 Thank you for joining this conversation on guaranteed income. My name is Autumn McDonnell and I'm the head of New America, California. New America is a think-and-action tank based out of Washington, D.C. And New America, California's efforts are focused on issues of economic equity, community voice and community agency. Please feel free to take the conversation online by using the hashtags guaranteed income and tagging at New America, California or at New America or our speakers. Our guests today are the mayor of New Orleans, LaToya Cantrell. Thank you for being with us, Mayor Cantrell. The mayor of Gainesville, Lauren Poe. Thank you for being with us, Mayor Poe. The mayor of Oakland, my mayor, Libby Schaff. Thank you for joining us, Mayor Schaff. And the mayor of my hometown, Cambridge, Sambul Siddiqui. Thank you for being here, Mayor Siddiqui. I don't feel that we can begin without note of the day. And while some are considering George Floyd a martyr, I believe we should all remember that he did not give his life for justice or for a movement. He wanted to live, he begged to live. So I ask that we all strive to commemorate with our works and our action. Thank you again for being with us today. Thank you all for joining us. And I'll start with a general question to all of our mayors. And I will point out so you can know what I'm talking to first. I will start with you, Mayor Poe. If you could tell us just briefly your journey of your engagement with guaranteed income. A sort of, you know, you've heard about guaranteed income, you learned about it. Then you heard about, you know, what was going on with the Stockton experiment at point W or and then you had such initial thoughts, et cetera. If you could just take a few minutes to kind of take us through your journey with guaranteed income briefly. Yeah, thank you, Autumn. And thank you, New America, for hosting this. It's such an important topic and I'm really thrilled to be here with such outstanding mayors. So I first learned about the Stockton Guaranteed Income Project last summer. I think it was probably through Twitter or something like that. And shortly after connected both through Mayor Tubbs and Cameron, who had been working and still is working on the Mayors for Guaranteed Income Project. And so we started some conversations, how I and Gainesville might support furthering the efforts. They were especially looking for some southern cities. They had some good buy-in in California and the Northeast, but the South was not well represented. And so we started having a series of conversations about what that might look like. At that same time, we have a local nonprofit called Community Spring, who is focused on poverty alleviation. And they ran their own direct-cash assistance program privately funded last summer during the height of the COVID pandemic. And so for me, point A and point B connected really well. They had a little bit of experience with direct-cash payment. They were rooted in our community. And so we started pulling them into the conversation. And by the end of 2020, we were fully on board, we're looking at how to design and develop a pilot, how to secure funding. And we also were able to narrow our target population to returning neighbors, folks that were leaving incarceration. That's where Community Spring had done a lot of their community work. And it's also a group we know that is incredibly underserved and faces some of the highest barriers when you're looking to alleviate poverty. And so it all came together and we're looking to send out the first checks, hopefully October 1st of this year. That's fantastic. Thanks for sharing a little bit of the background of how you came to be connected with this. Mayor Siddiqui, I'd love to hear the same. Just when you first heard about it, point W, point Y, point, whatever you want to call it. But you're a process. Yeah, well, thank you so much. It's great to be here to talk about this. So it's a similar story learned about MGI late summer, last fall. And prior to that, as a city, we were wrapping up the Mayor's Disaster Relief Fund assistance in Cambridge that really has existed in prior years for disasters related to fire. And we quickly repivoted that to raise ultimately about five million dollars. Really the beginning of which went to individuals. And so I was really thinking about how to continue supporting our residents in the most need. And it was great to see the data showing how recurring cash assistance was improving people's lives, not only financially, but also positively impacting participants, mental health, personal investment and other outcomes. So I quickly reached out to MGI Cameron as well. And really in October, November, you know, I started talking to local organizations who I thought would be really critical, including our Cambridge Community Foundation, who would be critical in the pilot projects success. So really started like that. And we're hoping to have our first disbursements go out in August. Fantastic. Thanks so much for sharing that. Mayor Cantrell, I'd love to hear about your engagement. Well, thank you again, you know, for having me. And it's good to be here with my sister, sister mayors and brother mayor as well. My first interaction and learning more about guaranteed income really came from my brother, brother mayor, Tubbs. You know, I got connected with him after being elected myself. And kind of us, we were elected almost around the same time. At any rate, I saw what he was doing, taking those bold steps and being innovative in the approach. And I wanted to know, you know, how could I be down? You know, and particularly just with getting the resources because the need is absolutely there. I know from growing up and single mom went from welfare to work, a little bit of something can really help you a long way. And you just need that little bit of help to get over the hump. But once you're over the hump, you're rolling. And so I think about guaranteed income just from that perspective. You know, it's not a handout. It's really a hand up. But it's to get people what they need in that moment and over the course of time so that they can be well, they can be healthy. And in the city of New Orleans, being not only majority African-American, but those stricken, you know, poverty conditions, disparity gaps that exist around, you know, wealth and, of course, health. But even the post-catrine environment where the wealth gap hasn't shrunk, is actually grown larger. And of course, being in the midst of a pandemic, it always brings front and center your most vulnerable people. And so with that, I hooked up with Tubbs and he brought partnerships to the table, resources to the table. And here we are, you know, with a program working with the mayor's office of youth and families that we're hopeful to start August of this year, July, August of this year. Fantastic. Thank you so much. I'm your chef. You know, I'm going to kind of back it up a little bit and go back to 2005 when I was working for then mayor of Oakland, both past and then future governor of the state of California, Jerry Brown, and representing him on a board of an organization he helped start called the Family Independence Initiative. And it's really where my awareness of just how deeply poverty is a policy failure, not a personal failure and how our current systems make being poor a full-time job that robs people of their dignity, that literally asks them to document deficiency on an ongoing basis and robs them of agency. And the Family Independence Initiative was really founded to try and get around that and used unconditional cash as a piece of pulling people on their self-appointed journey to selfish self-sufficiency. So fast forward to when I became the mayor myself of my beloved hometown of Oakland. Also, you know, got to work with Michael Tubbs, Mayor Tubbs all the time as one of the big California city mayors. And when he reached out to me, he sent me a text because he is an obsessive text or unapologetic emoji user and said, you know, I'm thinking of creating this national organization's mayors for a guaranteed income. I think I said I'm so in or I'm hella in I said something right away that Cameron told me they actually printed out my text and put it on the wall because I just was hair on fire about the idea that this system which really lifts up the true roots of poverty and how we as government are not solving it. We're almost trapping people in it and that that has got to change. The narrative has got to change and just have been so excited to be a founding member. And then when I got a call from Bloomer Lydian partners and was invited to pitch a vision of a partnership with them that would accelerate recovery from COVID, particularly around economic mobility. I knew that a guaranteed income demonstration in Oakland was my highest priority. That is what an equitable recovery looks like. And it is very exciting to be launching a guaranteed income demonstration that will be serving 600 families in Oakland starting literally next month. Well, that's fantastic. I love that you all talked about kind of how you learned about it and talked a little bit about your excitement for it and what makes you feel like this is not just a good idea but something that's really critical and important. My question is, and you started into this a little bit, Mayor Schaaf, what are some of the misconceptions? You started to kind of address what it does do. What are the challenges you're hearing? What are people saying? No, no, don't do this because, and I'll start with you, Mayor Schaaf, what are some of the misconceptions out there? I think one misconception is we can't afford this. Like it's crazy. We can't give all poor people cash all the time. And I would say that we can't afford not to. The cost of poverty is so tremendous on our society and on our governments. And I believe that the demonstrations in cities like ours are going to show that investing in people's health and well-being and stability is the best investment we can make, not just morally, which is first and foremost, but actually financially. The other misperception and Stockton's demonstration did a great job of debunking this myth is that if you give people money, they won't work. And one of the most powerful pieces of data that came out of Stockton was that if you give people money, they are actually twice as likely to become fully employed. That that instability is actually what is holding people back from getting that job, from being able to get a babysitter for their kids so they can go on that interview, from being able to take that unpaid internship that actually leads to a huge upgrade in income and responsibility and the dignity of work. So I love how the hard data is so clear and then the big surprise is just the huge impact on mental well-being and how that impacts everything from how children get raised and whether or not they're experiencing ACEs, which will have a lifetime impact on their brain development and functionality, to how we as a community have healthy, happy contributing people. Those are just a couple of the myths that I think need to be debunked and I appreciate, I think we all have committed to not just gathering data on our guaranteed income demonstrations, but also contributing that narrative because the narrative must change about what causes poverty. It is not lazy people. It is a system that is broken and unjust. So I can I can feel the passion and so I'm curious for Mayor Cantrell, Mayor Poe, Mayor Sticky, when you think of these kind of misconceptions, are there any particular stories like one person story, three people story? Is there one, is there something that kind of comes to mind that speaks to the flip side of whatever said misconception is? I guess for me, it's personal. I was that kid and seeing my mom go from welfare to work and how just a little bit of resources, whether she got it from my grandmother or even that she got from LA County, for example, she used it wisely to get the training she needed to raise her children and have a successful life and retired as a clinical social worker from Orange County after 35 years. So I've lived it and I'm just so connected to it in that way and hearing all of the misconceptions, I guess my entire life, your own welfare, you're poor, you don't want to work, you're lazy and it's racial as well. You get into the black and the brown in terms of that. And so for me, it was demonstrated in my home and in my family and in my community that just a little bit can get you over that hump and to get you well on your way. And in our city, I see the need and absolutely know that we can get people to pivot to a more sustainable quality of life if we give them the opportunity. And so this is just another way for our people to meet their immediate needs and then be able to start to place themselves into a more just environment in terms of training and workforce so that they can be whole and they can be dignified and there's no better time, in my opinion, than now for us to get this guaranteed income pilots off the ground and demonstrate in a much larger way across the United States of America. And so that's why I'm so excited about Mayors for Guaranteed Income. And I appreciate you're kind of sharing even the personal connection as well. I think that for a lot of people, it's personal and I'd love to hear a message if there are any stories through your own life or others that you think are compelling in this year. Yeah, similar to in American Terrell, I think for me growing up in Cambridge and growing up in affordable housing, I've seen just how unaffordable Cambridge has become. And so having that deep and intimate understanding of how big these economic gaps really are and then seeing it as mirror and seeing it when we get calls to our office saying, my car got towed and I don't have that $100 to go and first I have to pay the ticket and now I have to go get the car. And if I don't get the car, there's a fee associated with keeping that car. So that's just one example of what I've seen what we've seen here of that direct cash assistance can really help our families and hear our focus with Cambridge Rise recurring income for success and empowerment is what we're calling our pilot. We are really focusing on our single caretakers who we've seen who are 20% of whom in Cambridge earn an average of 13,000 a year. So really using that data and those stories to make sure that we really are focusing on the issues that are at the forefront for these communities is key. Thank you for sharing that. I'm curious, Merpo, if there are specific things either a story or as it relates to misconceptions there's like a specific argument you're hearing from any naysayers in your city. What are the main things that they're like, come on now. Oh, yeah, no, I think, let's name it, right? There's a very old trope that poor people don't know how to spend their money correctly and that's why they're poor. And it's both a classist and typically racist argument that's made. And so let's take a step back for a moment and we don't ask our senior citizens to validate how they spend their social security check. We trust them with that payment. We haven't asked people how they're going to spend their expanded child tax credit, by the way, make it permanent. Are you going to spend this on your children? Show us how. But yet when we talk about giving assistance to people living in poverty, we want to control how they spend that money. We take away their agency and that's especially true of our population of our neighbors returning from incarceration. We basically say we don't trust you with anything in your life. We're going to make you validate every breath you take. We know from the Stockton experiment that none of those tropes are true and we've known that for a long time, right? But now we are gathering data and saying, look, if we give money without any strings attached, what are you going to spend on? We know they're going to spend it on food, on housing, on utilities. They're able to prioritize their decisions based on their immediate needs to help their family in the best way they know possible. And so those are the sort of headwinds we're fighting that somehow the larger they believe they can make better decisions for individuals and families about how they spend their money. And I think what all of us are out to prove is that is absolutely 180 degrees off of where the truth lay. That when you give folks money, they know exactly what they need to do to best serve their family. I appreciate your saying naming it. Or you're just going to name it, right? So I'm hoping that this will continue to be a conversation where we just name it, name all the things. And so I know you have talked about, a few of you have talked about the boldness that you saw in Mayor Tubbs as the first one to lead a mayorally led pilot. I have a two part question for you, and I'm not going to direct this one. I'm just going to let you guys jump in as you see fit. So on one side, there's this element of are there certain populations that you feel like would benefit more so in terms of are there targeted populations that you are hoping to start a pilot with or continue to build in terms of providing cash? And then the second part of that is, how are you seeing the issue of equity? Like, let's just talk equity as you talk about how you're targeting. Who wants to jump in there? Oh, I'm happy to jump in because I've definitely gotten quite a slap back. I'm already popular on Fox News, but this made me more popular. We are really being open and honest about targeting our guaranteed income for BIPOC families. And we have documented the huge disparities in income and especially wealth by race. To us, it provides the clear evidence of systemic racism at work, baked into our systems. And we really see guaranteed income not only as something to heal our communities and do our job as government, but to also address the racial inequities that we see so clearly. In Oakland, Black families are three times more likely to live in poverty. White families have three times the median income, I believe nationally, the wealth gap between Black and White families is 10 times. These are clearly racially generated disparities that should be named as such and guaranteed income, I believe, is going to be one of the fastest and most clear ways to address the racial disparities. So we are targeting BIPOC families. We are not going to exclude anybody because we certainly are not inviting a lawsuit, but we are intentional in our targeting. And we are targeting families because we believe that when children grow up in stable households, that that benefit lasts for years and for a whole new generation. We would like to provide it to everyone, but to the extent that we are focusing in a little bit, it is on households with a minor child. Anyone else that's on targeting and equity? Well, I think everything has to be centered around equity, especially if you are in a community that has been disproportionately impacted on every single level for generations. The challenge here in the city of New Orleans was identifying because the needs are so great. But what we did settle on was focusing on our youth, particularly between the ages of 16 to 24. And we are saying our opportunity youth, those who are unattached from school and or work, our program, these young people that we have identified, of course, working with partner organizations throughout the city that work with and support our youth. And so this is an extremely vulnerable population in our city and we just want to leverage these dollars to ensure that they can meet their basic needs and then transition them into a job or training or education programs again, so they can be back on the road to success and live a productive life in the city that they love. And so that's where we're targeting 16 to 24. And it's exciting because this is a real need in our city at this time. Yeah, I'd love to talk about our target population. It's a population that most people turn their backs on, folks, neighbors returning from incarceration. Even their own families will often turn their backs on them. And so there's just not a lot of support out there. And having paid their debt to society, we put 100 bucks in their pocket and say, good luck. That's one night in a hotel and a hot meal and then what is day two look like? And so when you talk about equity, really realigning resources to help the folks that need it the most, that's exactly how we chose our target population. This obviously will be a huge benefit to our community overall when you have folks that are stable coming out of the penal system when they're able to take time to find a stable place to live, a job. And we're combining this with other initiatives. We're right now passing an ordinance to prevent employers from asking about incarcerated status until the point where they would be considered to be hired. And this program is also designed by the affected parties. So the folks that put most of the effort into designing how this direct cash payment program of work are all formally incarcerated, have gone through the challenges and discrimination that the participants in the program will face. And so we feel really good about redirecting our resources to focus on equity and really change the life trajectory of, in our case, 115 people. And I think just reflecting on what everyone said, I think the most interesting part about being involved in this movement is that you can see a variety of pilots and looking at the diversity of demographics that each pilot is focusing on. And there's going to be a lot of key learnings, right? It's we're talking about single caretakers, or we're talking about reentry population, youth, BIPOC communities, artists, and other cities. So it is really important that we have these models to see what the benefits are. And equity is at the forefront. As I said in Cambridge, we use that data. We saw where our families are struggling the most. 70% of those families were headed by a single caretaker. And then we saw how COVID, working with our nonprofits, our housing authority, we saw how the pandemic has really impacted our single caretakers. So we always talk about this notion of a financial vaccine and I think it really is critical with having something like a guaranteed income. Mr. Dickey, you mentioned the impact of COVID. There's been, some would say there's been some momentum in terms of this issue. And I actually saw that, I think it's in the economists that conservative support of guaranteed income is up from 28% to 45%. And some see this kind of movement of people having greater support for it as COVID related. What is it that you guys are seeing, thinking as it relates to how COVID has shifted the narrative? Or is there some element of it that's like there are just so many more people now who really need this type of support? What are your thoughts on all of that? Yeah, I think the momentum is critical as we continue to collect data that shows a guaranteed income is essential to address these decades of economic inequity. And to show this to our federal and state leadership, I know that these pilots in most cities can't be financially sustained indefinitely. So we'll need a lot of federal state financial support to continue them. So seeing that momentum grow and to see some of the bipartisan support really does give me a lot of hope. And so I think it's a great momentum to see it. And yes, it's COVID related, but I think it's better to have that than not. And I think we're reimagining COVID has been horrible. It's also taught us so many lessons and I think it's enabled us to be more urgent and not study the problem anymore, right? There's all these studies we could do. That's what comes up. And this is actually providing and giving us that momentum. So it's really important. And real quick, Autumn, most Americans have received a direct cash payment twice over the last 12 months. And not a lot of people complained about it. I think a lot of people needed that and put it to good use and it was a lifeline. So I think the story has gotten a little easier to tell about why this works and why it's so important based on direct experience by most people because of COVID. And I will just add that you say it's COVID related, but the bottom line is it's disaster related. And it's not a matter of if it's when. So there will be another coming our way, but what is always revealed in every crisis is that the most vulnerable people are the ones who suffer the most. And so while we're seeing it through COVID, again, it's not a matter of if it's when. It's the next one. And now I agree with Mayor Shute. Look, we know this, we've been knowing long time. So the studies are over, like let's get to it. And so that's what I'm most excited about, like doing the work and seeing some action. And so when I see from 28 to 45%, that's progress. And I think that with the work of the mayors that are on this panel right now, through our work and our efforts, we'll see hopefully that increase from 45% up to 95% because we would have demonstrated that our people need it. They put it to work. It alleviates stress. You know, it helps our folks focus on raising their children, getting an education, better opportunities. And so we all deserve that. So that's such a huge point, right? Like it's about how do people deal when there's disaster, when there's a people. And that's always right. Because there's not a time where there isn't some sort of a thing. I would love to get a sense from you guys about what are your tactics for engaging the community? At New America, and New America, California specifically, we are really thinking about narrative change. But specifically how the people with the lived experience are the ones, those are the voices that people are listening to when they're thinking about what needs to happen, what the policy needs to be, what the strategy needs to be, that those are the ones that actually have the great influence, right? So my question to you is, as you think about the water narrative and how it is, to some extent, potentially changing, what are your thoughts on how you're engaging the community and those who may be recipients or just everyday folks, everyday residents? I can start. For us, Cambridge Rise is comprised of a lot of local organizations who've been collectively working together over the last year to launch our pilot. So we have an outreach subcommittee that's taken on this task of formulating a plan to ensure that every resident who's eligible to apply for the lottery has the ability to do so in several languages, online and in paper format, and through cross-sector outreach efforts. So because the team, the founding team, is so connected to our nonprofit organizations, and our local housing authority. We have a really strong pulse of who our constituents trust for additional services and that it's going to be really all hands-on effort. And that includes working with our schools. We have family ASONs who are in our schools who work closely with families who can identify families. We're targeting postcards of families and all the most common languages to get information out on applying. We're having these targeted focus groups to ask residents important questions. So those are some of the engagement, but really it is on the ground having that information in the laundry mats and the food pantry line, the salons, barbershops, you name it, places of worship. So a lot of different engagement strategies. I'll chime in. In Oakland, we've stood up a collective impact organization called the Oakland Thrives Leadership Council. And they have been a huge support in the outreach. And it's a coalition of all the different public agencies, including the school district, the county government, all our healthcare providers, a ton of our big nonprofits, faith leaders. I mean, just everybody's at this table. And so even though we haven't even started one important part of our strategy, which is straight-up door-knocking, old-fashioned door-knocking, already just with the oversight of the collective impact organization, we have 9,000 people who've already registered to receive an application, even though we haven't gotten to the deepest part of our outreach strategy yet. Like was said before, we're obviously leaning on the trusted messengers, which I think we've leaned on more than ever during this difficult year of COVID. And just physically going to the places where we know the people we want to reach are there. And Autumn, I think it is worth saying, because I think we assumed people knew the difference between guaranteed income and universal basic income. I think we are all targeting this particular unconditional cash to people who are poor, to people who have low incomes. And UBI, universal basic income, goes to everyone regardless of their wealth. So just wanted to throw that clarification in there. UBI is fun to say. People say it all the time. It's more fun to say than GI. Sounds like a stomach issue. But it's important to see that distinction, because I think we've all done that targeting as part of our demonstrations. Thank you so much. I think that's an incredible point that we should have started with. So thanks for making that clarification. I have so many other questions for you guys, and I want to just kind of go through a few of the bigger bucket ones. But I'll ask if you're willing to kind of give your kind of quick answer to these so that we can get to as many as possible. What about the folks who say, why wouldn't we just do a federal jobs guarantee? Why wouldn't we just have greater flexibility in the existing safety net? Why don't we find some other way other than giving people cash? What do you say to that? Anyone who wants to answer? Autumn, I'd say we do it because it works. We know that from the Stockton experiment at the beginning, Mayor Schaff sort of went over some of the highlights. People twice as likely to find full-time work. I wish we had the graphic. I know that that's Mayor Schaff. You've seen this, and I think Mayor Cantrell. Maybe all of you, the mental health improvements. Are phenomenal. Any community, if you were able to say we have something that will only cost you X number of dollars and you'll see this level of improvement in people's mental health, regardless of their income bracket. But especially if you could say this is going to benefit our lowest income, most marginalized neighbors, they would say absolutely. Sign me up. We've been trying much more expensive solutions for decades and decades and none of it's working. And so if you care about people, if you care about their health, especially their mental health, if you care about restoring hope and dignity, if you care about returning agency to neighbors who have had it taken from them over and over and over, then you should support this because we've seen that it addresses all of those things in remarkable ways. And I kind of want to circle back to your last question, just dovetail on it with it a little bit. Part of all of our projects are part of the point. Yes, it's to help people in our communities, but it's also to build a narrative and to gather data to make an argument of why this makes sense on a national level. There's no way that every community across the country can do this on a city-by-city basis. A lot of communities don't have the resources or maybe the will. And so regardless of our target population or our current circumstances, building that scientifically viable data set and the qualitative narratives that each of our programs will have, we will each pull out a cohort and they will be our storytellers and they will give you the real lived experience. We'll, I believe, change the perception by many of those folks who might be opposed at the beginning, not knowing as much about the programs. That is such a great point. And it also leads to this element of what is the winning argument, if you will, like what is the lever where you say you point to this thing and that's the thing that's really going to convince folks. So we get that there are some folks who are going to say, I get it and it makes sense. And they maybe don't have preconceived notions about what is fair for those living in poverty or that they don't have all these kind of heavy things where they decided what people are worthy of. But if you were to say, try to get this at a federal level, if we were trying to bring this at a state or federal level, what do you think is the argument that shows the return on investment? What is the argument that makes people say, ah, you're right, do you believe it's the health element? What do you guys think is the element that convinces? Well, Autumn, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to create that body of evidence and that body of stories. And someone asked it in the chat, we are all committed to doing both quantitative and qualitative evaluations. It is one of the many awesomenesses of Mayor Michael Tubbs is that this movement is not just created a national coalition of mayors from every kind of community across this country. Talk about a powerful lobby. Our communities are America. But has also helped stand up a center for the study of guaranteed income. And the fact that in each of our communities, we are doing the gold standard of evaluations, randomized control trials. So that evidence is going to be solid. But the stories, the narrative, that is just as important to each and every one of us. And the kind of architecture of support that Michael Tubbs has created is one that is really helping each and every one of us not just do these demonstrations, but actually make sure that these pilots are on a path to permanence. Number of people in the chat have said, what are you going to do after 18 months? Well, our hope is to change federal policy. And Autumn, if part of that is re-examining how the current benefits work, if part of that is re-examining a federal job guarantee, these things are worthy of re-examination. And the fact that these conversations are happening is really encouraging. But we are on this mission to amass a body of evidence that demonstrates so clearly and so unequivocally that guaranteed income is the best investment you can make in human potential. There is no better payoff or leverage than that. And Mayor Controla, I saw that you had something you wanted to share as well. Thank you so much for that. No, well, Mayor, let me really summed it up. Some of your questions were, how would we say to those, look, we don't have time to be spending a bunch of time trying to convince somebody, okay? We're about to work. We're about to action. We're on the ground. We're mayors. So we bring people along by doing the work. So as Mayor Libby mentioned, we're doing the work. So when you do it and you demonstrate that, and it will evolve the stories of how you help people, how you can demonstrate that those gaps are actually shrinking, that the disparity gaps are going in a way that you have a healthier and a more vibrant community. Everyone wins from that. So I can't, I'm sorry, spend a lot of time on how can we convince somebody? We don't have time for that. People are suffering right now. And so while we do have our mayors who have stepped up, we have partners who've stepped up to give us access to cash to help our people. And when we demonstrate that we've been able to help our people, my hope is that I would be able to even divert, or not divert, direct public dollars to therefore move from pilot to permanent, as Mayor Libby has shared. So, excuse me, but I just don't have any time nor tolerance for trying to convince somebody after we have been living, especially in the U.S. of A, unbelievable, with all the resources. I mean, come on, we have. It is about redistributing and redirecting to help people bring them along. And we can do that. So that's what I'm about. And I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Thoroughly, I have a question, a follow-up question for you, Mayor Crenshaw, which is most of you joined this Mercer Guaranteed Income back before, you know, back in 2020 or even before that. And so my question is, as public servants, you guys have to think about what is good for our city, what's good for my city, right? And so when you're thinking about that, it can be sometimes folks can get swayed into thinking what allows me to keep the job. My assumption is that I'm talking to four people who are thinking about how do I do the job? But can you talk a little bit about those tough decisions you have to make before you, you know, before we got to this point right now, where 28% went to 45% and there's this momentum, you all were thinking about this back when. So is there anything you can tell us about making that decision to say, look, this is just what I think is right? Or how do you go about that? Or what are the, what's the thoughts you have about? Well, I think, well, first of all, having the opportunity to build relationships and fellowship with mayors across the country, right? And being able to, not everyone does it at one time, but you're able to learn from one another. You're able to be that inspiration, you know, to your brother and sister mayor and demonstrate that it can work. But making difficult decisions is something that we have to do every single day. And I know in this city, to move your city forward, and with my administration, it just seems like making difficult decisions have been a defining aspect of my entire administration over the past three years. But, you know, at every juncture, I mean, quite frankly, but we know that these decisions that we make, save lives, help people's, you know, lives live a successful life in our cities. And I think that we'll continue to demonstrate that. I know in the city of New Orleans, you know, being one of the hot spots in this COVID in the U.S. and, you know, being blamed of spreading the virus because of Mardi Gras, you know, all of these different things. But again, also being that example of how we flatten the curve and leading the country in vaccination. So it's through tough decisions. And no, for me, it's definitely not about keeping the job. I think if you do the job, then that'll help you keep the job. And that's just been my experience. Yeah, I just want to add, a leader's job is to make people uncomfortable. We are not changing at a sufficient pace if we are not making people feel uncomfortable. That's our jobs. And, you know, I've had to defend our decision to target by race, you know, on national TV. But it is good that we are having that conversation, that we are calling racism what it is. And the inextricable link between poverty and racism is so clear to those of us. And, you know, I can never say it the way Mayor Kentrell, I just love how you talk about the urgency of being a mayor. I like to say that we don't have time for partisan gridlock. That really mayors are not Democrats or Republicans. We all belong to one political party. It's the party of get shit done. So hopefully people feel that sense of urgency. And that's what drives us to do these jobs in the first place. And something I think about often is people think of Cambridge and, you know, there's the Harvard, there's MIT. And that's what gets talked about. And the reality is it's a tale of two cities, right? So keeping that at the forefront, that we have poverty. We have people who are struggling to eat, right? And in this city that does have, you know, we have a huge budget. You know, we are triple bond rating, you name it. But the reality is on the ground. There are people who, there's so much need. So I think, you know, we keep that at the forefront and in getting things done of we know it's urgent. And so it's really not that hard in that way, because that's what, you know, is in our hearts when we're, and in our minds as we're pushing these policies, is the people with the lived experiences who are our focus? Thank you for that. I don't know if we keep trying the same thing over and over, expecting difference results, right? I mean, we need to try something not just a little bit different, but radically different because the problem is growing. The gaps are widening, whether it's income or wealth or health disparity or educational disparity. And they're all widening. So let's not keep trying the same thing over and over. Let's try something different and hope for different outcomes. Yeah. I have two more questions that I want to ask before I jump into the Q&A and what the attendees have that they would like to put out there. The first is this idea of the connection between guaranteed income and health equity. I know you, Mayor Po, mentioned already just how deeply connected they are. And so anyone who wants to kind of speak to what you see as that connection. And the second is this ideas of what are the contours in your mind of a better safety net? I know Mayor Shack, you talked about like, yeah, let's interrogate jobs guarantee and all the other things, but recognize that this is working and this is addressing issues of inequity. So feel free to answer one, both, either, none. I will ask Mayor Po if you will at least just address the health equity element. I'm scribbling down. So we know that the health disparities that exist for people living in poverty are tremendous. And we've been learning more about this and trying to react to this in Gainesville for several years now. We actually created something called a Community Paramedicine Program where we use our firefighters and our paramedics to identify our most frequent users of 9-1-1 and the most frequent users of our emergency room and identify what their actual, I mean, we had people calling 9-1-1 every single day, same household. That's not a health problem. That's a social problem. There's something else or usually many other things going on in their lives that are causing them to need to call 9-1-1 or go to the emergency room. And the one thing that they all have in common is they're living in poverty. And so we know that these disparities exist. We know that the traditional system of healthcare does not work for people in poverty. It is designed to extract as much money as possible from healthy people. And so they recruit those customers to use their system and our sort of social safety net healthcare providers are absolutely overextended, under-resourced and unable to deliver the quality and quantity of healthcare that they would like to. So we need to look at other ways of helping those individuals because the traditional system is broken, has been for some time, and it's not going to be fixed overnight. And so one way to get at those problems is by putting money in people's hands. So they can seek preventative treatment if they need it. And just again, the mental health outcomes are just astound. I don't think any of us expected what we saw. You know, maybe stabilizing people's mental health with a guaranteed income, but the significant improvement was something that was incredibly uplifting. I think it shows a better model for communities and states outside of the guaranteed income conversation. But we see what people are able to do when they have that agency and are able to make the best decisions for themselves on physical health and mental health outcomes. And you know, I asked earlier what makes the argument to a broader population. To me, it's going to be that and it's going to be the jobs argument. But I mean, when people realize that you're saving lives and improving health for families, I think most people care about that and will want to support programs that encourage that. Hey, I just have to chime in. Michael Tubbs always says guaranteed income, it's better than Prozac. So, you know, that's a clever way of just really it. None of us expected to see those traumatic outcomes. And it also raises a question of is poverty actually making people significantly ill? And I'd say yes. The other example I wanted to kind of lift up Autumn to your question. I call it tweezer government, like we've got 20 different programs that are very specific. I know many of us have heard the story, I think it's told by Mayor Perkins of when he and his wife had a child, they qualified for WIC. They could buy all the peanut butter and eggs in the world. But their daughter actually had a nut and an egg allergy. And they couldn't get almond butter or a substitute that their child actually could eat safely because the program didn't cover those things. I'll share a story here from Oakland. We launched something called Keep Oakland Housed to prevent people from falling into homelessness. And one of the very first families that we helped, and it is through an unconditional, some unconditional emergency cash. It's unfortunately only one time and that's part of what we need to fix. But we had a household where the breadwinner was a developmentally disabled adult. And he had been successfully earning money in a job. But the job required him to wear a uniform and to keep that uniform clean on his own. And their household washing machine had broken. His disability prevented him from being able to navigate a public laundromat or to solve for this problem. He was unable to keep his uniform clean. He got laid off from work and the family could no longer afford what they had been able to afford independently. There is no government program that buys you a washing machine. That's what this family needed to be self-sufficient. So we were able to not only pay the back rent and back utilities that were owed so this family could stay in their home. But we also bought them a washing machine. That's the kind of dignity that our current array of multiple programs that are so targeted just does not address. Wow. Incredibly powerful. I want to segue into asking some of the questions that were posed by participants because I know we're coming towards our end and I want to honor their increase here. Let's see. This is a quick one, which is just are any of your pilots or do you know of any pilots that are geared towards those who are homeless or housing insecure? I mean, ours will be a little, I mean, we're targeting people returning from incarceration, which many of those folks are up against homelessness. But it's not specifically targeting homeless folks. But I think it will prevent a lot of what otherwise would be homelessness. Yeah, I agree. I think with the focus on 16 to 24 year olds that are not attached to school nor work. And then when I look at our homeless population among youth, it is our intention to be able to work with and elevate young people who are experiencing homelessness as well. I think there's a holistic approach here. We are doing outreach in our homeless communities, but it's not limited to homeless. It is something that we'll see if we can get enough of a critical mass to actually pull some statistical evidence out. But I'm hoping that some of our narrative work might lift up someone who at the time they received this benefit was experiencing homelessness. Just to be clear, in Oakland, we're actually going to have two groups. The one group will be in the kind of bottom quartile of income, but we're actually geographically focusing that cohort of 300 families in deep East Oakland, which is one are probably our most stressed part of our city. The rest of the participants will be in the bottom kind of one eighth of income earners in our city at 25% of the area median income. Those we will pull from citywide. And I would be very surprised if we do not have homeless individuals in that cohort. Next question is related to what comes next. And I think you alluded to this, Nesha, this idea of do you have ideas about making these initiatives or pilots ultimately permanent? And I'm going to just put in my own tweak here, which is, do you see that? Do you see that as something that continues for the individuals who receive it, as in some sort of way of extending money that is received by those who are in the pilot? Or do you see it as reaching more people through additional pilots? Or none of those? All right, if no one's going to talk, I'll jump in. Look, the big prize is federal policy. We're all struggling here at the local level. We have to actually pass a balanced budget every year. The federal government is the only layer of government that gets a credit card. They are like racking up a bill on their credit card this year in a way that is so inspirational and is probably one of the best investments that a government could make coming out of a horrific year like the one we've had. But that is the layer of government that can actually do entitlements and can guarantee this investment year after year. There are some glimmers of hope for that policy path. We are seeing an expansion of the earned income tax credit and the young child tax credit. But let's be honest, you don't get that benefit unless you file your taxes, which is another big barrier for a lot of people who would otherwise qualify and who need guaranteed income. However, this kind of unconditional cash payments, these stimulus checks, this expansion of tax credits, this is promising signs for those of us who are in the thick of things that shows a change, a shift at the federal level that really does show hope. Another one is a look at housing choice vouchers making those universal. Now, that's not unconditional cash, but it's again moving to entitlement to address poverty at scale. That is something we need the federal government to do. I think we're seeing a movement at the state and local levels, but at the end of the day, the federal government and an entitlement is what we really, really need. And put an exclamation point on Mayor Schiff's statement there. I mean, we really are hoping to build a narrative for federal support for this. For our program, we're also hoping that this is the bridge that helps people become self-sufficient and financially sustainable in the long term. And we're getting that, again, our program was designed by the impacted parties that will be receiving this. And so we asked them, what would make a difference to you? What would help you ensure that you were sort of stable? And they said $600 a month, ideally for 24 months. We said would 12 be okay? They said it would be all right, but really, it takes a little more than a year to get everything sort of stabilized. And so we're hoping that by the end of those 24 months, with this program, they will be full-time jobs, stable housing, healthcare well in hand, and will be doing well. So some of these are pilots designed to sort of test out some theories and see what works. Some of this is just that bridge that people need to get to a self-sufficient lifestyle without support. And we're going to learn different things from different pilots when it comes to that kind of outcome. I have a colleague or former colleague who used to call it a safety trampoline, Wei Faustino, who would talk about making sure it kind of bounced people back up to a place of stability and security. Stealing. Wei Faustino. And so I have a few questions here that are related to reparations. So they say, do you think that GI can be successful in the long run if we don't have a conversation about truth and reconciliation with the legacy of slavery and how it has harmed this nation? What are your thoughts on the need for the connection to HR 40, which I believe is about reparations? So is the only Southern cohort left on the call? Let me jump in. So we take truth and reconciliation very seriously in Gainesville and our county, Alachua County. We are working with the Equal Justice Initiative and are well engaged and well along the path towards truth and reconciliation. It's a very difficult and uncomfortable process. We're having those difficult public conversations, including what do reparations look like? How does equity fit into that? So I think it's important to name that as part of needs as a nation and as a community when we talk about guaranteed income. The way our pilot was designed, it's really addressing a different problem. That's a legacy of white supremacy and racism in our city, in our county, our state, our nation. And so we are addressing a part of that legacy. But I don't know that our program would be considered reparations. But I'm glad that that is being elevated to a more front and center national conversation as we talk about guaranteed income as well. Yeah. And I think I'll just add that everything is connected. And in Cambridge, we look at who is indeed poverty. It is our black and brown communities. And there's a historical context there in many ways. And we see who is living in affordable housing. We see even who we have a lot of home ownership programs. We're looking at who's actually applying to these programs. And what we're seeing is we're seeing more white families are benefiting. And so I think this is a really important conversation. I think we've started and we're talking about it. But in my view, there's a lot of connections and some deep learning to come from the guaranteed income pilot as well. So I see a few questions that are about how you've done the evaluation, how you've done some other kind of some more specifics. And so what I will say to anyone who is curious about that, when we send our follow up email, I can put some links to some of the kind of stats and details. But what I would love to do in the last four minutes is just ask each of you to share anything else that you have kind of as a parting thought for those who are joining us. So thank you for doing this, New America. It's important to spread the word. I'm so humbled and excited to work with so many amazing mayors, like my colleagues that were on this call, but we're over 50 strong now around the nation and growing every day at a meeting with Cameron and the mayor of Tallahassee, Florida, our tribal yesterday to try to bring them on board. And we just we need to grow this movement. It is an amazing opportunity to completely rewrite the narrative and support our brothers and sisters that deserve every bit of respect and dignity. They deserve to have agency over their own lives. And this is just an incredible opportunity to show how a guaranteed income and direct cash assistance can achieve those goals. Thanks, ma'am. Yeah, for me, I think I'm I want to thank you about them and every it's such an honor to be here with all the rest of you. You know, I think about this and I think about this notion of giving people greater flexibility to make decisions for their lives, right? And they know how to make. And, you know, that so much has been mentioned about these stereotypes. And then we see the data on the ground and really what is actually happening. And I think the more stories we have, the more anecdotal and data, it's really powerful. And I think building on Stockton. So that's why it's an amazing thing to be a part of. And we'll be hearing directly from constituents who who can provide, you know, their lens and how important this is. And so that's really critical. And so I'm really excited to be part of it. In Oakland, I just want to underscore the sense of urgency and possibility. This idea that poverty is a policy failure, not a personal failure. And that it is having untold impacts on the health and well being of our communities cannot be said enough. We just got through this year, where while it was so full of loss and suffering, it also was full of amazing resilience. We saw our whole country come together with a sense of urgency and determination to stop people from being harmed. We need to bring that same sense of urgency and this knowledge that we can actually do amazing things when we put our collective minds to it. And we put public resources where they belong to actually stop suffering and death. And I believe guaranteed income is at that place of urgency and possibility. And that there's an appetite for radical imagination like we've never had before, and that we've built this muscle of collective impact, and that we need to seize this moment to make this kind of transformational change. That's what excites me. Well, I have nothing to add to what the three of you have said. I just want to thank you again for being here. Thank you for your hard work and your passion for whatever it takes to help make sure that residents of your communities, our communities are able to survive. Thank you.