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good evening everybody welcome to the john f kennedy jr forum my name is trey grayson i'm the director of the institute of politics we're really glad to have all of you here with us at the harvard kennedy school we've been very fortunate this semester to have a great resident fellow anna navarro who will introduce our outstanding visiting fellow who's been all over campus this week and we're really glad to have had him uh i asked him if he was worn out and he said not even close so he's having a great time but tonight we're really honored to have both of them in the forum uh anna navarro is going to interview the mayor anna is a republican strategist a cnn commentator and uh from originally from miami florida and so we've been really glad to have her so please join me in welcoming iop fellow anna navarro well this was this is a frankly an unexpected treat for me because uh not only do i admire mayor b aragosa but we're also good friends and so the drawback to that is that i'm going to be asking him questions that i know a lot of the answers to and he's going to have to say the truth and nothing but the truth [Laughter] um he now says he's got seven staffers here that that he can see so i think well let's get this started so a little bit about mayor villaraigosa he was the 41st mayor of los angeles but he's gone through quite a metamorphosis and transformation he started in the farmworker movement he was president of the acau he was speaker of the house he was chairman of the democrat party he in california he was also lastly the uh chair of the democrat convention and and now he's a visiting fellow at harvard so i think he's got quite a lot of accomplishments so let's let's start by asking that question who is antonio villaraigosa how did he become mayor and how do you think you've evolved through the years there we go well it has to you know my grandpa got here a hundred years ago from mexico from leon guanajuato came here with a shirt on his back worked in the field built a small produce business in the teens by the 1920s had a fairly successful business that gave him a middle-class life my mom was at a catholic boarding home the top catholic boarding home in in l.a lost all his money in the depression lost his wife put my mother in a foster home in catholic school visited her on the weekends part of the greatest generation and i always say i'm here because of my mom and my grandpa who gave me an opportunity because we live in a great country that gave me a shot and because you know god is good and i was very fortunate to have a family that had a strong faith to them so that's who i am i am the product of my mother's love now i've seen a political evolution in you when you first came out as a latino leader to watch first of all you were that's what you were called then a latino leader i think now you've you are you're still a latino leader you will always be proud to be latino but you have transcended just that you are a leader period how would you respond to that you know it's funny because i was i just shared with you a little the background i was born here my mother was born here my grandpa got here a hundred years ago and yet as you said i was oftentimes described in the way that you did i grew up in an english-speaking home i'm the son of an immigrant on my father's side but he left when i was five so my experience was very you know mexican-american very like america the jewish or greek americans it was very particularly in the time that i was you know growing up it was everybody wanted to be [Music] you know kind of mainstream and homogenized so i i always i took umbrage from time to time with that characterization because you know i was born here um i started out though interestingly enough at 15 i tell people i never worked in the fields i i wasn't a farm worker i didn't speak in a word of spanish i kind of understood i had to stand up for them so i first got involved in the farmworker boycott against grapes i can't tell you i totally understood why but over the years i think it had something to do with i realized i had an education i had to speak out for people who couldn't i became a student leader i hope i played football not very well by the way but i hung around with african-american it was a back i was running back and linebacker hung around with african-american football players and they it was the silver during the civil rights movement and they started the black student union and i said i want to join and i did and then the united mexican-american students and then you know just led the walk-outs in that we had back then when you joined the black student union okay yeah and uh by the time i got to ucla i i brewing by the time i got to ucla i i certainly transcended that in my pot in politics i you know i worked across you know racial and ethnic lines and you know great deal of issues at the time there was the bombing of cambodia and laos and and there was affirmative action fights and i was in the middle of all of that and you know leading a very multi-racial group i was a labor organizer after that in a union that was probably 70 african-american i worked at the u.s equal employment opportunity commission enforcing our nation's discrimination laws and and became a steward and chief steward and president of a five state local at 25 and ran for national president at 27 and lost by seven votes and i've always been kind of a coalition builder frankly and so i i did i i took umbrage from time to time that was described in the way that you mentioned because it wasn't necessarily my experience and it certainly wasn't my politics it was more my politics were more coalition-based you began your political career as a maybe you disagree with us but i i think from the other side we saw you as a liberal firebrand you know you just described uh from the farmworker unions you were but today i know that you have a number of um republican friends you are a person who in a world that's so polarized and where there's so much lack of civility in politics deals with a lot of civility and have always performed your duty with a lot of civility how did that transformation happen again i i i attribute much of who i am to my mom you know we respected people and and and and as an example i was you know i did come from that side of the ledger as you said mentioned i i was president of the aclu but you know the aclu is an example i mean we believe in the battle of ideas we used to debate you know very often and heatedly and i i've always had a respect for people with different ideas now you're right when i got elected in 1994 i was majority whip within a few days of being elected and and i was the democratic firebrand i was the one that would get up on the floor the legislature and excoriate the other side uh i asked the republican leader at the time and he's now the chairman of the republican party and jim brouilty i asked him why do people hate me so much and he said one of the republicans hate me so much and he said well he says you get up and you personalize things and i i think i had gotten away from that civility that i was raised with and um i realized that if i was going to communicate effectively and more importantly if i was going to get things done that i was going to have to tone down the rhetoric and and you know respect other people's views and i think it was since that time that i i got back to the roots if you will and and understood that you know your best not when you're screaming but when you're lowering the volume a bit in fact whenever i'm t on tv and somebody starts screaming at me i always lower the volume because i don't want to be a part of that uh kind of an exchange so by the time i got elected uh speaker of the house the first thing i did you know democrats used to sit on one side of the aisle and republicans on the other i put them together i actually got called to task by the republicans went you know ballistic and the democrats were very unhappy and they called for a caucus and they said we don't want to sit with them i said well that's fine you will sit with them because maybe if you sit with them you'll realize that you both had a town hall this weekend you got screamed at um you had to go to throw you know the first pitch at a little league game uh you had problems at the house because you haven't been home all week and maybe you'll kind of think you have something in common you could work together i gave republicans proportionality of resources unheard of before or since i let the republican leader name every vice chair and all i said was i i want a budget you know they can call me names they can and they did and uh but you know we need a budget we got to get you know the house has got to do its work so i think over time and i realized that that was a more effective way of getting things done and really of understanding that you come with your own views but they're that they're just that they're your own jews so you were speaker of the house in california what advice would you give speaker john boehner right now you know i loved the institution i believed particularly in the the assembly when you're speaker the assembly is the people's house you know it's it's the lower house it's the bold house it's the house of innovation it's the house that moves the agenda so i loved the institution i i believe he loves the institution as well and i i guess the advice my advice that i would give them is you know put the interests of the institution before all else you know there were many times that my caucus would take umbrage with things that i would do you know they would criticize my reaching out to the other side and you know i pushed back you know i'll give you an example right after bill and hillary did their health care initiative i got elected so it was 1994. so you know most of us on that side you know most democrats felt the easiest way to expand health care would be to expand medical so i did a bill that said okay they killed health care for all let's do it for kids that's going to be hard to hit we'll expand health care medi-cal to 200 above poverty that's basically single-payer to to 200 percent above poverty i couldn't get it out of my house the first time the next year i'm still majority whip i'd put the bill across again i get it out of the committee but i couldn't get it out of the house the year after the republican congress with under newt gingrich and bill clinton agreed to what was the chip program that essentially the framework for providing health care for kids and insurance programs i was on the conference committee i'm now the majority leader and we all there were few of us who had health care bills and they were the democratic version in other words they were either some variation of single-payer or you know either in the senate or the assembly i went to because i was majority leader i went to the governor and i said you know what's the prospects of getting something done with you he said expanding your medi-cal bill is dead on arrival i will veto it i'm not expanding entitlements you know it's dead on arrival so i said what will you vote for what would you sign he said i'd sign a health insurance program i looked at him and i said i'll give you a health insurance program so i did the author of single-payer essentially for two years running i took it to the democrats and they booed me and all of the interest groups booed me as well and said that we shouldn't consummate that agreement i went ahead with it and i pushed it through my caucus and today whenever i'm introduced as the author of healthy family 750 000 kids have health care i get a standing ovation i learned a lot about you know getting things done and compromise and realize that you know like football you know you you when you get the ball you want to get the first down you're not trying to get a touchdown at every turn you want to get a first down and i wasn't afraid to get a first down is that possible in the is that possible today oh yeah in washington do you do you think both sides can compromise what they have to compromise in order for there to be a grand bargain we are what they have to compromise to get a grand bargain but i don't think either side understands the level of cynicism that's growing the the lack of participation that's resulting from that cynicism this sense that government doesn't work that's really kind of spreading throughout the country and i i think that's not healthy for democracy it's not healthy for either party and you know it takes two to tango and there's no question that in my opinion it's more broken on the right and and markedly more broken on the right it's broken left too you know i tell people with all respect you know i'm not a kid on a college campus anymore i'm i'm a grown up i gotta you know oh you are on a college campus i know uh but i said and a great college campus by the way and have a lot of respect for the young people here but i said look i don't see everything in black and white because it's not black and white there's gray here and you know particularly at this time you know when you start messing with the full faith and credit of the united states of america and and put us on the precipice of default and coming razor thin close to destroying the world i mean every economist said if we'd had done that this would have been lehman brothers all over again i don't get it so and while i put more blame obviously on that small part of the republican party that kind of led it you know we came too close and both parties need to push out you know the edges and and try to forge a compromise i mean you know with all respect to my friends on the concrete congress and the progressive caucus who i guess it was in the journal three days ago who said over my dead body mr obama we won't we won't change cpi for social security even in a grand bargain come on i mean what planet are you on who's look by the way nobody should care about that more democrat or republican than all of you the generation generational equity issue is is not a democratic or republican issue it is impacting you if if our social security medicare system which is taking more and more of our economy if if if they go insolvent or they'll never go inside what it'll mean is more taxes on you and less less benefits that's not that's not what we should do i i mentioned because you asked the question how i got here and you know because i had a great grandpa a grandpa who struggled and you know came to this country with nothing and didn't speak the language in the 90 you know the 1900s when you know coming to california or texas from mexico wasn't you know starting a business building it and then a mother who you know read shakespeare to her kids and sacrificed single mom raised four of us i mean you know i'm here because of the largest most of us work hard so our kids will have a better life what do we do in california past prop 13 to protect grandpa me grandson you know but grandson's got to pay more than we do i mean what's wrong with that picture that's what we're doing when we refuse to tinker around the engines and strengthen social security medicare so you know i do think it's more broken on the right and i'll continue to say that but you know i love progressives they they can get as rigid and as orthodox left to their own devices is the other side well talking about broken you were the ceo of a very large u.s city it could it's bigger than many countries 19th largest economy in the world ask the ceo what would you do if one of your cabinet members had performed the way secretary sebelius has performed what would you do if you hadn't been told that there were glitches for lack of a better term in uh the website and how do you think the white house president obama should handle what is i know you were a strong supporter of aca i've gotta feel you are extremely disappointed as are some other supporters do you think somebody's head has got to roll well you're probably talking to the wrong guy and i'll tell you why first of all i don't know that kathleen seville is is the reason for this glitch but we do need to get to the bottom of it that's that's one two you're probably talking right the wrong guy because i was always the guy and i have staff here who remember that it was always my chief of staff that wanted to make heads roll i was the one always saying oh come on i'm not going to fire her for that you know i said that was a mistake you know it was one mistake it wasn't a stake of volition you know i'm not firing him or her so my i i did have advisors particularly chief of staff or my consultants when i was in a campaign who would say you know you got to fire that person and i was always the one saying well hold it what really how what did they do this on purpose did they lie did they so i i was not the right one i'm not the right one to ask that question but i do think we need to get to the bottom of that and yes i am disappointed you know we've been preparing for this for you know x number of years three years they should have got it right and they didn't now remember we're talking about the federal exchange some of the states are moving ahead and the biggest reason why we're not insuring people is that so many states led by republican governors won't accept the medicaid provisions said that we got to get to the bottom of what happened people should be held accountable for it i don't know if it's necessary to fire somebody but people need to be held accountable and more importantly we need to fix it i spent my time not holding you know firing people but fixing what was broken my staff will tell you we did we brought in mckenzie what as soon as i got elected he brought in mckenzie we said the criticism of me is that i said dream with me and i had all these campaign promises i said so mackenzie help us put on a dashboard all the campaign promises and put deadlines you know milestones all across they should have done that with something as important as the federal affordable care act you know you put a dashboard up what have you done how have you done it have we tried it out in all these things that didn't happen and there's no question that as a result we're losing confidence that you know government can work kind of like we did when you know the bush administration they couldn't respond to katrina and so it's not a so much at the democrats or the republicans it's just a heck of a job civilians wow i won't say that either because i don't think we you know exactly know everything that happened she'll be testifying next week because i understand hopefully we'll get a better idea of what's going on and what happened let's move to a different topic something that i know you're passionate about and that's education you had some pretty big fights over education during your term as mayor and something unexpected for a democrat certainly is you took on the teachers unions on some issues and they took you on back when it came campaign time can you tell us a little bit about that well to the young women here who worked for me actually worked on my education agenda you know i i said when i ran you know if when you buy a home one of the first things you're going to ask is what is this the neighborhood school like how are they doing well you know real estate prices are connected to like the success of a neighborhood public school so i always say that when you look at great neighborhoods great neighborhoods are anchored by great public schools great cities have to be anchored by great public schools and and institutions of higher learning that's why boston's so successful la new york we have great institutions of higher learning none of us have great public schools when tom friedman says the world is flat and that we're not competing he's actually talking about the kids of the middle class in the upper middle class the kids of the poor aren't competing with the developing world so i made education priority number one now you mentioned the latino thing and and one of the things i said was the role of the first get over it i said i'm the first i won't be the last i said but the role of the first is to open up the door for the rest it's not to pound on your chest and say how special i am i i said to people whenever i was asked how did you get here i can read and write i can communicate you know i took on the issue of public schools because i believed it was the economic issue of our time we need com and you know the economy predicated on intellectual capital we need educated people it's the democracy issue of our time if you can't read and write you can't participate as an informed citizenry it's the civil rights issue of our time you know when i mean listen this is a beautiful university but let's be honest it doesn't reflect the fact that 50 of the people that are born today come from uh asia africa and latin america we we they're not in our universities in the way that they should be so i took on this issue and and early on i mean i worked for the teachers union i'm not an anti-teacher i i are they are they anti-violegosa no i well we'll get to that [Laughter] you know i i i understand i understood how hard it was i know that we're 47th in per pupil spending but you know i said look then work with me to turn this around over the last eight years we we doubled in a school district where 50 46 of the kids were graduating 80 of them were scoring at the bottom 20 percentile and you correct me if i'm wrong ryan we doubled the number of successful schools at 800 and above which is what the state says is a successful school we increase the graduation rate from 46 percent to 67 percent nothing to break home to mother about because every one of them should be graduating and hopefully going on to college or getting a specialized degree but we moved it we have more kids in well we built schools it was the most overcrowded school district in the country and the reason why that was a problem was because they won a year-round calendar and they got 16 fewer days a year the poorest kids because those are the ones that were overcrowded they got 16 fewer days a year in a country where our public schools aren't the days aren't long enough and they're not going to school long enough in the year when compared to other countries so i said look we're all in it i'm the mayor i want to partner with you i went to the legislature i got permission to partner with the school district to run the schools i was sued i lost on constitutional grounds i went to plan b i said i'm going to elect a school board that will support reform and changes and accountability for all of us including the mayor i lost i won repeatedly and uh the result is what i just mentioned we've seen we got more kids in charters they're public many of them are union they or some of them are union we but more important we triple the number of charters but more importantly and have more kids in charters than any school district in the country but more importantly we increase nine-fold the number of charters at 800 and above then i said but i know that's not convincing many of you so this is what i'll do i'll take on the toughest most violent schools in watts the east side and downtown schools like markham markham was a middle school in los angeles that had 120 kids in watts 120 kids arrested on campus in one year i took it over i took it over and after a year less than 20 kids were arrested after the second year less than 10 we made safety a priority if we were a school district in the last two years thanks to the work of these two young women here our schools would be the most improved in the state two years running we had the most improved high school in the state two years running one of them in watts and we pushed an agenda of change and innovation we gave parents power i said i came from unions i believe in unions i believe in collective bargaining bargaining i want parents to have one so we started the parent union we started the parent revolution the parent trigger we started every effort to involve our parents then we had a parent college and we said in the college and we were tough on our parents too we held them accountable we said look these are your kids you know how i got here my mother set the highest expectations for me she took the bus to the parent teacher conference it's unacceptable that you not come to your kid's school it's unacceptable that you not involve yourself in their education my mother sometimes work two jobs you will you should too we created a culture of parent involvement a culture of empowerment we said to the teachers we're going to evaluate you how involved based on how effective you are not just how long you've been on campus uh we closed down schools you know look we didn't do that because you know there was some animus toward either teachers of the union we did that because i believe the most important thing we do in this country we should all be concerned if all the people that are serving you come from one part of the world that is not healthy in a democratic society we've got to fix these schools and it's it is it touches all of us because in california if we don't start graduating kids of color we're going to be two and a half million down by 2025 and the number of college graduates or kids with specialized degrees and it's all because of the achievement graph so i was willing to take on my friends as you said notwithstanding that you know i might have had some political costs associated with it because i'm not gonna because the role of the first is to open up the door for the rest it's not just to say it's okay that in great universities you after after the affirmative action proposal in 1998 there was one african-american at uc law school i said this isn't alabama this isn't mississippi this is america and that was unacceptable so i feel very strongly about that and i'll take on my friends over and you know [Music] you know i hope to collaborate and work with them ultimately because i think that's the goal for all of us and i've never said it's just them it's parents that don't think they have a responsibility for their kids because i'm working hard because i don't speak that no we all have a responsibility it's it's politicians who won't challenge this broken paradigm it's all of us who aren't saying or you know we've got a stake in someone else's kids as you can see i get passionate about this i know this is a passionate one for you in fact uh one of the most interesting conversations i've ever listened to is the conversation between governor jeb bush and mayor veragosa talking about education and the amount of common thought that was going on in that education and that conversation frankly scared me scared a lot of people so i want to open it up to questions and uh the rules as you all know is identify yourself and your affiliation make it brief and make sure it's a question that ends with a question mark not a speech good evening my name is juan salazar i'm a masters in public policy student here at the kennedy school and also the editor-in-chief of the harvard journal of hispanic policy so my question for you and i have to say it's an honor to have you here today as a fellow californian it's an honor to be here thank you thank you uh so the uh the question i had for you was what is your advice for the next generation of latino leaders specifically considering the changing demographics of the country maybe not just latino leaders but leaders that are going to go ahead and represent predominantly latino communities as you did in los angeles my advice would be the same [Music] that i shared with you when you get a great education put it to use not just for you but in the service of others there's too few of us to have the luxury not to give back i always say to people that when too much is given much is expected and required you you all are getting an education second to none give back help others the other thing i'd say is don't limit yourself maybe because of my own circumstances i i didn't i never walked in a room and you know kind of said i'm the only one i kind of walked in the room felt like i owned it and own it don't don't let others put you in a in a box you know break out of the box president obama is president united states of america because he was willing to break out of a box he didn't let people limit him when i ran the first time i mean all the pundits said that you know someone like me in their stereotypical view couldn't get elected until 2017 because the you know latinos were 22 percent of the electorate and i said well why is that well because racialized voting and you know you won't be able to you won't have enough people to kind of get elected and then how did someone else do that well they branched out and they went well i said well i'm going to branch out too i went to i've been to the homes of jews with three ovens two ovens and one i've been in the homes of african americans and asians and koreans in every group and i i wouldn't let anyone put me in a box don't let them put you in a box you have every right to be here to blossom to demonstrate and share your talent and do it that's what i'd say thank you let's go down here good evening my name is auden lawrence and i will be asking tonight's um question on behalf of the twitter community ah the twitter community do you tweet the answer do you tweet ryan used to tweet for me i i tweet from time to time but mostly my staff did i and i was always very clear i mean look i'll be honest and not to knock anybody but i've never understood how some people can tweet all day and run a country i was running and i mean i don't mean and still get elected senator from new jersey well i didn't say it you know i i didn't understand i didn't understand that because you know you got to run you got to run stuff and you're going from one meeting to another and so usually you have to say tweet this you know and but you're not doing it yourself and and usually they would say what do you think is this a good idea and i would say yeah so i didn't always tweet and i was always honest about it so the question is how do you foresee both parties adapting to a growing latino demographic and will um these changes be effective in securing i'm sorry say that um how do you foresee both parties democrats and republicans adapting to a growing latino demographic and will these changes be effective in securing the vote you always describe us in las you know the new irish i mean i think people gotta figure out people are people and i that's i also got from my mom you know in the 1950s my mom had jews non-white jews japanese americans who lived in our community african-americans and looking back even a gay couple always over for dinner we were very open in the 1950s i mean in an era when we were much more segregated my mother always taught us to respect other people and that we were all you know the same in many in most ways and and i would just say understand that you know latinos want the same thing everybody else does you want to be a part of the dream you want a house you want a family you want your kids to have a better life it's really you know you want health care you it's really not any different than the irish or the italians or the greeks or anybody else african-americans they just want to be part of the dream so i'd say treat them that way and don't take them for granted any more than you would take any other part of the electorate for granted that's what i'd say antonio there are some there are more republican hispanics elected statewide than democrats we've got two governors republican governors there's also republican congressmen hispanic congressmen like raul labrador from idaho like the woman from washington state herrera bower so they are not in a box i see few democrat congress people who are not elected from congressional districts that are specifically drawn to represent a minority community why that irony with the party that wins 70 percent of the hispanic vote a couple of reasons i i think particularly i mean there's also more governors and senators there's two republican senators two republican governors there's one democrat hispanic senator bob menendez from new jersey what happens is i think when we were with ron bronstein and he was phenomenal you did you had a great session today and ron talked about the changing demographics and you know the fact that with a growing latino electorate and minority electorate it's becoming more and more difficult for republicans to get elected i think what happens with republican um candidates and statewide elected officials is that they're able to get more of a sliver of the latino vote and then they get the republican vote and i think i would generally agree because they're operating in a party in an atmosphere that's probably more hostile they they were they didn't have the luxury they had to mainstream faster than you know democrats might want is that an unforeseen positive you think yeah it's an unforeseen positive i do think i mean look when i ran remember i would speak to the assembly that was that was another time when everybody said well that's not going to happen and you know i i just i never let them limit me and i i think i think democrat or republican you can't do that i think the republicans do a fairly good job of not letting that be can we go up there good evening my name is rebecca and i'm asking a question on behalf of the jfk junior forum looking forward where do you see the hispanic community 20 years from now what does it look like in terms of median income demographics and education well if we educate i mean we've got to educate i see a bright future i mean even with the world that we have now that the fastest growing new entrants into universities and colleges but their percentage is still lower than uh every ethnic group so the key is going to be are we going to educate them if we do you're going to see them grow and and in influence and power um but the key is educated so i i can't answer that question without answering the threshold question are we going to educate them if we don't we're going to continue in an environment 20 years from now that this university will look like it looks like today without you know the breadth of diversity u.s born i mean not u.s born but from this country because you have a lot of international students and that kind of helps the diversity here but but if you look at you know from the united states the answer is we got to educate them we just gotta educate them it's it's the most important issue it's so important for all of us educated workers will keep our social security system alive our medicare system alive well that's why i tell people don't think i'm for immigration reform just because i'm a nice guy and for human rights and civil rights and i've always been for immigrants this is this is good this is great for the economy 1.5 trillion dollar infusion into the u.s economy we're going to keep social security and medicare uh solvent and more so if they're educated so that the key to that question is are we are we going to decide as a society that we're going to invest in our public schools in a way that we should again because remember and i don't you know you all much more informed than i on that opportunity intex that the oecd does where are we now 24th the opportunity index basically says you started out here and you your ability to start out here and get here you know and how great is it for how many people i think we're 20 something 20 seconds there's a professor here at harvard who specializes in this there's a raj he's a rock star professor and you really need to get with him before before you leave here i would love to do that because that's that is the challenge for all of us not just latinos just the we've got the public schools were the great equalizer in american society they were the way that all the immigrants every group this is that that was the way to get here that's it's not working like it used to and we all got to be concerned with that not not talking ethnically just all of us need to be concerned with that let's go look there hi thank you uh my name is max libiskin i'm a freshman at harvard college and i'm originally originally from new york city and i was great i i agree i spent a lot of time there and and i was in the new york city uh public school system for my entire life from kindergarten to 12th grade so i want to ask you a question about public schools you were talking about the unions earlier and it seems like today the unions tend to take a lot of heat uh there are strikes every now and then there was one in chicago last year but it does seem also that the unions definitely serve a purpose especially in terms of attracting the best teachers and keeping them there making sure they're not fired and things like that so considering that you were involved in a major metropolitan school district in the united states i'm wondering what you think the role of union should be today and in the near future in american public education they should be at the forefront of lifting the standards of the profession they should be at the forefront of improving our schools they should be at the forefront of challenging society to invest in our teachers in our schools and our kids and my hope is that we will collaborate over time to do that you know as i said earlier i i'm not somebody who in any way denigrates unions or doesn't believe in collective bargaining i just think we have to be working together to improve the quality particularly of our urban schools you are and i met a number you are a growing anomaly when you look in you know kids from urban schools come into places like this we've got to change that and i i i would love to partner and ultimately we have to partner with them um i think we should pay teachers more but then we've got to be able to evaluate them on their effectiveness i don't believe that you should be able to make every decision based on seniority i tell people imagine if i had run a third term and said vote for me i've been here the longest well you're laughing but imagine if i'd done that that's going to go real well right i mean yeah you can't make every decision basically you do realize you're in an institution where there's tenure yeah i know and i you basically have to kill them in order to right but but you know where did that what was the genesis of that that was genesis came out of a lot of it came when it really got where it is today came out of that mccarthy era when they were going after professors who were questioning the government and science and everything else and you know should every teacher have tenure for life should they be able to re-earn it somehow there's a middle ground you know some people say eliminate tenure completely what about having to earn it every couple of years what about senor having seniority but not not so uh you know the private sector unions will tell you they have seniority in the workplace they don't have industry-wide seniority i mean you i think there are a lot of rules there that just aren't working anymore but to end i do believe that ultimately we have to collaborate and work with them because that's the toughest job there is there's not a tougher job you know i mean you're going particularly in some neighborhoods where it's you know they're not coming ready to learn they're hungry they don't have a mom and dad that you know they you ask them where are you living like in our schools you ask them where are you living they don't have a home i think we have the largest homeless population of students in the united states i mean you know kids need a home that's a tough job so i i recognize how hard it is to teach and how hard it is to kind of work with those kids now i take umbrage with those who tell me well mayor you don't understand they're poor they're they don't have a dad their parents didn't go to college they don't speak the language you're describing me i mean you know i i can read and write you can't make excuses for the lack of success in our schools you know you're giving bleeding heart liberals a bad name i love bleeding heart liberals yes i love them because they have a bleeding heart we should all have a heart you know i tell people what i read a a card once it said someone gave me a card once and said what is imp as important as knowledge asks the mind seen and caring with the heart answer the soul i have a heart and that's why i fight for these kids uh you know i i i cry at movies you know i cried at uh what's the name of the movie uh waiting for superman no i'm serious i cried i saw it four times or five times and i cried every time did you you remember i was like it's just i mean it just kills you that these kids with so much talent you know not making it and you just so i got a bleeding heart too i just don't have tolerance for you know mediocrity hello my name is christian martinez i am a first year master in public policy uh student congress um and here um also representing the harvard journal for hispanic policy so on behalf of all of us thank you again for being here and just going with the trend of youth homelessness when you spoke about the importance of giving power to the parents well there are those who parents are not advocating i'm particularly speaking about foster youth i worked with an ngo in orange county that particularly worked with foster youth and what you actually saw was a noticeable migration of foster youth in the system as well as those emancipating out of the system moving to orange county or even changing the address simply to receive the services that orange county had to offer as well as the ngo services we very much welcome them but what did you do during your time in office to serve that community what challenges did you face what strides did you make what challenges continue to exist and where do you think there could be movement la's a city and county both the county as you know provides the health services they asked me today in one of our sessions what i would do to change governance i would make ali a city and county both so we can directly deal with issues like homelessness and i built 2 400 units of permanent supportive housing for the homeless that was in eight years in the 12 years before they did 726 but i could i needed services wrapped around services for those for those homeless and i couldn't provide it because the county did and they didn't they wanted to put all the services downtown and not throughout the county the only place where i interacted with the issue of foster kids was through my schools and there we tried to connect the county to a greater degree than probably other schools but and maybe because we had a higher number or percentage of foster kids you know than other schools but it was always difficult and that's that whole you know trifurcated government that we have you know we didn't run the schools i tried to run them anyways through you know we didn't run the county you know new york is a city and county boat and the mayor runs the schools chicago and san francisco is a city and county both chicago runs the schools and is a city doesn't run the county but they're so powerful in the county that they actually drive it we have 88 cities in the county and even though we're the biggest city they pretty much don't respond to the city so it was very difficult and i'm glad you raised that issue and particularly that you know foster kids are getting some services but that emancipated between 18 and 24 my god would just fall in the black hole the lack of services and i it's just sad because uh we shouldn't let because still children yeah you know young people go down that hole that way i think we got time for two more questions so my name is john clark levin i'm a first year master and public policy student here at the kennedy school congratulations thank you um my question is this drawing on your experience in labor politics and also as mayor of a large technologically progressive city what do you see is the opportunities for government especially city government and city public schools to help the labor force adapt to changing technology and globalization well as a result of changes in the economy working with your brain becomes more and more important so number one educating our kids number two introducing technology to a much greater extent part of why our schools are doing better than the rest of the state is we've brought in blended learning and we've brought in um technology to a greater degree than others but we're so strapped for cash that we've not done nearly what we should and so i would just say that while i recognize that we need to prepare our kids for the 21st century and the technology requirements that come with that i don't think any of our publishers most of our public schools particularly in the urban core are doing enough they're just so strapped you know i think alley unified proposed giving an ipad to every kid which i supported but it fell in its face for for now and ultimately i hope it moves forward it should it needs to uh smart boards we're you know we're trying to put smart boards in our cloud i mean we're dealing with the basics you know so um i can't say we're doing enough is the answer antonio you were the um remembering this as i was sitting here you were the chair of the democrat national convention and i heard you say oftentimes when you were doing opposition commentary color commentary in tampa that the republican the republican platform sounded like it was from 1812 not 2012. now you had a pretty memorable moment when you tried to remember i said if you close your eyes and you listen uh to their agenda you think it was 1812-2012 and it's well look the the self-deportation of 11 million people um not just abortion but no uh no abortion inc in including uh when that abortion is the result of rape or incest uh no contraception i mean you know the list went on and on it was no climate change all right all right that's all good and fine that's enough with but you were on the stage national tv gavel in hand when you tried to amend the democrat platform to include god and change the language on israel i think it was jerusalem jerusalem think you had to do it three times four times take that vote can you tell us a little bit of the back story on that and i'll give you some backstory yeah give us something juicy i get a call around 3 30 in the afternoon one of the democratic operatives called me he said the president's apoplectic god in jerusalem have been left off the platform he wants them back in and he wants them back in now we need you to come in well i've been doing color commentary all day i'm chairman of the democratic party convention i'm just walking into this shower and you know dressed as if you're just walking into the shower and i said well i'll i'll come in a minute but i'm you know i'm not gonna shower be right there and he and i said but have we whipped this whip means have you gone to all of the delegations the state delegations and got told everybody what we're gonna do and gotten them you know to get behind it and he said well we don't want to bring attention to it and i i said sarcastically i know that a lot of people think i was made chairman of the democratic party for certain reasons but let me explain something to you i used to be speaker of the california state assembly i never lost a you don't put on the floor something like this without whipping it he says what we don't want to alert the press and make a big issue of it so i hang up the phone i get a call from jessica yellen our friend from cnn who i've known since she was a kid and she says mayor there's a rumor you're going to put on the floor an amendment to change the platform and put god jerusalem back in and i said to her jessica uh i don't know what you're talking about and i hung up i then called back this individual and i said you know you said that you didn't want to alert the press they already know and he said yes i know. and he said jessica's called here too so i said hey i'm giving you advice you got to whip this he says i don't think that people will vote against god in jerusalem and i said well you want me to do it at five o'clock there won't be people in the room you know you just can't put it up the chance that way so he said well sir we don't want to do that come on in i come in it's a few minutes before 5. he comes to brief me and i i said look i really think we got to whip it they said no i said fine i said then let me do this you know when your speaker you get up on the floor and to communicate to everybody that you want something you you'll say something like the chair asked for the eye for an eye vote i said i want to say that they said no that sounds undemocratic these things don't happen in the republican convention and i said undemocratic better than chaotic i really suggest that i say the chair asked for an eye vote he said no and then finally now two minutes before i walk up onto the floor i said do you have the the parliamentary language and he says no we're typing it up [Laughter] so i walked on that floor with no language with nothing and um i called on governor strickland he made the motion i got a second i then asked for the pleasure of the house we got the exact wording and we all heard what we heard i won't acknowledge it but we all heard what we heard and then i smiled and i said let me do that again and the second time we all heard what we heard and then i turned around to the parliamentary parliamentarian and she said sir it's your call and i smile and i say i know i turn around we all heard what we heard and i said the eyes have it and then speaking of another colleague i immediately leave the floor i do know the rules and i knew that someone had 10 minutes to object so i left the floor i go on cnn our friend soledad o'brien says mayor what happened there there were two-thirds vote to pass that amendment and i said sure there was soledad she says no there wasn't i was standing on the floor and i said well that's nice to know but you didn't have the prerogative i did and i exercised it that was um one of those days i think one of your newspapers the miami herald described me as a the year caught in the headlights yeah deer caught in the headlights that i was smiling the whole time when people were booing me you know i knew what i did and i knew i had to do it and i do it again because i do believe that god should have been on our platform and i do believe that jerusalem should have been inserted in that platform and um you know i i took a lot of ribbing i thank bill clinton for saving my bacon because i would have been the story the next day for weeks but thankfully bill clinton gave a speech of his lifetime um and you know i got away with a little ridicule but it's all good i was ridiculing him yes you were anyways over here hi thank you for being here my name is shirley hidalgo i graduated from the school of education this past may and i'm so happy to see you here in person because i recently read an article in which you were heralded as kind of a trendsetter so to speak for your decision making in terms of your own life and your last name and how you came to change that um prior to your marriage so i'm curious as to what was the conversations that kind of led up to that and the process behind that um and how you feel about being sort of putting a first down in that arena i grew up in the civil rights movement i believe strongly in in well but but tell them the the background because i'm not sure everybody else i put two names together back 20 some odd years ago you were antonio villarreal v-i-l-l-l-a-r and everybody anglicized it so it was antonio velar and actually a lot of people would call me tony so it was tony vallar you know it was like it was a very different name and that's like a good soap opera name yeah opener well there's a guy in general hospital everybody say i look like or whatever and look at lisa wasn't carlos danger yeah right so um yeah i just felt strongly that you know i was at a party one day and it was a group of people and someone asked my ex-wife if she was going to change her name and she said she was and i said then they asked me what about you and i said well i thought she wasn't going to and i said well you're going to change your name i'm going to change my name too and one thing led to another we landed a whole long name that nobody can pronounce and when i ran for office in 1994 my consultant said to change my name back and actually they said i should go by anthony and i told them they needed to go get another job you are who you are and i've kept the name even though i divorced because it is who i am now and uh i did it because i had a respect for the notion that when you come together like that that you know you're one we've got i think two more students you want to take those questions or are we seven we'll take yeah we'll take one more okay two more i guess hi people standing up hi good good evening and uh thank you for coming tonight okay my name is ben i'm a junior at the college and i'm also resident of thousand oaks so quasi-la president yeah yeah anyways so uh my question relates to kind of a narrative of activist mayors especially on the national and the international stages and it's definitely a narrative that i think your work and like mayors like mayor bloomberg have contributed to and the question is this what tools or advantages do you feel mayors have on these issues relative to national and just state and national actors and how do you see this role kind of change in the coming years and where do you hope it'll be well when we're closer to people you know i was married the second largest city in the country i'd be sitting at a restaurant at a baseball game i'll be in the market and people come right up to you and tell you hey when are you gonna fix that pothole when are you gonna trim my trees they didn't pick up my trash today they left the trash all over the street i mean you touch real people and they touch you sometimes literally i mean you know and so i'd say we're closer to people they trust us more what happens once you're mayor you're in a less hyper partisan kind of environment you got to work with a broad cross-section of people you know you get elected based on what you do not what you say so while you might have views and you may be able to communicate them you know ultimately you get judged by whether you did what you said you were going to do the congress doesn't have that kind of accountability they just get to espouse their views frankly in a very in a way different from mayors and governors to a lesser extent because state capitals tend to be very partisan as well um but i think when you look at the country i mean let me give you all like an example new york 1.2 trillion dollar economy la an 800 billion dollar economy chicago about a 600 billion dollar economy if you took the three metropolitan areas we have an economy the size of france if you took the top ten metropolitan areas our economy is a five trillion dollar economy i don't have to tell you the only two countries that have a larger economy are the united states and china as america's cities go so go the nation we're 89 of the gdp of the nation the top 10 is a third you know of the gdp they they have a lot they can learn from us i mean you know i was president of the conference of mayors we unanimously and we're we're 70 30 as far as democrat republicans unanimously supported immigration reform we we unanimously have taken on we've supported charters high performing ones we've we've supported you know addressing this issue maybe not eliminating it but addressing the issue of seniority and tenure we've taken on entitlements we've we got behind simpson bowls we we we've had to do pension reform you know the difference between us is that i tell people because i used to be speaker i tell people the federal government when they're in a crisis they get to lift the debt limit they get to print more money states when they're in a crisis they balance their budgets on the backs of cities counties and school districts we're the only ones that actually have to balance a budget and so that has a tempering effect on you you know i joke you know when you become mayor or a governor or a president for that matter and you have to sign the check on the front it tempers you at a bet you know you're not just signing it on the back you got to look at how how much revenues you're getting you know what you're spending i think they can learn a lot from us and uh they don't seem neither party the republican's more but neither party responds to marriage and particularly the the the mayors of the large metropolitan uh you know we can get a meeting but we don't get much else and that is a mistake you know it's not just the united states you look at america copenhagen we were at copenhagen you know the follow-up to kyoto and and you know i don't know if you know 1200 mayor signed on to kyoto in the united states my city i signed on in july of of 2005. kyoto says you reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7 of 1990 levels by 2012 right most of you know that right we're at 28 the number one american city they can learn from that new york chicago san francisco we're all beyond the kyoto levels they can learn from that they can learn from well around the world that's also true london the number one city reducing carbon emissions is uh berlin and copenhagen at 40 then i think london and then toronto and then la but they can those countries can learn from us but you know particularly in the united states they don't pay much attention uh to bloomberg to daily to abraham now to menino to be able to you know garcetti to any of us and they can learn a lot from us because that's actually those the cities are actually places where things are working okay so our last question oh mayor i'm very excited you're here i'm from los angeles as well where'd you go well i went to a few schools i went to hooper i went to edison junior high i went to bell high school and i'm getting my doctorate here in uh educational leadership congratulations and i wish you would have brought the dodgers with you better well i was saying to my girlfriend it was from boston i said you know i i my dream is a dodger red sox game because my son loves the red sox and they're my sec second favorite team because they beat the yankees from time to time and i'm a dodger fan uh but we didn't make it um my question is is about something we haven't heard from today you mentioned that in california we're about 47th in the nation or at least we're in spending for schools for education can you talk a little bit about prisons and in particular in california if i understand this correctly since 1980 we've built 23 prisons and won uc uc merced and what does that say for our state and for our country in terms of our economic priorities when we're 47th in spending in schools but we're spending so much on prisons and locking people up and you mentioned there's not a lot of us here i happen to be the first mexican immigrant in this doctoral program uh so it's it's a little bit of a challenging journey but if i went to uc chino or soledad or san quentin we're the majority and so it's a very real question uh with real lives at stake that i'd love to get your take on yeah and i i i actually took on prison building i was president aclu i was against the death penalty i i took on prison building in california i saw the trend with three strikes you're out and i post three strikes throughout when i knew it was going to pass overwhelmingly and i was on the ballot for the first time i also opposed 187 which was on the ballot the anti-immigrant initiative i post both of them was against the death penalty president the aclu and survived so i immediately took on the issue of prison building and i said look we have all these people who are dying who are geriatrics 80 years old 70 years old they're in beds what what are they still doing in prison if we let them out the federal government will have to take care of them because of medical so they'll be off of our budget it took me three years and they completely watered down the compassionate release bill so it was a bare facsimile thereof of what i initially proposed they're now mississippi and texas are now starting to realize we need to move in that direction i then tried to fix prop uh three strikes i was one of the leaders who said hey look let's make that third felony a serious felony here a violent felony not you know stealing a pizza we're just putting all these people in prison and the cost of that is astronomical and you are right when you say that there's a direct correlation between the 18 1980s and beginning of the 90s particularly after three strikes amount of spending for education institutions of higher earning and the amount of spending for prisons everybody what if i told you that in america today the freest country in the world we incarcerate more people per capita and in absolute numbers then as i understand it any country in the world that means south africa that means russia that means china that is a broken paradigm and then when you add on top of that the situation where we increasingly have more folks of color in prisons than an institution of hiring learning this isn't healthy for us so i think we need to get back to being smart on fighting crime you're looking at a guy who we didn't talk about the things we did but well i was mayor we homicides and violent crime went down more than 40 percent but we grew community policing we had as our mantra constitutional policing and we have some of the most innovative prevention intervention programs when it comes to gangs in the country because we're the gang capital of the united states of america so i think it says a lot about our priorities that we're in the state i hope that our values uh are such that we'll understand that it makes more sense to invest in kids early then have to spend the amounts of money that we spend i think we can learn it's interesting enough coming primarily from the fiscal and fiscally conservative end right now mississippi and texas are leading the way and i mean they were leading the way in sending people to prison and that we followed my joke used to be when they would put these unconstitutional bills on the and i would vote against them my joke used to be do we have to make the standard mississippi well it's actually and go i mean we were talking in the 1990s we were talking about the death penalty for 12 and 14 year olds and i'd have to get up and say excuse me mr uh the gentleman from the other side of the aisle um can you tell me how many countries do that uh uh and then he'd have to i'd say well i can tell you there are three i mean is that where we want to be so i i i think we've got to be innovative we got to give people shot you know once you've served your time you know you if you have a felony and you serve your time you can never vote again i mean after you served your time you got to be able to integrate we ought to be able to have a job we should have reentry programs we had to have re-entry programs rehabilitation programs we ought to reward uh people changing their lives and those of us who got fearing i started out with saying you know i believe in god you know i don't believe in redemption god of love is about redemption and and you know we have such a punitive view toward crime and punishment and it's not smart because the recidivism rate in california and all these other it's like 78 that means after they serve their 20 years they come back so maybe we had to try something smarter talking about rehabilitation let me ask you a quick political question do you see any potential 2016 candidates on the republican side who could rehabilitate the republican party with latinos i think the best candidate there is jeb and not because i you know agree with him but you know he he doesn't have that hard rhetoric he supports comprehensive immigration reform he he's comfortable in his skin you know his family is he's got a blended family uh you know he i think he has the possibility but it but he that won't happen if they don't pass immigration reform and they you know keep this this if the the party overall continues this demonization of immigrants what about the two hispanics that are mentioned uh right now uh as potential 2016 candidates cruz and marco has a better shot than cruz i agree and then final question you got another one in you you got another election another campaign in you you've got the itch still you know i didn't i i i didn't have it you know i've been there for eight years council member for two majority whip majority leader and speaker for six years it's been 16 out of the last 20 years i've had some of the toughest campaigns i i i want some the reason why i'm here and i want to thank you all for having me i want some time to reflect i want some time to drill down deep about the path ahead for my state for our country for the world and i i i i want to spend you know i'm gonna i think it was announced today so i could say it i'm gonna chair i'm i'm a senior fellow at the bipartisan policy center not because i've gone to the other side but just because i think things have to work and we have to work we have to model civility and compromise and statesmanship and practicality i have just been announced that i'm going to chair the center for the cal the restoration of the california dream at usc i'm a bruin so this was a big decision uh and a big announcement and yeah i i want to be around that sounds like a pretty good platform to stay relevant in california i want yes but i want to be around deep thinkers who help me think through the path ahead because i can tell you this i don't intend on ever running again if i can't be transformative i don't want to tinker around the edges i was i think an effective mare um not a great one the next time around i want to be transformative and if i can't be transformative i'll let uh someone else do it that was the biggest political non-answer i've heard in a long time no there wasn't a non-answer i i you said you also said that uh i it sounded like a good platform to you i i clearly am uh the reason why i want to reflect i want to regenerate i want to i want to see if i'm ready um but i may not be just like jeff i mean listen you asked about jeff the the question for jeb is does he say no no i asked who would be the the best to rehabilitate usage of yeah but but but jeb the question for jeb is going to be does he have it in the valley does he really want to do this and that'll be the question for me too because the one thing if anybody's watched my campaigns over the years i run hard i am indefatigable you need energy you need heart you need you need to be inspired to do that i know how difficult and then to run for california it's like running i mean it's a two-year campaign and it's brutal it's brutal um and because i'm not i would if i did it i wouldn't do it like they're doing it now where it's all tv i'm knocking on doors i'm putting on my five-gallon hat and my cowboy boots and i'm i'm i'm going to those picnics and barbecues and i'm going to touch people because i believe that politics when it's a big state buddy when politics when reduced to its simplex component is about people this is not we're not university professors talking in the abstract you're practical you roll up your sleeve you're with people so if i campaigned it's going to be campaigning old fashioned style all right so i'm gonna let you reflect for a year or two then i'm gonna ask you again you can do that stay tuned thank you very much

Channel: Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics

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Id: R8hRfwFENzQ

Length: 86min 36sec (5196 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021