you
Speaker 1: think I would have been the master of social media,
Speaker 1: but I came of age politically in twenty twelve. Twitter
Speaker 1: was like a very small part of my campaign strategy.
Speaker 1: So much of our game plan we were communicating to
Speaker 1: people through newspapers, through broadcast television, through like traditional media outlets,
Speaker 1: and we weren't talking to people every single day. So
Speaker 1: they were also able to build a relationship with people
Speaker 1: where they would post like a fire first before anyone,
Speaker 1: and post like a car crash before anyone, And I
Speaker 1: think that led to a relationship with sort of folk,
Speaker 1: so that when they started feeding them that poison, it
Speaker 1: was like, well, I mean I checked out for what
Speaker 1: I mean, I was going to look at the traffic
Speaker 1: to that I was going to see if there was
Speaker 1: any fights, anything happening in the homeless encabinets, and this
Speaker 1: is what they said, and a thousand people liked. It
Speaker 1: can all be true, it can all be false. Like
Speaker 1: there's something there at the same time leading an agenda
Speaker 1: that was very much anti status quo, that was doing
Speaker 1: things like basic income, that was doing things like giving
Speaker 1: second chances to ex offenders to bringing down homicide. I
Speaker 1: was doing things like prioritizing the parts of the city
Speaker 1: that had been neglected, that was doing things like ending
Speaker 1: the golf course subsidy. So you have all this change
Speaker 1: happened by someone who looks very different, so that's causing
Speaker 1: a lot of energy. You have all this national attention saying,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this guy's amazing, which breach resentment. And
Speaker 1: then you have this local hyperlocal blog misinformation site that
Speaker 1: every day, three times a day, dripped by drip by
Speaker 1: drip is painting a difference story. And the last thing
Speaker 1: I'll say about this, which I never thought of before.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is that I was like, Okay, people have
Speaker 1: to recognize that if they're the only people who are
Speaker 1: saying this, chances are it's not true. Of all the
Speaker 1: attention we get and they're the only people that know this.
Speaker 1: But because of the lack of an education and because
Speaker 1: the racism, it became like the more outlandeous the claims became,
Speaker 1: and the more isolated and detached they were not just
Speaker 1: from reality or from other media outlets, the more resident
Speaker 1: it became with folks because like, oh, yeah, everyone else
Speaker 1: is lying, but they're telling us the truth, which is
Speaker 1: it's hard for me because I just don't have that worldview.
Speaker 1: And I came and begin to logic why that makes sense?
Speaker 1: Do you think that's because some part of people wanted
Speaker 1: it to be true a million percent? And I think
Speaker 1: that's why I was so effective, because not everyone who
Speaker 1: sort of pays attention to that website it's necessarily racist,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of things on that website that
Speaker 1: it didn't peel to people who were racist. I think
Speaker 1: part of it was, oh, wow, this fits my schema.
Speaker 1: No one's been successful as mayor of Stockton, so he's
Speaker 1: stealing money. Of course, he can't be the mayor. He
Speaker 1: didn't really win the mayor. He doesn't even live in
Speaker 1: the city. It was like finding ways to legitimize people's
Speaker 1: abhorrent and abnormal thoughts about who I was and what
Speaker 1: I was doing, and unfortunately it was successful. Michael Fitzgerald,
Speaker 1: who was a longtime columnist at the local paper you
Speaker 1: mentioned the record, said I think there's that envy factor
Speaker 1: in this town. I mean, shouldn't people look up to
Speaker 1: you when you graduate from Stanford and you have all
Speaker 1: this wonderful innovative stuff going on in the city with
Speaker 1: such a focus on the economically disadvantaged. But a lot
Speaker 1: of people didn't. Stockton has a culture of mediocrity, and
Speaker 1: it's really difficult to try and send it. I'm not
Speaker 1: from Stockton, I haven't spent much time in Stockton. I
Speaker 1: don't know what he's saying is true that it has
Speaker 1: a culture of mediocrity. But the fact is Stockton hasn't
Speaker 1: reelected a mayor for a second term since nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: Pretty hard to get things done in four years. Do
Speaker 1: you believe what he says that some part of the
Speaker 1: community is stuck in mediocrity? A million percent? And I
Speaker 1: say that as someone who has deep love for the city,
Speaker 1: who dedicated my entire twenties to the city's uplift. But
Speaker 1: you see him particularly in our governmental institutions. I was
Speaker 1: fighting with the county on mask ordinances during COVID when
Speaker 1: we have one of the worst COVID rates in the state.
Speaker 1: Our largest school district has some of the lowest literacy
Speaker 1: rates in the state and has a board that's incredibly
Speaker 1: incompetent in dysfunctional. The city tolerates from its institutions people
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't hire to do anything. So I think
Speaker 1: there is a real culture of mediocrity, and I think
Speaker 1: that's part of why I came back. That's part of
Speaker 1: why I made sure on my end to be consistently excellent,
Speaker 1: not just on the Stockton stage, but on the national stage,
Speaker 1: like we're going to show that we can be excellent,
Speaker 1: we can be great here, and that's why we spent
Speaker 1: so much time with young people and investing in young
Speaker 1: people so that they don't begin to embody or internalize
Speaker 1: that culture. And then I also think there's not all
Speaker 1: the community, but there's a segment of the community that's
Speaker 1: addicted to dysfunction. What do you mean by that. There's
Speaker 1: some people in the city who leaders I've worked with
Speaker 1: who were happier when the previous mayor had nothing moving,
Speaker 1: when the previous mayor was in the FBI investigation, when
Speaker 1: the previous when there's a dysfunction in rank or at
Speaker 1: city hall, because it made them relevant and made them
Speaker 1: important and made them sort of leaders. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of community leaders who actually were upset because things
Speaker 1: were moving with or without them. Things were happening, we
Speaker 1: were showing what could be done. I think ALC said
Speaker 1: this after the insurrection. I remember her ig live. She said,
Speaker 1: these folks would rather the building burn down as long
Speaker 1: as they're in charge. And I think of like the
Speaker 1: fire union, for example, the police union as a clear
Speaker 1: example of that, but also some different community leaders and activists.
Speaker 1: So it's not the entire city, but there's definitely a
Speaker 1: culture of like hyper parochialism that's actually exclusionary and marginalizes
Speaker 1: a lot of folks in the city who aren't part
Speaker 1: of quote unquote Old Stockton. That permeates, and that's a
Speaker 1: lot of things I fought against when I was accounts
Speaker 1: member at mayor. It's a curious thing because for people
Speaker 1: who don't know, the city manager is really more important
Speaker 1: than the mayor, which essentially makes the mayor an ambassador,
Speaker 1: a fundraiser, and a go between with other government entities.
Speaker 1: And so you very much knew what the job was.
Speaker 1: And I think knowing that you did a remarkable job
Speaker 1: introducing new innovative ideas that garnered national attention, you then
Speaker 1: funnel that national attention back to Stockton in a way
Speaker 1: they previously haven't seen. And the strange thing is you
Speaker 1: were punished for it, And I want to know where
Speaker 1: do you think you missed up along the way. I
Speaker 1: definitely think that's a fair characterization. And the other other
Speaker 1: thing I would add is that I had steadied the
Speaker 1: position for four years as accouncil member, so I knew
Speaker 1: how to make it work. I was able to hire
Speaker 1: a city manager who I selected to be my partner,
Speaker 1: and I always had four votes with me. Anything I
Speaker 1: need to get done, I could get done. But so
Speaker 1: I think it was that and all that power and
Speaker 1: all that influence is all their intention from someone who
Speaker 1: looks very different than anyone who's ever occupied that role
Speaker 1: or space, which I think led to some suspicion of people.
Speaker 1: I think I misstep in a couple of ways. Number One,
Speaker 1: I should have scoffoled it. What does that mean? Cee
Speaker 1: Stof would go crazy because I would say if the
Speaker 1: ABC D E F G H I J. K All
Speaker 1: the way to Z. We're not just doing A and B.
Speaker 1: We're so far behind. Like literally, in my office I
Speaker 1: had a shot clock of how many days, how many hours,
Speaker 1: how many seconds until my term was over? And I'm
Speaker 1: just going all the time. So there was always a
Speaker 1: sense of urgency that we don't come much time we have,
Speaker 1: so you wanted to give yourself an anxiety attack. It
Speaker 1: was very motivating for me. It was like, look, you guys,
Speaker 1: we have how much something you have? Can we get
Speaker 1: it done in this time? Let's go if there here
Speaker 1: would be done yesterday. It drove my staff crazy. I'm
Speaker 1: sure because of that. I didn't think of my time
Speaker 1: as eight years. I thought of my time that's four years.
Speaker 1: And I think if I thought about sort of, okay,
Speaker 1: you have eight years, maybe I waited the golf course
Speaker 1: thing in term two when I'm laying ducked in the
Speaker 1: political ramifications when it been, I wouldn't have to calculate those.
Speaker 1: So I think that's one. The second thing is minus
Speaker 1: the last election. Every other election I've been in I
Speaker 1: won by at least eight points or more, and usually
Speaker 1: by twenty thirty points. I know politics, but when I'm
Speaker 1: governing my local calculus a second to what I think
Speaker 1: is right, and I think it's that sort of fidelity
Speaker 1: to this is what's right. We're going to do it
Speaker 1: regardless of the political cost. To me. Unpack that distinction
Speaker 1: that you're talking about. Yeah, So when campaigning and the
Speaker 1: act of politics is just the act of sort of
Speaker 1: perception and the act of sort of getting people to
Speaker 1: think that you are gonna have their worldview, you'll have
Speaker 1: their best interests at heart, or you are the best
Speaker 1: representative of them. You sit with people you disagree with,
Speaker 1: you don't really take strong positions, You talk about value,
Speaker 1: talk of the things everyone agrees with, etc. But then
Speaker 1: when you govern, you actually have to get shit done.
Speaker 1: You actually have to do stuff. And I just take
Speaker 1: it so seriously. I take like the public trust. It's
Speaker 1: like sacred to me that I was going to be
Speaker 1: adamant that I would tell my stuff. We are in
Speaker 1: this office to do something, not to be something. We're
Speaker 1: not here to be mayor, we're here to do the
Speaker 1: job of marrying govern So I've never been afraid of
Speaker 1: to have votes. Oh, golf course, golfer is gonna be mad,
Speaker 1: White yarns gonna be mad. People who live on the
Speaker 1: golf course are going to be mad, but that didn't
Speaker 1: phase me. It was like they could be mad, but
Speaker 1: this was necessary for us all to be happy. And
Speaker 1: I think that's a great skill to govern. It's hard
Speaker 1: to do that well and do the politics well, particularly
Speaker 1: in the city as diverse and as messy as Stockton.
Speaker 1: So I could have done less. But I mean, for me,
Speaker 1: the position wasn't what it means to win end, So
Speaker 1: I just can't even fatto me slowing down to do
Speaker 1: it for eight years but I could do it in four.
Speaker 1: What do you mean? It was a means to an end.
Speaker 1: Being mayor was never the goal. The goal was to
Speaker 1: increase opportunity in Stockton. The goal was to sort of
Speaker 1: prioritize equity and to center marginalized people. The goal was
Speaker 1: to really show that cities like Stockton matter. That was
Speaker 1: the goal, and the mayor was the means to achieve
Speaker 1: that goal. But I can't imagine being happy if I
Speaker 1: was every day was well, okay, how do I get
Speaker 1: to four years later? It's like the job wasn't that
Speaker 1: great for me to even and want to move slower.
Speaker 1: But if I want to be reelected, that's what I
Speaker 1: should have done. I should be like, Okay, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is a tough vote. And the thing is my
Speaker 1: your biggest strength is also your biggest weakness. And one
Speaker 1: of my strengths is I'm not afraid to be first.
Speaker 1: I'm not afraid to be in front. I'm not afraid
Speaker 1: to take heat. So for almost every tough vote the
Speaker 1: council took, from the time I was a councilmember to
Speaker 1: the time I was done being mayor, I was always
Speaker 1: a front person. I was always making the motion, I
Speaker 1: was always making the arguments. I was always in the
Speaker 1: press making the case. And I mean, you can only
Speaker 1: take so much arrows take You're gonna be the fall
Speaker 1: guy for so much. Right. I knew I had political capital,
Speaker 1: but I think I just spent more than I had
Speaker 1: and I didn't really recognize that, Hey, actually someone else
Speaker 1: should probably be the front person for this. But then
Speaker 1: it's like I might not get done. Did you want
Speaker 1: to get re elected? I did. I want to be
Speaker 1: re elected, But a year later, I'm happy I wasn't reelected.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy with how everything played out. But I
Speaker 1: definitely wanted to be re elected. But I'll be honest
Speaker 1: with you, I was exhausted, especially twenty was just a
Speaker 1: tough year to be mayor and seeing all the devastation
Speaker 1: of COVID and your city is a ghost town and
Speaker 1: people are stressing, anxious, and you're working with a county
Speaker 1: government where the head of the Office of Emergency Services
Speaker 1: told me to stay in my lane because I said,
Speaker 1: I need some I need a mask and maniday for
Speaker 1: my people. I need some of these county funds to
Speaker 1: come to the city. I need my migrate fine workers
Speaker 1: not to get COVID because we're not doing our job
Speaker 1: as government. I need a testing site, I need this,
Speaker 1: I need that. And the response was stay in your
Speaker 1: lane to the mayor of the largest city in the county.
Speaker 1: And then my council voted against me on like render
Speaker 1: protections during the pandemic so we could. It just got
Speaker 1: to the point where I'm just tired of fighting all
Speaker 1: these fights and no one seems to care, Like everyone
Speaker 1: outside hates me still and thinks I'm a crooking criminal.
Speaker 1: I'm the only one on here fighting for their best interests,
Speaker 1: making sure that money is spent the way it should
Speaker 1: be spent. So I think part of me subconsciously may
Speaker 1: have been ready to transition, honestly, but as far as
Speaker 1: I know, I wanted to be re elected. I felt
Speaker 1: like we were. We had so much momentum. I felt
Speaker 1: like in term two I could be even more radical
Speaker 1: because I was lame ducked and there wasn't another election looming,
Speaker 1: so all political calculusts out the window. And I was
Speaker 1: really excited because we had some big things lined up.
Speaker 1: But everything happens for a reason. I'm happy I wasn't reelected.
Speaker 1: I bring all this up because next year of the midterms,
Speaker 1: and it's worth thinking about not only the races, but
Speaker 1: how one wins those races. And I have to say,
Speaker 1: if someone like you couldn't pull it off, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to find hope. The only caveat I would add is
Speaker 1: that it helps a lot of caveats, well the biggest one,
Speaker 1: And I want to make sure people don't lose sight
Speaker 1: of this. It wasn't an election year campaign that did
Speaker 1: me in. It wasn't like the regular campaign, the six
Speaker 1: to eight months cycle. It was a four year, strategic, planned,
Speaker 1: intentional campaign with no counter until election time that did
Speaker 1: me in. So I think part of it is to
Speaker 1: your point when folks like us get in office, things change,
Speaker 1: things move, and we just have to be smarter going
Speaker 1: in predicting that the backlash will be probably even more
Speaker 1: than we expect that there will be organized interests. We
Speaker 1: will spend time thinking about, Okay, what can we do
Speaker 1: every day for four years to make sure it's not
Speaker 1: a second term. And I used to get that warning.
Speaker 1: No one told me that. I would have made sure
Speaker 1: we were ready, but it was four years is by
Speaker 1: the time people got to the ballot box, we were
Speaker 1: fighting whether Michael Tubbs is a criminal or not, whether
Speaker 1: Michael Tubbs lives in Stockton or not, whether Michael Tubbs
Speaker 1: is under FBI investigation or not. And that was a
Speaker 1: whole different sort of level of political warfare we weren't
Speaker 1: prepared for, and I take some blame for that, but no,
Speaker 1: we have to be hopeful because what we see in
Speaker 1: our politics now are people who are interested in governing,
Speaker 1: who are just interested in being in government. The only
Speaker 1: way to solve these big exidential crises from I'm change
Speaker 1: transitional racism to housing affordability, wealth and income inequality is
Speaker 1: getting people in the messiness of the system. And then
Speaker 1: also for everything, there's a season, and you play every
Speaker 1: day like it's you only have one term. If you
Speaker 1: only have one term, like me, you have a body
Speaker 1: of work you'll be proud of and be like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm having sure if I could did more in terms too.
Speaker 1: I feel like we've been hard to follow this act. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, like, I think we did such incredible work.
Speaker 1: So I think people should get in knowing that you
Speaker 1: may not be in forever, and that's okay. When you're
Speaker 1: in there, do everything you can to make it matter
Speaker 1: that you were there, and then when or lose, you'll
Speaker 1: be able to look yourself in the mirror and say,
Speaker 1: we'll look at mattered. So you're in favor of people
Speaker 1: getting into office doing as much as they can with
Speaker 1: the time they have, irrespective of how their voters feel
Speaker 1: about it. Which is why I'm the one term mayor.
Speaker 1: I think so. But no, I think the job of
Speaker 1: leadership is to mold, like doctor King says, a leadership
Speaker 1: is a molder of consensus. Like you don't just wait
Speaker 1: for consensus and then you lead. That's like no, Like
Speaker 1: leadership is saying this is where we need to go,
Speaker 1: and let me push us to get there, let me
Speaker 1: build consisus to get there. I think I can't think
Speaker 1: of anything I've done as gonna like the leader that
Speaker 1: at the time the public was already there. Usually what
Speaker 1: I did was the public identify a problem that they
Speaker 1: went a solution for. It was consensus around the problem,
Speaker 1: and they had to bring consensus about the solution, and
Speaker 1: oftentimes people didn't like the solution. I get it, but
Speaker 1: we all agree on this problem. So let's focus on
Speaker 1: this is a solved, a possible solutions to the problem.
Speaker 1: I guess I just wanted to add nuance to what
Speaker 1: you were saying. It's that your job of leadership is
Speaker 1: to get the public to where they should be, to
Speaker 1: solve the problems that they say they want to see
Speaker 1: solved before we go. You referenced all these things that
Speaker 1: you're proud of. Why don't you share some of them.
Speaker 1: I'm incredibly proud of the Stockton scholars Program. I was
Speaker 1: able to raise twenty plus million dollars so that even
Speaker 1: though though I'm not even there, we have a foundation
Speaker 1: I started that I'm still the board share off and
Speaker 1: for the next decade, every single kid who graduates from
Speaker 1: our high schools is guaranteed a two year four year
Speaker 1: a trade school scholarship as a way to trendscend that
Speaker 1: cultural mediocrity that we talked about them. Let the young
Speaker 1: people know there's expectation that after high school you'll do something.
Speaker 1: Whether it's trade school, whether it's a certification, whether it's
Speaker 1: opening a business, where it's whatever it is, community college,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, you have to do something after high school,
Speaker 1: and we're going to make sure you have the resources
Speaker 1: to do it. We're not just telling you to do something,
Speaker 1: we're giving you the resources to do it. So I'm
Speaker 1: incredibly proud of that, Incredibly proud of the basic income work,
Speaker 1: which started with one mayor. Now we have sixty mayors
Speaker 1: as part of the Mayors for Guaranteed Income, a coalition
Speaker 1: I've found it. We have money in California's budget for
Speaker 1: basic income. We have a federal child tax Credit which
Speaker 1: is a guaranteed in the cover of Friends with Children.
Speaker 1: Incredibly proud of the violence reduction works. When I was
Speaker 1: the accouncil member, I helped create the Office of Violence
Speaker 1: Prevention that's still there even though I'm not. We brought
Speaker 1: in the Ceasefire Program and the Ants Peace Program, which
Speaker 1: is still there even though I'm not we reduce homicides
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen, So proud of that. And then we also
Speaker 1: did a bunch of workaround climate justice and we were
Speaker 1: able to get ten plus million dollars from the state
Speaker 1: to really focus on planting more trees so people in
Speaker 1: the south part of the city don't have asthma or
Speaker 1: don't live three theres higher than other people in green jobs,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Really proud of that work. And lastly, proud
Speaker 1: of the fact that when I came to city council
Speaker 1: we were bankrupt. When I left this mayor, we're the
Speaker 1: fourth most physically healthy city in the nation with a
Speaker 1: thirteen million dollars surplus in the pandemic. Like proud of
Speaker 1: that way as of the health fisically manage the city.
Speaker 1: I know many people keep asking you, Michael Tubbs, are
Speaker 1: you gonna run for office again? They usually ask it
Speaker 1: in a much more seductive way than I just said.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna ask you that. Okay, I might ask you,
Speaker 1: but but first, in two thousand and eight, you're seventeen
Speaker 1: years old. You were part of a team that won
Speaker 1: a national debate competition sponsored by the end WAACP. As
Speaker 1: a result, got to meet then Senator Barack Obama, who
Speaker 1: was a presumptive Democratic presidential nominee at the time. You
Speaker 1: said to The New York Times, I looked at him,
Speaker 1: shook his hand and told him I'm next. He responded
Speaker 1: to you, Okay, do you still want what that seventeen
Speaker 1: year old wanted? I'm not wedded to the position, but
Speaker 1: I still want with that seventy year old want it
Speaker 1: in terms of a country that works for everyone. That's
Speaker 1: a bold kid. Yeah, that's a bold kid from Stockton, California,
Speaker 1: South Stockton's finest. But no, I think I'm still waited
Speaker 1: to this notion that the country needs to work for everyone.
Speaker 1: But at seventeen, I thought the only way to do
Speaker 1: that was to be president. And now I recognize there's
Speaker 1: so many ways to do that. So I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: open to that work, and I'm not wedded to any
Speaker 1: particular position. Can I tell you that's really the only
Speaker 1: politician answer you've given this whole time. Well, it's a
Speaker 1: real answer, Honestly, I guess I should say. I'm thirty
Speaker 1: one years old, and if you had told me last year,
Speaker 1: if you though, if you asked me last year that I
Speaker 1: I would be doing this ship. I'd be Mary of Stockton.
Speaker 1: If you would asked me ten years ago what I
Speaker 1: would be doing, it would not be being in Stockton.
Speaker 1: So I'll have to say, I don't know what the
Speaker 1: future holds. I'm open to opportunity, but I'm not waking
Speaker 1: up every day trying to be president. No, that's not
Speaker 1: sort of how I'm living. In your personal life, you're married, married,
Speaker 1: two kids, two children. I'm thinking back now to that
Speaker 1: scene you described earlier. You're in a motel six with
Speaker 1: your mother, and on her off days, You're right, she
Speaker 1: whispered affirmations about how one day I would have a
Speaker 1: pool in my backyard, or that I would take my
Speaker 1: family on vacations to nicer hotels than this one. At
Speaker 1: thirty one with two kids and a wife. How do
Speaker 1: you hear those affirmations? Now? Yeah, my mom and my
Speaker 1: grandmother just had an incredible vision for sort of what
Speaker 1: I could be and what I deserved. And I so
Speaker 1: appreciate the fact that I kept my vision upward and
Speaker 1: outward and not sort of in the minute she of
Speaker 1: the day to day struggles in which we lived. And
Speaker 1: I'm just so so thankful for them because they were
Speaker 1: planting a vision, building a self determination that serves me well.
Speaker 1: And I think we're all shocked at how right they were,
Speaker 1: and we're all shocked at how they knew from a
Speaker 1: really early age. So so thankful to them. In the pool, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was sharing earlier. I remember are the first house
Speaker 1: my wife and I bought together in Stockton had the pool,
Speaker 1: and my mom was so through the roof and she
Speaker 1: doesn't swim well, but she would come over and just
Speaker 1: jump in the pool and swim and say, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: my son has his own pool. And now it's someone
Speaker 1: who's been around sort of people with actual money. It's
Speaker 1: funny how for folks who come from poverty or economic insecurity,
Speaker 1: how there's little small markers that show you've arrived. So
Speaker 1: it's not a maserati, it's not a private jet, it's
Speaker 1: not a house in Aspen. For my mom was a pool.
Speaker 1: If her son had a pool, that signal that he
Speaker 1: had made it, that she hadd her job. So I
Speaker 1: think it was a full circle moment for her, and
Speaker 1: I was so happy to be a part of it.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you've made it? No, But I
Speaker 1: think sort of my definition of making it is as
Speaker 1: much about communal economic security as my own. I will
Speaker 1: feel like I've made it when we like end poverty,
Speaker 1: or when we have a guaranteed income program, or we
Speaker 1: have baby bonds or retirement savings for all, like like,
Speaker 1: when those things happen, then I'll be I made it.
Speaker 1: But right now I feel lucky to be in the
Speaker 1: process of making it. If you will well until then,
Speaker 1: I have only one thing left, which is a piece
Speaker 1: of poetry that I know means a lot to I
Speaker 1: think sometimes you would read it in front of kids
Speaker 1: at lengths and hughes academy. I'm going to turn it
Speaker 1: over to you now. Yeah, this poem is my favorite.
Speaker 1: It's the Rows that Grew from Concrete by Tupac Sugar.
Speaker 1: Did you hear about the rose that grew from the
Speaker 1: crack and the concrete? Proving nature's laws wrong? It learned
Speaker 1: to walk without having feet, funny, it seems, but by
Speaker 1: keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air. Long
Speaker 1: lived the rose that grew from concrete when no one
Speaker 1: else ever cared. What does that mean to you? Now?
Speaker 1: It's funny because I've had dozens of lectures on that
Speaker 1: poem in workshops, and for some reason when you just
Speaker 1: ask the question, I was like, well, what I had
Speaker 1: to stop and think. I think the poem is both
Speaker 1: celebratory of sort of resilience of the rose, but I
Speaker 1: think it's also a challenge, at least to me. I
Speaker 1: take us a challenge as to why did that rose
Speaker 1: have to grow from concrete in the first place, and
Speaker 1: how many roses that were planted aren't growing, and not
Speaker 1: because they're deficient, but because the environment that they're in
Speaker 1: is it conducive to growth. So the challenge to me
Speaker 1: and that poem is, while being so proud and so
Speaker 1: excited about the fact that a rose, when in a million,
Speaker 1: can grow from concrete, it's also about sort of deep
Speaker 1: mourning about the fact that there's all these roses that
Speaker 1: didn't grow, and so of what can I do to
Speaker 1: make it so that they're plants and environments that they
Speaker 1: can't grow. Lots of work to do ahead wherever you land.
Speaker 1: I look forward to supporting. I appreciate that. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Michael Thombs, thank you for coming in, Thanks for having me,
Speaker 1: and that's our show. Special thanks this week to Ashton
Speaker 1: Wickstrom and of course Michael Tubbs, his new book, The
Speaker 1: Deeper the Roots is available now. Get your copy through
Speaker 1: McMillan Publishers or wherever you do your reading. To learn
Speaker 1: more about Michael's work, visit our show notes at talk
Speaker 1: easypod dot com. There you'll also find a back catalog
Speaker 1: of over two hundred and fifty episodes. I'd recommend our
Speaker 1: talks with Representative il han Omar Roxanne Gay, Noam Chomsky,
Speaker 1: Doctor Cornell West, Michael Lewis, Gloria Steinham, Jubbulaherri, Jake Tapper,
Speaker 1: and Brittany Pacnick Cunning. Here to hear those and find
Speaker 1: more Pushkin podcasts. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk easypod. If you'd
Speaker 1: like this, support the show by purchasing one of our
Speaker 1: mugs or our vinyl record with fran Lebowitz, you can
Speaker 1: do so at talk easypod dot com slash shop. That's
Speaker 1: talk easypod dot com slash shop. Of course, this program
Speaker 1: would not be possible without our incredible team. Talk Easy
Speaker 1: is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janick Sopravo,
Speaker 1: our associate producer is Kaitlin Dryden. Today's episode was edited
Speaker 1: by Clarisse Gavara and mixed by Ben Taliday. Our engineer
Speaker 1: is Tim Moore out of York, recording here in Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 1: Illustrations by Chrisha Chanoy, music by Dylan Peck, Video and
Speaker 1: graphics by Ian Chang, Derek caberzach Ian Jones, and Ethan Seneca.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Patrice Lee, Andre Lynn, Kaylin Ung, Shilo Fagan,
Speaker 1: Niki Spina, and Callie Syringis. I'd also like to thank
Speaker 1: the team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Heather Fane, Mia LaBelle,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Maya Kanig, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to talk easy. Before we go, on a
Speaker 1: personal note, a friend of this show, James Rocky, passed
Speaker 1: away in the last week. He died of a sudden
Speaker 1: heart attack. He was fifty three. Some of you may
Speaker 1: have read his work. He was a great film critic
Speaker 1: through most of the two thousands. Eventually he pivoted to
Speaker 1: a different career like many film writers have had to
Speaker 1: and became a teacher. I never saw him in action,
Speaker 1: you know, teaching kids, but every once in a while
Speaker 1: I like to imagine what that looked like, because James
Speaker 1: was this uncommonly curious, polite Canadian, gargantuan fellow. He loved reading,
Speaker 1: he loved writing, but he really loved people. The director
Speaker 1: James Ponsell tweeted something I really liked. He said, there
Speaker 1: are plenty of smart people, but there are very few
Speaker 1: decent ones. And James, ever since I met him, he
Speaker 1: was a decent one. If he liked you, he called
Speaker 1: you a doctor. He would say doctor Fragoso every time
Speaker 1: without failed, doctor Fragoso. If he didn't like you, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't say it to your face, but in private he
Speaker 1: would have called you a melon farmer. I still don't
Speaker 1: know what a melon farmer is. About four or five
Speaker 1: months ago, he called me up on the phone. We
Speaker 1: hadn't talked in a year. Like many we had grown
Speaker 1: apart in the midst of the pandemic, not by choice
Speaker 1: but by condition, and right away we dove back into
Speaker 1: it like no time was lost. We talked about our
Speaker 1: families and love and school and peaching, kids on the
Speaker 1: other side of this pandemic, or in the middle of
Speaker 1: this pandemic with weird ELA's school mandates and kids who
Speaker 1: don't really want to be there. We talked for about
Speaker 1: forty five minutes, and at the end of the call
Speaker 1: he got a phone call from someone else and he said,
Speaker 1: hold on, I have to take this. I'll call you
Speaker 1: right back. You know the end of the story. And
Speaker 1: what we're left with, besides the pieces of writing, is
Speaker 1: this beautiful memory of what he was. It doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like enough, but it's what we got, and maybe, just
Speaker 1: maybe some part of him remains in all those students
Speaker 1: he had, whose names I'll never know, whose faces I'll
Speaker 1: never recognize. But there's something really comforting in this image
Speaker 1: of walking down the street and thinking, well, maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit of James is in this person next to me.
Speaker 1: But God willing, those kids will become adults that fall
Speaker 1: in love, get married, have kids. Maybe one day, when
Speaker 1: their kid is in the eighth grade, the kid will ask,
Speaker 1: what was your English teacher like in eighth grade? Dad, mom?
Speaker 1: And they'll say, you know, it's funny. I didn't like
Speaker 1: most of my teachers, but this guy who pushed me
Speaker 1: to read and write and care and show up and
Speaker 1: be decent. He was a tough teacher. He only gave
Speaker 1: me a bee, but I really liked him. He was
Speaker 1: a good man, and he really was. My love goes
Speaker 1: out to Arianne, his family, and all of us he's
Speaker 1: left behind. The strangers are otherwise. I'll see you back
Speaker 1: here next week with known Chomsky. Until then, stay safe,
Speaker 1: So long and much love, doctor