Week 6:
U.S. Conference of Mayors

June 30, 2014

Monday:

Today was busy. We started off with the Exports and Ports task force meeting at 7:30, bright and early. As hard as it is to believe, the attendance at the meeting was slightly less than average – I think Kool and the Gang the night before was a bit exhausting for our mayors! We had some mayors present, along with a senior advisor for the Army Corps of Engineers and a former US Trade Representative. Dave, James and I set up the meeting beforehand, and as always, I kept an eye on Dave as he greeted each guest and watched his interactions. One thing I’ve noticed, that I probably knew all along, is that Dave always finds some interesting way to relate to whoever he’s talking to. Whether it’s a statistic that somehow deals with their position, or a story that they could relate with, it’s important to establish some sort of connection. This isn’t difficult to do; most of the mayors I spoke with, I was able to think of something right away – even just a phrase or fact about myself – that connected with them beyond a simple “Hey, nice to meet you!” For example, when the mayor of Mount Vernon, New York, came to our booth, he introduced himself and I threw out that I went to school in Mount Vernon, Iowa (shoutout to Cornell!). It wasn’t necessarily a substantive connection, but even this little similarity, sharing town names, loosened the mood and led to a great conversation. Would we have had that conversation without my comment? Perhaps, sure! But it was so easy, after revealing a seemingly insignificant thing we shared, for the words to flow.

Alright, I’ll stop talking about it! After the Exports and Ports meeting, there was the final plenary session, where voting took place. Before voting, there was a panel with a discussion on Sports and Race, featuring Roland Martin (journalist, TV host), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Irvin (former Cowboys player), and USCM President Kevin Johnson, a former NBA player. That was very interesting and fun to listen to; all of the panelists were African-American, and there were definitely disagreements among them about how race is and should be handled in the context of sports and outside of sports. Something interesting that Martin said was that we assume someone is either racist, or not racist. We don’t account for (what probably most accurately depicts reality) racism being a scale, and people often falling somewhere along that scale instead of being completely racist or completely without any type of prejudice.

After the panel, the mayors voted on resolutions. Gene and Gail, two USCM staffers, were in charge of putting together these thick booklets that held all resolutions that had passed through committees to be voted on. Each mayor received a copy. President Johnson presided over the session, and most resolutions passed anonymously without discussion. There were about 6 or 7 that were pulled out for discussion by various mayors who had some type of concern or wanted to hear more. I had to leave before deliberation happened, as our DollarWi$e workshop was immediately after the business session, but I was told that all bills that passed through committee passed on the floor.

The workshop was great; I had to keep running to go get more chairs! People were very engaged and we had a bigger-name mayor there (Ed Lee, San Francisco), so the room was packed. Afterwards, we cleaned everything up and went to the closing luncheon. Once the luncheon was over, then, Dave and I attended a mobile workshop on the Dallas Trinity River Corridor project. Dave mentioned earlier in the weekend that I would be writing an article about the workshop for the USCM publication, so it was important that I paid attention! It was pretty cool. We saw a restaurant incubator where people bring their ideas and the business management side of things is taken care of by the incubator owners; this way people with new concepts can get off the ground and not worry about finances and things of that nature. After that, we went to a conservation Audubon Center, and then an area where horse barns were being built (imagine that, they didn’t have a horse-riding area previously!). It was really good to learn some more information about Dallas and how the project itself (currently already at $200 million) was organized and executed.

And the day still wasn’t over! That night was a final party at the Arboretum, which was absolutely beautiful. The food was phenomenal (best scallops I’ve ever had) and the party atmosphere was a little cozier, as quite a few mayors and staff had left after the final business session. It was a perfect way to end the conference.

Tuesday:

Exhausted and brain racing from the million things I learned during the weekend, I finally got a chance to relax on Tuesday. It was our travel day, and because our flight didn’t leave until five, we spent some time looking at Dealey Plaza and the JFK Musem in downtown. That was incredible – there are X’s on the street in the two spots where Kennedy’s car was when he was shot. That was crazy to see.

After a final, relaxed lunch in Dallas, we flew out and got back to Washington around 11, which put me in Van Ness at home-sweet-home at 12:30 in the AM. Back to work in 8.5 hours, leggo!

Wednesday:

I began the day by meeting up with a friend for breakfast, and got into the office around 10. My focus now is (almost) solely on the Income Inequality task force, and everything  I’m reading and doing has to do with previous policy ‘solutions’ to income inequality and what those results were. My goal is to create a white paper to provide some background into previous research for the task force meeting that will be happening in early August, and a main sub-goal (if I may) is objectivity. I am merely taking the empirical findings of various  studies, policies, etc and putting them in a consolidated format. The topic is a hot-button one right now (I’m not sure if I’ve already mentioned Capital by Thomas Picketty, but that is a book I’m reading right now that deals directly with the issue) and certainly is interesting to learn about!

The other thing I’m working on is a newspaper article about the mobile workshop I attended Monday for the USCM publication that it puts out after the annual meeting. Dave worked with me to shape my writing to mirror an actual newspaper article, and that was a great exercise for me.

Thursday and Friday:

More newspaper article and income inequality! I found it rather difficult to focus on Thursday morning, as the US Soccer game was at noon and Dave graciously allowed me to leave and go watch. Parker and I went to Dupont Circle, where the German Embassy had set up huge screens for people to watch. The circle was crowded; we were standing body-to-body, a giant pool of cheering sweat. The US team didn’t score a goal, which may have been a good thing because we probably would have trampled someone in the midst of our celebration! There were several people cheering on Germany there as well, but the atmosphere was not unfriendly – both Germany and the US were pretty sure to make it in, so the stress level wasn’t too high. It was a great way to watch the game!

I returned to work after the game, and the research continued! Denver and Jacksonville both have early childhood education programs, so I’m looking into those, as well as quite a few minimum-wage studies. I struggle with quite a few of these ‘solutions’ because I do not believe that it’s the governments’ job to provide, for example, pre-kindergarten programs, regardless of their result, but again, that’s not the focus of my paper.

I also listened in to a meeting Dave and James had with a future potential business partner in financial education. Financial literacy programming is required for our Summer Jobs contest, and the programming we use is pretty important. The meeting was a great chance for me to hear the types of questions that Dave and James asked of the person we met with (via phone), and to hear post-meeting deliberations. There was definitely some strategy involved. James reported that we have over 1,200 kids signed up for the contest, which is a great number, and we’re still looking for more.

Saturday and Sunday:

Both days were very relaxing. Sunday featured a hike around Rock Creek Park, which is about a mile from where I live on Connecticut Ave. The park is gorgeous, and reminds me a little of the Pal! I’d also been wanting to try out this burger n’ shake place called Shake Shack, so Tommy and I went there for supper. It was delicious, and while my peanut butter shake was slightly overpriced, I am certainly glad we went!