Mayors: You Say You Want A Revolution?

DOES IT TAKE STRONG DOSES OF COURAGE TO OCCUPY the position of mayor? One wouldn’t think so at the civic level, and yet politics has changed significantly enough that mayors attempting to take their cities along a more successful path must oppose powerful influences that have stood as obstacles to any new direction.Last week I watched the entire Ken Burns’ seven-part series on the lives of Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. It was remarkable in the telling.All three came from generational wealth and could have spent their lifetimes plying their investments and overseeing their small empires. Instead they believed that their financial security required that they expended their lifetimes cultivating the public good, and their chief vehicle for ensuring that effect was politics.Burns didn’t whitewash their faults – the warmongering, dalliances, prejudicial tendencies, and the policy oversights – but time and again he chronicled how they overcame such flaws to repeatedly side with the average citizen against the financial barons and corporations. In so doing, the documentarian made their actions pertinent to our time of growing financial inequity.Intentionally or not, Burns brought out the inherent weaknesses in our present-day politics. The disappointing failure of many of our current "leaders" is glaring by comparison.  In researching for this series on vital mayors around the world, the subject of fighting the moneyed interests and corruption repeatedly factors into their stories. Many are innovative and visionary, but what they possess in good measure is courage. For years they watched as their people continued losing out to those with financial clout and when their time came to become mayor they began serious efforts to put the average citizen and the public good at the centre of their efforts.Obviously in the developing world, where poverty has been deeply rooted for centuries, we would expect such economic divisions and admire those who confront them. Yet the Roosevelts in the documentary understood well enough that if politics continued to coddle the wealthy in increasing measure then it was only a matter of time until conditions were created that mirrored the oppressive conditions in poorer nations.I wondered while watching the series how the Roosevelts would have fared against present-day Wall Street, with its almost invincible sense of privilege and infallibility. It also made me consider that, with the focus of politics moving increasingly to the city level, that fortitude must become an essential to any head elected official.Citizens require more champions now than ever, and if not a mayor, then who? As Professor Joseph Palermo noted in a recent article:

“Today, when we see politicians like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo or Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel bludgeoning teachers’ unions while supping at the table of big campaign donors from Wall Street we’re left with the realization that working people have few reliable advocates for their interests anymore.”

His observations are from America, where powerful interests often reach heights of influence greater than senior politicians. Yet every political jurisdiction has them, and cities are no exception. Municipalities most often get into trouble over a period of decades – a period where self-serving interests frequently gain an upper hand. To pull a city out of such a downward spiral doesn’t just require skill, diplomacy, tact, or vision; there must be courage to fight for the average person again. The ability to stand up to historic power brokers is now required by mayors more now than ever before.With cities increasingly bearing both the problems and potential of modern democracy, the time for competent management in our cities is not enough. Things must change and that requires champions, not just organizational ability. Or as Martin Luther King Jr. put it regarding another subject: “There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.”Mayors can no longer merely manage the status quo. In a time of democratic decline in our cities, standing up for one’s fellow citizens becomes a revolutionary act. And revolution is about challenging those power structures that got us into trouble in the first place. It is time to stop treating them as merely taxpayers, but vital investors in community in their own right.