Recorded Live: Mitch Landrieu visits UT Austin, urges fight against racism

[0:00:00 Speaker 1] This’ll is Policy on Purpose, a podcast produced by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Way take you behind the scenes of policy with the people who help shape it. For more. Visit LBJ dot utexas Study. Teoh

[0:00:20 Speaker 0] Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. Welcome to UT Austin. I want to thank Dean Angela Evans and the staff of the LBJ School of Public Affairs in all of my team at the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life for putting this program together today. I’m Susan Nolde. I’m director of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life. We’re a unit in the moody College of Communication that’s established to celebrate, study and teach the citizens role in public life. We’re founded on the knowledge that active, engaged citizens are made and not born and that society benefits when more people take part. Many U T students will know us for being the home of Texas Votes, a nonpartisan student voter registration organization in the U T Civic Engagement Alliance. You’ll see these folks table ing with voter registration cards very actively for the next three weeks. We are also known to many of you for hosting the annual Great Conversations dinner each spring, putting out the Texas Civic Health Index report and for lots and lots of outstanding faculty research that explore and expand our understanding of civic participation. So I’m delighted by the turnout here today. You all are in for a real treat. The program is gonna be captured in a podcast. So if you like what you hear, you’ll be able to listen again and share it with folks that you know. There will also be time for audience questions at the end. So be thinking of things that you’d like to ask. It’s now my pleasure to introduce a man who really needs no introduction. Cappy McGarr. Cappy joins us today from Dallas, where he’s president of M. C M interests. Professionally and personally, Cappy has been an investor in business, philanthropy, politics and UT Austin for over 40 years. His service to the university and his civic affiliations are truly too many to name. Cappie was a student at U T. Austin In the seventies, he was a campus leader many times over, and he even earned three degrees from UT Austin. In the years since I suspect Cappie and his wife, Janie, are only three degrees removed from anyone and everyone who has a connection to this university. Any students who spend time up in the below Center for New Media and the Moody College will recognize Cappy for the coffee shop that bears his name. Please join me in welcoming my friend Cappy McGarr.

[0:02:52 Speaker 2] Thank you, Susan. Mayor Mitch Landrieu recently gave an interview where he asked what was the most surprising thing he learned while writing the book he’s going to discuss today. His reply quote. You don’t always right the way you speak, and you don’t use as much historical detail in speeches because speeches are supposed to be short. The more you talk, the less people will listen. So, Mr Mayor, I hear you, I’ll be brief. I graduated from UT over 40 years ago, but back then burnt orange. Our school color was not the presidential Secret Service code name. This is supposed to be a university crowd. Come on, you’ll catch up. She’s unbelievable. For years I’ve been honored to serve on the board of the LBJ Foundation, and in 2000 I became the founding co chair of the Net Strauss Institute name from my late mother in law. I was always trying to impress her since long before that, and it was the first woman mayor elected a Dallas, and I knew she would love tohave the former Mayor Mitch Landrieu, here today because she knew the challenges of being mayor. LBJ once famously said, When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor, so it’s fitting we bring to great Longhorn institutions the LBJ School in Your Net, Strauss Institution for together for this event. We’re gonna hear some great from a man who has done so much to bring his city together. I want to thank Susan Know the director of the Net Strauss Institute and Dean Angela Evans of the O. B. J School for organizing this event. But I’d really like to thank my good friend Walter Rob’s, who was previously the CEO of Whole Foods for making today possible. And for U. T students, Whole Foods is sort of like a bigger version of weeks feel Coop. I want to thank Mayor Landrieu for joining us today. Mr Mayor, if you haven’t heard you to motto is what starts here changes the world. So if you’re looking for a perfect place to make some sort of national announcement, this is it. As you know, last year, Mayor Landrieu took the extraordinary step of removing Confederate monuments around the city of New Orleans. You know, thinking about thinking about the flooding of the Hurricane Florence and, of course, the flooding in New Orleans from Katrina and I was reminded of a visit LBJ did in New Orleans in the aftermath of a hurricane in 1965 called Hurricane Betsy. There was no electricity in the city. LBJ went into a shelter literally dark, and he had a big flashlight, and he shined the flashlight in his face. And he said to the assembled, He said, My name is Lyndon Baines Johnson. I’m your president. I’m here to make sure you have the help you need. That is a true story. Unlike today, Uh, it echoed something L B. It echoed something LBJ said into Warren’s a year earlier, when he came through on a campaign stop, he said, Quote, our cause is no longer the cause of party alone. Our cause is the cause of a great nation leaders who are here to help leaders who put our country first. I think we may just have one of them that will speak to you shortly. So to chat with him, please welcome Dean Angel Evans. Thank you.

[0:06:54 Speaker 5] Hi. Are you everybody So can’t be warmed up Way start. I told

[0:06:58 Speaker 4] him I was going to do this. I’m only going to do it cause I’m here cause I’m in l a shoe flam, but hooking horns

[0:07:05 Speaker 3] taken out of context.

[0:07:08 Speaker 6] So thank you all for coming. This is really a treat for us and Mayor. Thank you for spending time with us and allowing us to hear some of your story. Um, we’re just really pleased to have you here. So, you know, in the book, this is the book in the shadow of statues. And there’s a lot going on in this book. It’s about the Confederate statues, but much more. It’s about this man. And what made him gave him the stamina and the courage and the persistence to move on. So it’s his whole life stories. We’re gonna try to explore some of the up today, so I’m going to get started with my questions. I’m gonna have some questions and then we’re gonna leave some time for all of you to ask your questions as well. So my first question really comes from your book. The prologue, it says, Can someone get me a crane? And so when I read that and then I started looking at the book This is really about you make a decision. And when you make that decision, you step into an arena that you there’s a lot of unknowns. Are you going to have supporters? Are you going to have people who really don’t like you that they hate you? That they shown you that they work against you and this this little thing? Because someone get me a crane? It’s like I’m going to do this now. Who’s gonna help me implement it? And when you do it, you might be running into something that you might not have looked for two or ever had experience. So what? I want the mayor to talk to us about us. What does that mean when you say, Can someone get me a crane? What does that mean In terms of persistent

[0:08:34 Speaker 4] Well, thank you. First of all, thank you very much for having me. Thank all of you for having me, Walter and Cappie. Thank you for hosting me here into the entire family of beauty is a great school. You were in really one of the great cities of the world in Omei. Adler is not here with us. But he is a spectacular mayor and a great friend into all of the university leaders. Thank you for having me. When cabin was introduced to me, he was he said, you know, what’s one of the hardest things? You hardest things. You learned about writing a book and I said, Well, you don’t really right the way you speak, especially with an accent like mine. And the truth is that you know, when you write a book, they say, you know, what’s the first part of that book is really important because it needs to captivate people. They really kind of have to see its immediacy. What the problem Waas on The truth is the first time I wrote that line, Can somebody get me? There were a couple of expletives in there, a crane, and they said, Well, you can’t. That’s not the way you start off a book. But essentially what? What that story about in the prologue turns out to be about institutional racism. Uh, and the specific problem that would be created is that not withstanding the fact that the mayor of a major American city who owned a piece of property on behalf of the citizens owned that I tried to exercise authority over through a constitutionally created process? In other words, public hearings that were voted on by duly elected representatives that said Yes, we want to take down the statue to a number of different boards and commissions that had to do it to the City Council, voting for it to the mayor, signing an executive water to the Legislature, trying to opine about this. I know that you don’t have this here in the state where the Legislature charge to tell cities what to do, but yeah, but you might want to contemplate what that would like if you ever personally experienced that to seven different courts, with 13 separate judges opining, that’s about as a democratic processes you can

[0:10:42 Speaker 5] have, even after all of that

[0:10:44 Speaker 4] was done, and I as the mayor has was was given complete and total authority now act on behalf of the citizens. The legal part of what we did was finished. We had the full authority through the Democratic process to operate. But then something else happened, which was, notwithstanding that fact, it was still hard for me to take them down because I could not find a contractor. Give me a crane. Now, let me put this in broader context for you. Save New Orleans, you know, got beat to death after Katrina, 500,000 homes across the Gulf South hurt 1800 people plus died. They’re still fit by the way we talk about Puerto Rico in a minute. There was still there was still unclaimed bodies that have not been identified since Katrina that we have buried that we revere every year in New Orleans. But 1800 people lost a city that it was in the midst of completely being rebuilt with rebuild. 33 new schools would build two new hospitals we’ve rebuilt in the process of rebuilding a $1,000,000,000 airport. We’ve completely reconstructed the city, which is to say there were lots of damn cranes around and the

[0:11:52 Speaker 5] mayor of the city would drive around and see all the cranes. But I couldn’t

[0:11:57 Speaker 4] get anybody to give me a crane. On

[0:11:59 Speaker 5] top of that, I couldn’t find anybody to operate the

[0:12:03 Speaker 4] cream. Now, maybe all of you understand this, but the African American community clearly understands that this is the difference between de facto and the jury discrimination. You can still control all of the laws. Think of Brown versus Board of Education and the words with all deliberate speed. But if

[0:12:23 Speaker 5] you don’t have your hands

[0:12:24 Speaker 4] on the power, if you don’t have the money, if you don’t have the machines, if you don’t have the ability, you are what I said. And we would say in New Orleans on the street s so well, I won’t spell it out for you. But you also smart enough to

[0:12:38 Speaker 5] figure out what that means. And so the reason

[0:12:41 Speaker 4] why I started the book off with that is because I wanted people to understand that even in the second decade of the 21st century, even well after this issue had been litigated again after a democratic process had been implemented after the law had said yes, it was still hard to move into the actuality of doing the thing that a democratically elected mayor with legislative support, judicial support, wanted to do. Which is to say that we got a long way to go on the issue of race and that the theory of the book about race that’s really what the book is about is that you can’t go over it. You can’t go under it, You can’t go around it. You got to go through it and going through it hurts and going through. It requires recognition of wrongs that were committed on understanding that they were an ability to admit that we can do better. Ah, thought about how to go forward and then the reconciliation and a part of another part of the book. I say that maybe the 26 most important words made probably in our private lives and in our public lives and as a matter of policy is the ability to say I am sorry and that I forgive you because we could spend forever litigating whose fault everything waas or anything. Waas. And I’m not saying that that’s not important. Those important things to know. But sometimes if you get stuck on whose fault it is, you never get to where we can fix it. And so one of the things that I’ve kind of learned after 30 years of being in office is that I can’t really figure out who’s fault. Everything is. But I know whose responsibility it is to fix it. And that’s those of us that eat here today, which gives us a pathway to move forward if we’re ability. If we able to actually talk through these issues, understand what are really history is how we really understand it, which takes you into the issues off. What is being a patriot really mean? What is being a great American really mean, What does it really mean to be out of many or one Is diversity really a strength rather than a weakness? Is democracy really better than autocracy? All of these things that we thought had been put to rest with the New World daughter is now being questioned, and what happened is when we were taking these statues down, it was just happened to be at a time, coincidentally, when all of these issues began to get litigated once again during the presidential race because we had started to take these monuments down. Well, before that when this thing started. A night in 2014 for us. But actually physically, when they came down, it actually turned out to be a short time after President Trump was elected when the nation began to be all aflutter and in alienation and then suspended aggravation where we all are right now, you know about this in any other issue that was of any semblance of difficult.

[0:15:36 Speaker 6] Well, one of the things that comes out in the book several times is you have the passion. You have the purpose. You have the office you talked about you had behind through the rule of law. Uh, and you had behind you a lot of history with the city, from your family and from your position as lieutenant governor and mayor. Uh, and even when you went to some people who were your supporters, when push came to shove in, it became difficult. And, for example, one of the persons who was who did he have a crane? Uh, who was willing to do that? Was car bombed and threatened eso There was that level of pushback Can you talk to us a little bit about how you get through the up to people who really fundamentally would like to do it, but the courage or the the history of trying to do that they don’t have that. I mean, where do you go from there?

[0:16:21 Speaker 4] Well, you know, that’s an excellent question. The question really is more about how you overcome fear on whether or not you take a risk of what sacrifice you’re willing to make to do a certain thing. Not all problems are created equal. Um, you don’t want to die in your sword, you know, for, uh, something that’s not worth dying for. But there are certain things that are And so we face these almost all the time and our private lives in our public lives in our business, and knowing the difference you know, is important. You have to think about that. I mean, that’s really something you just learned as a human being throughout your career. It is. It is fairly true about most of us. And I include myself in this almost all the time that there’s a good reason to be afraid about a lot of stuff. and then that that feeling you have a fear is an important thing for you to be for you to be able to feel it stops you from getting killed from time to time. Like I’m afraid if I walk across that street, the car is going to hit me. That’s a good fear toe have, especially when they’re the cars on the street coming your way. But when you get into public policy or you get into running universities, for example, you know very often you’re gonna come into a situation that has conflict, how we have that conversation with each other. We used to be able to do it better than we’re doing it now. But we used to be able to talk to people we disagree with in a thoughtful but passionate way and get to resolution were out of practice right now. Now the country’s never ever been perfect, but we’ve been better at it at other times, and the reason the founding Fathers in my mind we’re just so brilliant is that you know the way they designed the Constitution was designed, expecting that lots of people who were different we’re gonna live together. That’s like the whole point of it, not just that you can be with people that you like or that you agree with, but so that you actually have a formula for dealing with people that you don’t like and don’t agree with and don’t have to go to war with. That’s why the Constitution is written the way it is. That’s why it’s designed the way it is. But from time to time, you there are certain issues I think that call you forth to do what it is that you’re supposed to dio. And the problem with speaking about it is that person is a hero that’s persons courageous or that person’s something other than what I should be is it takes you away from the possibility that you could do that, too. And so I want to say this to you. I’m afraid of a lot of things, and as mayor and as a lieutenant governor, I was a legislative for 16 years, to if there was an issue that I was afraid off, I had to learn how to first acknowledge that I was afraid so this is a real process. This is what I do. If I’m afraid I go, I’m afraid. And I write down what I’m afraid I’m afraid of. And then I write down why I’m afraid of it. And then maybe five or six different reasons why you would be afraid of it. And then you put it in your drawer, you know are reported on the other side of your desk. And you come back the next day and say I’m afraid off because And what once I’m starting to happen, is that the because is kind of start to go away Because then you find that what you’re really trying to do in his evade your responsibility. And in some instances, it might be something you’re afraid of and the good reasons to do it. But more often than not, especially if in issues really, really, really important. It kind of calls you forth to a point where you really can’t look away, and then you kind of have to face yourself, which is always the hardest conversation have when you’re looking in the mirror and you can’t evade who standing right in front of you and say, Look, this is my responsibility. Am I gonna walk away from it? or not, and sometimes we do many times in my life. I’ve done that many times where I’ve said, You know what? This is my responsibility and it’s nobody else’s. I can’t put it on anybody else’s shoulders and I have to do this. And the monuments was one of those examples, and I went through that entire process. But I want to just tell you for a moment specifically how it happened. When we were I got elected in 2010 the recovery installed, we were rebuilding the whole city. If anybody knows anything about mayors, you know that we are really frustrated designers. How the city looks where the buildings are. Walter knows this because he put a couple of stores in our city. But when he came to see me, I said, You just can’t, you know, put bad stuff in my city. You’ve got to build a nice building. The neighborhood that you build on. It has to be. Your building has to be reflective of the neighborhood. You have to respect the culture. Don’t come here. I love whole foods, but you could go out on a suburban street and put an old, nasty store if you’re gonna come into the city of New Orleans, put something that reflection now. They did this anyway, and they’re better than everybody in the country. I was I’m just blowing smoke out of They were really respectful off the neighborhoods that they built in. But so mayors think about that stuff. So as we’re rebuilding the city, we were doing all of this stuff. The schools, the hot, the hospitals, the airports, the hotels. It occurred to me that we didn’t have very many circles in the city of New Orleans. And I’m speaking, I don’t know whether you have them many in Austin. But if you go to Washington, D. C. You know what I’m talking about? If you go to Paris, if you go to Berlin and wanting it is a great historic city. And so I was thinking about those public spaces. I was also thinking about getting the city ready for its 3/100 anniversary, and I needed to give the citizens of the city something to dream towards and work towards like an Olympics are World Cup. And so we picked a 300 anniversary. And so,

[0:21:50 Speaker 5] as we

[0:21:51 Speaker 4] begin thinking about all that stuff. We began to organize ourselves around art music, historic preservation, architecture and then how we were going to celebrate our 3/100 anniversary of the people of New Orleans. Miraculously said, We’re not gonna build the city back the way it waas, which is everybody’s instinct. When you’ve had a near death experience, we’re gonna build the city back the way it should have been if he would have gotten it right the first time. Now, that kind of takes you into a space where you got to think about. Well, if we didn’t get it right the first time, why didn’t we get it right and who didn’t get it right? And what would it look like? As a matter of fact, like, Why was New Orleans bigger than Atlanta in Houston in 1960 but dramatically smaller, since those are tough questions to ask the answers somewhere like what we got out of the way politically in the business community. Racially, something happened where we became a descendant city rather than an ascendant city. So

[0:22:40 Speaker 5] having that kind

[0:22:41 Speaker 4] of discussion takes a lot of courage for people toe have And in the in that midst I asked my friend, who I grew up with, went Marcellus, the great trumpet player and the great historian to help me. And like a great politician, Wen said to me, Hey, man, he says, I’ll help you. I’ll do this for you But you got to do something for May. I’m sure you know what do you want me to do? He said, I want you to take their Robert E. Lee’s

[0:23:04 Speaker 5] way. Come on, when I’m like, that’s not a fair trade and I just ask you to be on a commission.

[0:23:12 Speaker 4] So anyway, I I said to him, Why would I do that? And he said to me very seriously, He said, Well, have you ever thought about that statue from my perspective? Now, if you’ve ever been a A person and you know what it’s like to get hit in the head with a two by four, that’s really what I felt like, because I realize that notwithstanding my whole family’s history and the fact that I walked by the statues every day, I never, ever put myself in my friend shoes and my immediate thought, to be honest with you, not withstanding all the accolades I’ve gotten for being courageous of taking the statues down. My original thought was to flee. As a matter of fact, my what came out of my mouth, I can’t repeat, but it was something like hell. No, I’m not doing that. If you lost your mind because I knew that the squeeze wasn’t worth the juice, I mean, politically, right away. I knew. I mean, my instinct was like, That’s a massive fight. You’re asking me to take up the last two years of my term in the massive fight. That would be just crazy. But

[0:24:19 Speaker 5] he did something else to

[0:24:20 Speaker 4] me that only good friends can do to each other. He said to me, Will you think about it now? If you ask a kid that was raised about the jet by the Jesuits, who’s got a guilt

[0:24:32 Speaker 5] complex, you know where you think about it? You know, I said, of course I said Yes, I think about it. Wanted in 10. Don’t thinking about it. But I did start thinking about it and my second reaction as a politician. Waas. I’m not gonna have to do this because this is somebody else’s responsibility. It’s not mine. I don’t

[0:24:58 Speaker 4] need to stop and give that person the dollar whose whole that’s not. That’s not mine. I don’t need toe. You understand what I’m saying, right? You walk away, you turn away that your instinct, that your default position. It was mine, too. But I started thinking about it and went and said something else to me that made my head explode after he hit me with a bat have accused him of abusing me already, So he knows it. Just with one question. Have you ever put yourself in my shoes? He said. Did you know? Of course it’s a question Is that

[0:25:26 Speaker 5] this is the teachers know this? Did you know, like you dumb you didn’t eso, he said. Did you know

[0:25:35 Speaker 4] that Louis Armstrong left this city because of that? Now, when he said that everything that I tried not to pay attention to in civics class professor from the time that I was in third grade came flowing back into my brain right away because I had given already 1000 speeches as a lieutenant governor, about how we lost in the south of intellectual capital out raw material, raw talent, and I knew that five million American citizens was sent out of the South and they took away all the spectacular thing, and the

[0:26:08 Speaker 5] best example in the world was sitting in front of me. It was Wynton Marsalis, the greatest trumpet player in the world, right across the street from my house. Had to go to New York to open jazz at Lincoln Center. $800 million building, 3000 employees. All that stuff was in New York with the raw talent that was born in New Orleans. What more evidence do you need

[0:26:26 Speaker 4] to know that if you expel raw talent, raw material, intellectual capital, that you’re gonna be worse rather than better? And so

[0:26:33 Speaker 5] when he told me that, I said, Oh, my God, I’ve actually

[0:26:35 Speaker 4] been talking about this my whole life. So now it really got to think about it. So I started thinking about it, and I said, You know, I don’t know if I own that thing. I certainly don’t want to get in a fight with my Legislature because it’s like Austin fighting. You know, the state. It really is in Louisiana. Same thing Blue City, Red State, same thing. But Congress ought to be doing it, Not me. Well, come to find out I’m a lawyer. Had been practicing for a long time that the city owns the property. That was like, Oh,

[0:27:02 Speaker 5] hell. So I realized we on the property and then I had

[0:27:09 Speaker 4] to figure out what who put it up and how they get it up and

[0:27:12 Speaker 5] let me

[0:27:13 Speaker 4] figure that out. So I started doing some research, had my staff is actually they’re great folks and went back and they come back from the library, which is right across the street, and they had me a bunch of stack of documents and I’m reading what the historians have written. So if something’s gonna be on the historic register, some smart historic people go back and write the whole story about it, and you hope they get it right. And so I start reading about it and I’m reading because I know the civil washing 18 61 in 18 65 that this monument wasn’t put up until, like, the 18 nineties. Now I know because I’m preparing for the 300 anniversary that the city of New Orleans was founded in 17 18 before the rest of the country was here. And so there was something there for a lot of years before somebody put this statue is when people say go Remember your history. I’m like, Well, which Which history are you talking about? I

[0:28:00 Speaker 5] said, that’s interesting. How far back?

[0:28:02 Speaker 4] Great question. You started an argument with me now. So now we’re gonna

[0:28:05 Speaker 5] have it. Who got here first? And when did they get here? And whose property is this? Really? You see, 3000 years ago at Poverty Point in Louisiana, the indigenous Indian tribes were there and they had a fairly sophisticated culture. I’m saying 3000 years

[0:28:24 Speaker 4] ago you understand what I’m saying? All the Christians in the room. You understand what

[0:28:28 Speaker 5] I’m saying? Thistles. Before Jesus Christ was with us. So 3000 years

[0:28:35 Speaker 4] ago, there were folks hanging out in Louisiana. What was that? Got some like Okay, that’s interesting. Nice Columbus muscle. Who discovered America? Yada yada Not following me here.

[0:28:48 Speaker 5] Yeah, so as you as you jump

[0:28:51 Speaker 4] forward and start thinking about Well, even the city of New Orleans was here Well, before these statues were put

[0:28:55 Speaker 5] up, how did this that should actually get put up? Who put it up

[0:28:59 Speaker 4] well, that there was this thing called the cult. Not my word. Historians work. It’s not a pejorative word. It’s an accurate description, the cult of the lost cause. So I start thinking, Next question. What’s the lost cause? It turns out that after the war, surprising to some, the South the Confederacy lost that war. Confederacy lost the war. That’s that. That is an

[0:29:26 Speaker 5] established fact, right? We have

[0:29:29 Speaker 4] the argue about that. The Confederacy lost the war. The people that lost were upset that they lost and felt that the cause for which they fought was a noble cause. Excellent. What was the cause for what you fought that was so important to remember while the Grand door of the Confederacy? Oh, really? Well, what was the Confederacy really about? Now here’s what we get into really weird interpretations of history about how it was really an economic fight, and we had this for years. But the truth of the matter is, and I’m not saying it’s not arguable. But the argument has been claimed is that the Civil War was fought to destroy the union in an effort to preserve slavery, maybe for economic purposes or not. And so then I started thinking, Well, if the cause was lost, why is why is that cause worth revere ing? Because that’s in fact, what monuments did. Now it’s to jump backs 2018. I’m the mayor of a major American city. It’s a continuous government from 17 18 to 2018 in 18 90 around their mayor be hand who happened to be a Confederate. They did not. Not not that it was cooked or not. But the daughters of the Confederacy went to go see the mayor, who was a Confederate officer and said, Can I have a piece of property to put Robert E. Lee up to say that he was the greatest thing since sliced bread? Sure, it sounds great. All of my friends have for me. I’m gonna put it up. There wasn’t a commission. They want any votes. They just put it up. And it occupied the central space in New Orleans. In a city that, you know, after Katrina, everybody on the steps of the convention center. Everybody on the steps of the Superdome, mostly African American gas. But the possibility of losing the soul of America that came from, Ah, diversity, our willingness in our ability to create gumbo, to create jazz,

[0:31:27 Speaker 5] that is who we

[0:31:28 Speaker 4] are. Identity is out of many. We are one out of many people. We have become a stronger thing because all of the different things that come to us and yet his Roberti, at least and in that God never been in the city, by the way, in our central location, in a place of reverence. Now I’m the mayor of the city. I’m getting ready for 300 anniversary. I’m talking to people about telling the truth, being who we are celebrating everything that makes us valuable. And it hits me like a ton of bricks that that’s a lie, that that that thing right there happens to not be reflective of who we are, who we have. Our who we have a word never got put up the right way. I’m now the mayor of the city that owns a piece of property, and I’ve been asked to think about it. And so I got to the point where, in part of a racial reconciliation movement called the welcome table that we had where people were meeting, we decided toe have a conversation with the people of New Orleans about the possibility of taking the statue down. And that’s how the argument started. In a room just like this. I sat right there and said to the people there about this many people in the room, we should start talking about taking those monuments down now You would have thought that I stole everybody’s Children and ran away and said, I’m never coming back. I mean, it started a really, really, really difficulty tough discussion that went from soup to nuts that you can imagine some thoughtful, some intuitive, some emotional, some irrational, that ended up with us having the authority to take it down. But essentially, I had a moment there, and I don’t mind telling you about it where I was really questioning whether it was the right thing to do. I was seeking a lot of counseling advice I had talked to, you know, small rooms and big rooms. I was in a room of a I don’t know about 30 of the most close people to me that we’re also community leaders. The room was African American and white and Hispanic and Vietnamese, male, female and the room did not break down the way you thought it wasn’t all the white people on one side and all the African Americans on the other side. It was actually split, and there were people who said I’m not a racist than they warrant, But I don’t want to take it down because I don’t like taking things down, like adding to them. And maybe we should put it in context in a different way. Some people will like No, I want to leave them there because that’s exactly what it reflects, like the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I don’t want anybody changing them because I want people to remember all the time. And so it was a very thoughtful discussion and I was listening. I knew now that that the city owned him. I knew now that it was our responsibility. I knew that if we didn’t do it now, we never get done. And one of the mother said something to me that completely changed my mind and push me over the edge, and she told me this story that she was not really in favor of taking him down. African American businesswoman But she was in New Orleans visiting and she had her daughter in the backseat and they were driving down ST Charles Avenue and the daughter says

[0:34:27 Speaker 5] him, Mommy, Mommy, that’s

[0:34:28 Speaker 4] a beautiful statue. What is that? And she says, Robert E. Lee. And she says, Who was Robert E. Lee? Oh, he was a great general baby. Really, really rewarded. He fighting well, he fought in the Civil War. Mom, Wasn’t that the war? They got rid of slavery? Yeah, it waas, she said. Well, what side did he fight on? And the mama said, Well, baby girl, he waas for the Confederacy and she said, Well, Mommy, isn’t that the side that didn’t think that I had a right to be free and the mother said, Yeah, and then she said this. Why is he up there now? I could not, and I when she told me that, and I thought to myself, Why is it I couldn’t answer that question and then the more I thought about it, I started thinking about what am I gonna tell my grandkids when they said we’ll put Paul, You were the mayor of that city and that thing was up there and you could have taken it down because it was yours. Question. Why didn’t you? And because I couldn’t answer those questions because of the diaspora because of everything that we were going through because of the city of New Orleans being unauthentic wonderful city whose idea is essential to the nation. Out of many, we are one. And our diversity is our strength. And because we were preparing not to build the city back the way it was, but the way it should have always been, Then all of a sudden it became completely crystal clear to May what the right thing to do. Waas. And they gave me the ability to say, You know what? We’re gonna go ahead and pay the price that you need to because it’s the right thing to do. I also believe that the people of the city wanted to do it. Although the papers kept taking polls, but they would interestingly only take polls from the whole state, which is 70% white. So the polls were skewed. I knew what I know what the people in the city wanted. 60% of the people always wanted to take him down, so that’s when we kind of move forward and said, You know, this is a bigger issue. The more important thing, though, is that in politics, Cabbie knows this. The timing is important, really, really, really important. And you can’t control the time We have been thinking about this for a long time, and it wasn’t until the shootings in Charlotte at a me church when those people were killed and that it clicked in my mind that you know what we’ve had. Enough now is really the time to make sure that what we have in our property symbolizes what’s in our heart. And it’s critically important that we speak to this issue as a nation, and we make sure that we make a statement that diversity is a strength, not a weakness. And as you know, Nikki Haley and Joe Riley took down the flag. And that’s when I said to my team, You know what? Now is the time to do it, which is when we said to the people of the city and we went through what we went through, we took him down, and after we took him down, you know, evidently the same feeling was big, permeating the country and I don’t I don’t know that we started it, but there was something else going on that was bigger than us. That has now become part of a much larger conversation that’s being tested. And I think that I side’s gonna win the argument because I think in our country diversity is a strength. It’s not a weakness. It is a uniquely American idea that we don’t discriminate against people based on race, creed, color, sexual orientation. That notions being challenged right now. And this has now become part of that much larger fight for the nation as we try to find our riel identity as we go forward, I

[0:37:58 Speaker 3] think

[0:38:09 Speaker 6] so. This is what you actually recounted a big part of this book. What I’d like the students here to hear from you is, uh, you know, they’re young. They’re starting off in a lot of what you just told us is a combination of many of your experiences. When you were young in terms of your Jesuit upbringing, your dad and mom moon in vernal, who were civic leaders, your neighbors who were African American. Um, your off scent. So the combination you’re talking about timing the window of opportunity here. We had a man who is in a place at the right time in the right place, and that took a lot of, you know, your whole history. So when you have young people, you know, starting off, what kind of advice do you have for them? You gave them some. That was I think I’m hearing is one. Listen to do your homework, get your information. Right. So, you know, he didn’t know about the lot the cult of the loss clause. Until you said I want to know about this. The other is persistence. You know, step in and, you know, know that. So, you know, I really want the students to hear about what made you What do you think made you be able to act that way at the time, you needed to ask.

[0:39:18 Speaker 4] Well, that’s an excellent question. And I’ll try to give you some constructive, um, thoughts, the most important of which is that every every one of you, it’s a very special person. We have a tendency to make people heroes. I think we do that sometimes by saying, Well, I’m not really that way, so I don’t have to do that. Those crazy people can do all that crazy stuff. I’m not really that That’s really not true. You know, after Katrina hit, when I was in the water rescuing people, it was because the government failed to prepare adequately. But when I was in those boats rescuing people, the most astounding thing were the other people who were regular citizens that we’re doing extraordinary things that nobody expected of them. As a matter of fact, most of the leaders of the civic organizations and the government leaders and they left the people that stayed behind with just really, really, really what we would all consider to be regular folk. As a matter of fact, some of the kids in the neighborhood that you would walk across the street from because you think that hit you on the head and it was amazing to see the kind of leadership that comes out of everyday human beings all the time, which is a long way of saying is that you have it in you. You just have to find it, and you have to be willing to exercise it. Not you don’t need to be Superman every day. The fact that matters. I make so many more mistakes in my life, and then I get right. I’ve done so many wrong things that I wish I would’ve fixed. But when, for example, you’re in a room with people that look just like you and you’re talking about somebody else, it doesn’t look like you do you have the car is to say to your friends, Do you think I’m gonna exercise you? Well, that’s not my experience, because that person you’re talking about, a good friend of mine and whether they be a person or a color or a woman, or if it’s a room of women or a guy, when you have the courage to tell your friends through without fear of being ostracised or put out of your group, what the truth is based on your experience. So in this book, for example, this gentleman’s got a picture of Dr Norman Francis on his lap. Dr. Norman Francis is the longest serving president of HBCU. He just retired last year, but he was my daddy’s best friend. So from the day that I was born, my father’s best friend was African American and Miss Blanched, it was Norman’s wife and my mother, Verner. They had Bunches of kids together, so I grew up with their kids. So my personal experience was growing up with African American kids who was smarter than me. Better looking than me faster than the better baseball players and tennis players, etcetera, etcetera. You get the picture and they’ve all grown up all the Francis kids doing spectacular things. So my personal experience was a certain way. So when I went to an all white high school and they were speaking poorly of African Americans, I would be like, Well, that’s not not only am I taking up for my friends cause I don’t like you talking about about my friends, which is important. You should stick up with your friends. But my experience was different from their words. And so the question is, do you kind of just like in that setting, that little bit of cards that it takes to say, I don’t know what you’re talking about? You’re wrong. That’s not my experience. Why you talking like that locker room talk, for example? And I don’t mean that in a silly in a funny way. But, you know, you talk different when you would people that it just like you. You ladies do it.

[0:42:37 Speaker 5] The talk at that That’s true. When you have the beauty parlors

[0:42:39 Speaker 4] away, everybody talks like the guys at the football game, and then we talk different. Win together an African American, start different whites when they in that context, when somebody’s Jihan on somebody else. Do you have the willingness to say that’s not right now that that kind of idea, that thing that plays itself out when you go to work? So you were at work and you’re in a meeting with your colleagues and somebody says something out of the way, do you mic check him and say, With all due respect, that’s really not the way we think here are better. Ask a question. I’m sorry. Is that viewpoint consistent without principles? Oh, by the way, here our principles there actually laid out. You know, the one about integrity, what does does what we just said. So if you get into the practice of doing things like that, we Kony check each other and help each other because each of us will get out of the way from time to time and that kind of ethos helps you kind of become better institutionally. Now, from time to time. This is just kind of the way it works. And then these people are the saints, the doctor, kings and the Mandela’s. They get put in situations where almost every human being in the world would fold except for them. Where they get that from is by the grace of God. And, you know, you pray that you’ll have it if you’re ever called the point of doing the hope that you never. But I think we can practice being better with each other. And so that’s that’s kind of what happened when I grew up. And so when I grew up and I tell this story in the book, I went to all pretty much all white. But there were a couple African American kids that went to Jesuit High school and some of my white friends later in my life when they said they wouldn’t come to my house, and I asked him why, Because you lived in a black neighborhood

[0:44:18 Speaker 5] and I said I live in a black name would and I said, Why do you say that?

[0:44:22 Speaker 4] And they said because you have black people in your neighborhood. I said, We’ll

[0:44:24 Speaker 5] have an African

[0:44:25 Speaker 4] Americans in my neighborhood and living in a black neighborhood. Can I get it coming? People know what I’m talking about. It occurred to me that my definition of living in a diverse neighborhood, a mixed neighborhood, an African American neighborhood were different from my friends. And you know what? It wasn’t that different from the 1 32nd rule. All the paper bag test back in the day. If you had one ounce of black blood one you all black and you didn’t get entry into anywhere that you were going. And you know that thing has spilled out over time. So when people say that slavery and racism not still here with us today, yes, they are. Because the worst thing when people were trying to beat me to death about taking these things down and they were trying to stop me, the worst thing they could say about me or that they tried to say about me, is that he’s doing because he’s really black, as though that you have to be to understand the nature of discrimination. But they were saying that because my great grandfather, my great grandfather’s mother, was evidently half African American and she married a white guy. And so I think I have black blood and people were like, you know, saying to me, Oh, that’s why he’s doing it cause he’s having black blood like it was embarrassing to me. It would be a great honor, by the way, just from case anybody wants to know, you know, And by the way, most people in New Orleans and most people in the South you may not want to admit this to yourself. But if you go do your little

[0:45:54 Speaker 5] thing, you may find out things about yourself. You don’t want to know. My greatest fear is not

[0:46:02 Speaker 4] that I’m gonna have black what my greatest fear is like I’m gonna be a descendant of King George or something

[0:46:07 Speaker 5] like that, right? So, like when you from

[0:46:11 Speaker 4] New Orleans and you be and you learn how to celebrate diversity in love and you’ve grown up with other people and you know that love is the connector, that’s what’s transcendent over time. That’s the thing that transcends history in time, being able to see somebody for who they are. not what color they are. You know, that’s a platitude for most of us. But like if you live in the real world, right and you look at a child and you see what’s coming out of their eyes and you can’t deny that child’s humanity, it’s only when we grow up when we really start separating people. You

[0:46:45 Speaker 5] know that song from from South Pacific? Anybody know that song I’m talking

[0:46:49 Speaker 4] about? You’ve got to be taught. You don’t know the truth. Listen to the poets and playwrights. I mean all the truths, all their regional Shakespeare. But the lyrics of this song, you know, it’s maybe out to young. This is too young across the South Pacific, where old people

[0:47:04 Speaker 5] Cappie region You remember South Pacific, right? You remember. Stop.

[0:47:11 Speaker 4] There you go. So I wanted somebody to out themselves. Let’s listen to these lyrics. You have got to be taught to hate and fear. You’ve got to be taught from year to year. It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear. You’ve got to be carefully taught. You’ve got to be talked before it’s too late. Before you are six or seven or eight to hate all the people your relatives hate. You’ve got to be carefully taught now. That was a hit Broadway show back in the day, a long time ago, and that same it aeration has played itself over time. Where do you think I kids learn how to hate? What kind of poison do you think is being put in the years right now with this public discussion that we’re having? Which is why, in my opinion, the thing that we’re facing right now is not whether you’re Republican, every Democrat forget about that for a minute. Forget about whether you’re conservative or liberal. You better start thinking about whether you believe in democracy or not. That’s like the big issue that’s facing the country right now

[0:48:08 Speaker 3] on it’s

[0:48:10 Speaker 5] a It’s a discussion teachers that you should have in your classes with your students. Like Do we want

[0:48:18 Speaker 4] to be a democracy, or do we want to be an autocracy? That’s a legitimate question Now. Do we believe in socialism, or do we believe in capitalism? That’s an interesting question. Do you want? Do you believe in nationalism? Isolationism? Do you believe in white supremacy, or do you think that that’s something that we ought not talk about because people actually talking about that now, by the way, this just isn’t in the United States of America. This is not just a U. S problem. This is an international problem where this issues being litigated. In the book, I write about David Duke a right about David did not to scare you, but because when he ascended to prominence in US politics in 1990 he did it in Louisiana and at the time he was younger. He was attractive, great public speaker. He was speaking in code. But the code waas that white people are superior to African American people. That was the message and that had to be confronted and have to be called out. It had to be dealt with. It had to be litigated. And we the people, I had to make a decision that that’s not the way we wanted to go. In other words, it just didn’t run away and go back under the rock. What’s happening now in America is not going to run away and go back under Iraq. This is a civic fight that we have to have about who we are. the issue has been raised. Don’t walk away from it. Just have the argument. America will do the right thing. It will take us time to retrench from where we are right now. But it won’t happen by accident. It won’t happen by an affirmative decision of the American people to say things like the Civil War was fought to destroy America for the cause of preserving slavery. That statement should not be a contestant statement anymore in America, but evidently it is. So we have to make the statement again. Number two America is an idea. The idea is we all come to the table of democracy as equals. We don’t discriminate based on race, creed, sexual orientation, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And, yes, we believe in our country. But we are not. Nationalists and isolations were part of an international community. And freedom is our calling card to the world. That’s who we are. Whatever else you don’t want to fight about, that falls in that circle. That’s fine, but let’s go ahead and redefine our circle of friendship, and then we can get on with how America could be. The greatest country was supposed to be

[0:50:37 Speaker 3] Theo.

[0:50:45 Speaker 6] I mean I can listen to you and we could go on after. I do want to have give some opportunity to the students or faculty in the audience to ask the mayor any question that he or she would like. To you, it’s hard to say. So there’s a person with the mike here.

[0:51:03 Speaker 9] Thank you. I was just wondering if you could tell us what happened with the cream and the story of the brave person that came forth to finally do the good deed.

[0:51:14 Speaker 4] What happens with the

[0:51:15 Speaker 6] crane? How did you actually get the training? Did you get to come?

[0:51:20 Speaker 4] Well, actually, it’s confidential, and we couldn’t tell anybody because we don’t want to put people’s lives at risk. Essentially, what we have to do and this is just really sad is that we have toe raise and spend a lot of money to create a security perimeter so that nobody was killed when those stones were put down. So what was prescient? Unfortunately, was it some months later in Charlottesville, you actually had somebody die, and we needed to take extra serious precautions because without going into all of the details, security on the highest level federal state local said. These imminent security threats, You actually have to keep everybody’s identity confidential so that they do not suffer personal harm or physical harm, or that the businesses don’t actually go one because people threatened the first, a couple of people would never doing business again. And so we had this process that we went through. We did through a whole bunch of different means. Got it, found a crane because mayors can do that, things like that. But it took a while, and we actually got people to do. But you’ll notice that we got criticized roundly by the opponents for taking down the statues at night because they think we were trying to hide well. First of all, the people who took him down, cloaked in anonymity. But the reason we took him down at night was because we were worried about sniper fire, and it was more secure to take them down at night. One was taken down during the day, and the only reason that was taken down during the day is because for security purposes, it’s around Lee Circle. That’s where the streetcars go. There was no way to get the streetcar lines down in the crane, not to hit it so somebody wouldn’t get electrocuted. So we have to do it in the light of day. But all of the security personnel said, if you want to protect the safety of citizens and the people, you have to do it at night and it has to be anonymous and they’ll remain anonymous so that they don’t have any repercussions. But that’s where we were, if you can imagine that in the second decade of the 21st century, which has said, and it shouldn’t have to be that way. But the people at that time were now trying to stop an official government action. So how do you define threatening people with violence to stop an official government action? What would you call that, professor? I would call it terrorism, and that’s what we had. We had domestic terrorism threats, and so we had to do it that way on hopefully, as time goes on, when we litigate these issues more publicly that you know we won’t have that kind of difficulty. Although you’ve seen to play itself out now a couple of times in different cities, and I would just say, Just like with hurricanes, life is always the most important thing to protect. Property can be damaged. You can fix that, Not somebody that gets hurt. And we shouldn’t be hurting people in democracies who disagree with us. Anyway,

[0:54:07 Speaker 3] Theo,

[0:54:11 Speaker 4] the people that did it, it was unbelievably courageous and have on dying gratitude. Yes, sir.

[0:54:18 Speaker 9] While you’re in the midst of this engagement, Um, what other institutions were your allies, and in particular, Could you speak to where the religious institutions are? The church stood in this.

[0:54:33 Speaker 4] Yeah. Excellent question. Um, you

[0:54:38 Speaker 5] know, you have you.

[0:54:39 Speaker 4] I’m gonna use the wrong word. You have your your faith in people tested. When you do this, I remind a lot on Martin Luther King’s letter from Birmingham. I would commend you to go back and read it. Martin Luther King was not loved when he was killed. All the kids that you hear that now we revere him every day. That didn’t used to be like people. Just didn’t say Oh, yeah. Let’s name something. Martin Luther King Boulevard For the older folks in the room. You could remember when we tried to do that. That was awful. And by the way the last six month of his life. If marrying Wright Edelman, who was his one of his best friends, whose told me the story is correct, he was despondent because he was hated. And in the letter from Birmingham, what he says is that the people who was most disappointed in we’re not the haters, it was the moderates, you know, the people who should have been with him when they warn African American friends that didn’t show up. White liberals that said they really wanted to do something, that people who didn’t speak right, and so I found in trying to kind of get people to help me. The political mistake that I made was really one of hubris. I kind of thought everybody was where I waas when I was ready to take him down, and I didn’t realize that people needed to come along further. Now some people were never gonna come, but I was really shocked at a lot of members of the community that either didn’t see what I was trying to do or get to where I wanted or should have been there and hit. Let me just leave it at that without calling out any names. But that definitely is true. And that’s gonna happen when you have major events. Just be ready to be, you know, upset by your friends and then get ready to get surprised by people that you never thought existed that come up to you and say I am with you on 100%.

[0:56:28 Speaker 5] You like, really? All right. I got a friend, you know, because that happened a lot, too. And it didn’t follow Rama reason.

[0:56:35 Speaker 4] It was weird. It wasn’t about race and class. It wasn’t about religion. It was just like people either would

[0:56:41 Speaker 5] call to it are called away from it. There were a lot of people

[0:56:44 Speaker 4] that were afraid because they didn’t want to get ratted out in the cocktail parties that they went to wealthy white people who were talking bad about the Landrieu’s. Because we ruined the city by letting African Americans in those kind of cocktail parties. You know, the country clubs where some of us don’t get invited to where you know your name is nobody. Even when they were your friends, like Oh, man, I don’t want I don’t want to be around. You had a lot of that. The faith based community, incidentally, especially the African American pastors, were spectacular. And there were some white pastors that was spectacular to Sean Angle, um, being one of them who right now is in the midst of the immigration debate. There were a couple of pastors who were white that were there early, but because their congregations well, think about this at church when you’re praying and you asking, what would Jesus do? And Jesus would keep him up in this church. So the past it was stuck. You understand what I’m saying? Can I say that again? The pastor was like there. And then when he went back to church on Sunday, his congregants was so furious that we were taking down the statue a statute which sought to repress people and keep them in bondage, that their view in their church was they didn’t want their pastor being involved in it. And so there were one of two passers that came to me very quietly and very privately and said, I can’t I just I can’t hang with you. And, you know, I felt I was not mad at them. They did what they could do, and you can only do what you can do there. Certain people that are just where they are, they have to be there. In politics when we put in votes together, we call this giving people room finding a way to get this. So this is just this is hard core political lesson. You might find this a little bit crafts, But if I was in the legislation, I was putting votes together for a certain thing, and I knew it was really stuff and I had a person of great courage, but I didn’t need their vote, and I don’t need them to fall on the sword. And I didn’t either. Given the political career cause I had extra votes, I was like, Look, vote the other way to protect yourself because we’re gonna need each other later giving people room and that’s another way to get to. Yes, it doesn’t always have to be running out there with a flag, demanding that everybody go with you. If you can be smart and you could be elegant about a solution and you can let people save face and save their honor, do it that way. Don’t demand that they stand there with you all the time, especially if you don’t need him because there are no permanent friends and enemies. You may need him again, and they may come back to you a couple years later and said, Man, you really let me off of that thing Now I’m gonna come be with you again. In other words, as my daddy would say, when when I would get beat politically and I was angry and frustrated, he would say, Don’t worry about that. He said, Play your politics in the future, which makes you think like, well, where the hell’s the future? Because then you gotta figure it out because it’s not that clear. But in politics, you hear you hear the phrase a lot there, no permanent friends and enemies, just permanent interest.

[0:59:57 Speaker 5] And I have found that

[0:59:59 Speaker 4] to be almost always true. But people’s interest changed, too, and I’ve always the thing that about this whole episode that I’ve lived through, first of all, but I’m shocked that I’m here. The speech I gave I was just given to the people of nuance. I really wouldn’t even thinking about your I’m glad you heard it and I’m glad I wrote the book, but it was weird because that was a local that was for a local audience. But evidently the truth or an idea that you have no control over can, like, take on wings. And there lots of other people that might be thinking about Which is why when you get back to courageous

[1:00:34 Speaker 5] acts, you never knew who else is doing the same thing you doing someplace else and you might find a home, want your friends you never had,

[1:00:41 Speaker 4] because ideas can spread as quickly as they do. And so when you think through all of this stuff at the end of the day, I would I would say, And this is why you asked me earlier how I’m doing. I’m doing great right now. I feel good because I’m feel freer then I’ve ever felt in a long time. You know, when you’re in politics, you can’t always say and do everything that you want. Well, I’m not in politics anymore, and I’m not an elected official, and I think I tried as hard as I could when I was an elected official to do what I thought was right. I didn’t always succeed and I can’t always say that everything that I did was courageous. But I feel better now because I’m freer and I wonder what my life would have been like every day if I would have felt like the way I live today. So I would say seek freedom without being, you know, kind of theoretical about it. I mean, really seek to be in a place where you could be who you are because as I’ve said to, uh, people who talk to me about his diversity is strength. You know, it is because you have to think of the country is a mosaic. Don’t think about the country is black and white and brown all coming together to create something that a color that we don’t know Don’t think about it that way. Think about each and every one of you being unique and special in your own right, being a bright light, having a different color and when wound together, right calling into woven knitted together like your grandma used to do in Afghan. Grandma used to do that. No, I’m talking about the bars may not know how to knit Afghans, but the leaders do I do when you need it together like that? You come up with a mosaic, one color benefiting the next. And then all of sudden, you’ve got this beautiful thing that creates something bigger and better than the sum of, you know, just the individual parts. That idea is more important than whether or not we’re trying to get black people and white people and brown people to be exactly like walk the same way I wear the same clothes were not trying to do that. We’re trying to deeply and richly celebrate each other’s respective cultures so that we can learn more and be better. That’s a better idea. And that’s really what the idea of the founding Fathers had in mind. Which is why this fight about the statues now evidently is so important because it essentially is the same strain that has been. We’ve been fighting over from the beginning about slavery, Jim Crow laws, civil rights and all the other issues that we have. And if you stand in your strength and just be who you going to be, have the courage to be that have the freedom to be it, you’re gonna add great value to each other’s lives, or we’re gonna be better because of it.

[1:03:05 Speaker 9] Yes, sir. So you talked a lot today about what We know what you’ve done and how how that has succeeded in various forms. Where do you think you go from here? Where do we go from here? Continuing the fight. How do we not let it peter out and continue? This Mo mentum has started from the statue debate.

[1:03:36 Speaker 5] Well, I don’t

[1:03:38 Speaker 4] That’s an interesting question. I don’t I don’t necessarily see it as we started something. And where is it going to end? And how do we keep the momentum up about the statues? This this book is really not about the statues. This book is really about my experience of race in America. So the question is a bigger question because now it’s not just about race. If you ask me When I started this in 2014 that I think that we would be litigating on the national stage whether diversity was a strength in America or whether or not you could have a false equivalency of white supremacy with good natured people that are trying to do the right thing. I would say, That’s insane. We shouldn’t be doing that in this country. But the truth is we are and the sad part about it. It’s not the first time that we’ve seen it. I mentioned to you that we saw it in Louisiana in 1990 with David Duke. You saw this? Ah, this this sense of governing in a certain way With Huey Long back in the 19 thirties, you saw AH co mingling of race and some of this populism in 1960 with Governor Davis and with George Wallace. So from time to time throughout history, this part of ourselves and by the way it’s it’s all of us, it’s not just some. I mean, it’s kind of permeates every, you know, indivisible piece of all of us. We have to put that side down. In other words, we have to continue every day. This is the answer to your question. Continue every day to make the right choice about moving towards what the principles are that we say make the nation strong. It’s like one of the things that helps me like when I’m kind of getting out of the way. I’m having a hard decision that things are really coming fast. I really have to go check myself and say, Wait a minute. I don’t think this is so confusing. What are our principles of governing again? What

[1:05:33 Speaker 5] are our values? And then you ask yourself, Does this act take us towards that?

[1:05:38 Speaker 4] Our doesn’t take it away. Are we kidding ourselves? Are we looking for an excuse to do a thing that we don’t want to do? Are we rationalizing why we should does the end justify the means? So these all more kind of bigger questions that don’t lend you two? What specific action you have taken. But

[1:05:56 Speaker 5] how do how do you

[1:05:57 Speaker 4] get your head right? Two more often than not, making a good decision, rather a bad decision. Here’s another one. Walter knows more about this than I do. Although I’ve made more mistakes in my life. You go back and you say, as you get as you get away from things and looking back and when you’re older, you have the freedom to do this.

[1:06:11 Speaker 0] How many

[1:06:11 Speaker 4] bad decisions that I really make in my life, you know? And what the heck were they? And more importantly, other than just beating yourself up and lasting yourself. You know, after you go to communion and confession and all the things that you do in the Catholic Church,

[1:06:24 Speaker 5] you know, you can ask yourself what is the

[1:06:26 Speaker 4] anatomy of a bad decision? I mean, really, you can actually break it down and think about it that way. And if

[1:06:32 Speaker 5] you go back

[1:06:32 Speaker 4] and do this in your life, you know, I’ve kind of come to conclude that when I made bad decisions, I was either angry. I was in a hurry. I I was not as knowledgeable as I should have been. I was afraid of something. Like somebody had threatened me or I felt like I was gonna lose a vote or something like that. I was under pressure from a lot of different things aren’t really just didn’t understand. And those are the reasons why you make it. So the question gets to be if you’re if you want to be a good leader, you want to put yourself in a place where those conditions of making a bad decision or less than the conditions of making a good decision, which is to not be angry to be patient to know as much as you possibly can. No, to have smart people around you who have given you the best choices, and you want to try to put yourself in your organization in a position where you have a choice between a good decision and a better decision. Now that this is not theoretical, this is real. Because when I became mayor of New Orleans, we had $100 million hole in our budget, which meant that I had to cut 22% out of our budget in six months. That’s catastrophically bad stuff, and every choice that everybody brought in my room was a choice between bad and worse.

[1:07:42 Speaker 5] Every decision I made for a year was between bad and worse, so people would come up to me and said you made a bad decision. I say, Yeah, that good. What the hell is wrong with you? I said, Well, did you know what the alternative waas and that’s worth thinking about as you go forward as a management to and to the extent that you

[1:08:01 Speaker 4] can set our control conditions in your life so that you’re in a better space rather than a bad space to the extent that you can. Their emergency said it current. Like fellow Americans in Florence, you know, it’s a it’s a difficult thing to be in. But put yourself in it. Don’t wait for the world to kind of tell you where to go. Figure out where you want to go yourself, and that helps a lot as well. And who your friends are makes a big difference to and the ones that are not. Yeah,

[1:08:32 Speaker 6] we have. We have one more time for

[1:08:35 Speaker 5] one more question trying to shorten. I would do to make sure my answers that I’m sorry.

[1:08:38 Speaker 9] This will be a sure win about politics. Your father was a transformational mayor of New Orleans. He brought African Americans into into government. And you remember the white reaction of that. But just a few years after that, you were elected statewide in Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, and your sister was elected senator. Okay, my question is, when Mary tried to get re elected, I think after three terms, she got 16% of the white vote. Okay, How can the Democratic Party make a comeback in the south toe? White voters?

[1:09:11 Speaker 5] Well, well, I thought you said

[1:09:13 Speaker 4] that was a short, well, talk times change. Both Mary and I marries my oldest sister that I’m one of nine. Mary’s the first on the fifth. I’m in the middle. I’ve had middle child complex ever since. But both of us ran statewide and she got elected three times and I got elected twice. Both times I ran, I got I got elected in the first primary. So the state voted. For a white Democrat like this is the bigger point. Without a lot of stretch. When President Obama was elected, it started to change the conversation in Louisiana. I happen to think it was mostly about race. Now. My friends who did not vote for President Obama would say no, what didn’t have anything to do with race? And I would say OK, well, John Kerry ran four years earlier by every indication, and I know John Karen like him, and he’s a friend. But he is way left ideologically of President Obama, who by all international and national standards, even on a good day as a moderate today, he would probably deny because he wants to be a progressive like everybody else, right? But I mean by national standards. He wasn’t a Teddy Kennedy liberal. John Kerry Waas Barack Obama was a middle of the country to the left, but a but a moderate nevertheless. John Kerry when he ran against George Bush. George Bush is right. George Bush beat him. Uh, bye bye Carry out. Did Obama in Louisiana by 14 points. So four years later, Barack Obama runs. He’s less liberal, happens to be African American and you know what, Not so good. And after President Obama served one term, the issue of the Affordable Care Act was hot on everybody’s mind that my sister was a great senator and if she was sitting here today, I would tell you that without her, there is no city of New Orleans and by every standard, uh, LBJ kind of politics, like I’m sending money down there to fix my home state. Did he do that a little bit here? Lyndon Baines Johnson’s He was its when they when they had earmarks, and they name things after politicians because they sent money down here and you build him. Mary Landry generated billions and billions of dollars of federal taxpayers out that she got to New Orleans, Louisiana, so we could survive. She was terrific. But because she was so closely tied to President Obama and she was the vote on health care, the people of the city said State said, Your Obama, you’re out of here. Forget the fact that we’ve been knowing you and everybody forever. And so I happen to think that election was more about President Obama than her. Now the South has gone completely read. You all are challenging that notion as we speak. You also litigating that will know the answer to that in 60 days about whether Texas I know you don’t consider yourself to be part of the South, but some historians do. I don’t want to get anybody in trouble. I asking if you think you’re part of the South, But let’s just say, you know, we understand. So you all attesting that right now? Florida’s testing and, of course, George’s testing it with Stacey Abrams

[1:12:29 Speaker 5] running who’s an LBJ alarm? Oh, how about that? Good for you. So you know what’s interesting

[1:12:34 Speaker 4] is just we’re talking hard core politics and numbers here. Generally, the way it’s worked is when the African American population, all the minority population, now Hispanic gets to be around 39 40 41 42%. You’ll begin to see a change in the kinds of people that are elected in whatever jurisdiction that that ISS. And of course, then the the political battle start between the clearer definitions of who’s a minority and the Hispanics and the African American, the Vietnamese. That’s going to be a whole new thing. The South, in my mind, is generally on racial voting patterns. At least of Louisiana is an indicator about 10 to 15 years behind the rest of the country. And my expectation. This is an assumption on my part. Not that people will perform in the future as a performed in the past on this could be accelerated. But if if, for example, a beta Iraq wins the Senate race or if a Stacy Abram wins the Georgia race, not advocating one way, the other just making a political observation as a scientist that that will exact that will exacerbate that progression. If they don’t win, there’ll be a retrenchment, and then it will take a little bit longer. But demography is destiny, and so all the white people in the room let me speak to you just racially for a second. Not that you need to be spoken to in this way, but I say this everywhere I go just to the white people is that in 2050 this nation is going to be majority minority. That freaks some white people out. I’m not suggesting that anybody in this room is freaked out about it. You don’t need to be freaked out about that. You do not need to be afraid of that. This country has always found a way to get along and to open up space for each other. Which is why not discriminating against people because of race, creed, color. Sexual orientation is important because you’re not always going to be in the majority. And you want to make sure that people treat you better than you treated them. Do you

[1:14:46 Speaker 5] understand what I’m saying? Just amongst us friends, and so that principle, that principle

[1:14:51 Speaker 4] is an American principle. That’s what makes us Americans. America is not, is not It’s not specifically a place, it’s an idea. And that idea has coursed itself over time, and that idea is worth fighting for, which means that we have to all treat each other based on individual behaviour behavior. We can distinguish, you know, between people who are good and behead based on our behavior, words, actions and how we treat each other, Not because of immutable characteristics that we cannot change. And that idea to me, that is like the essential idea. Everything else revolves around that, because that essentially, is the seed of freedom and liberty, which is of course, what we’ve built on it. So

[1:15:32 Speaker 5] when we have

[1:15:33 Speaker 4] in this discussion right now by patriotism, you know

[1:15:36 Speaker 5] what, what, really what is a real patriot? I mean, what is a

[1:15:40 Speaker 4] real patriot who deserves that definition? And do we have to move people towards a sense of false patriotism and false nationalism that excludes people and that discriminates, or do we invite everybody to the table of the markets? I would just suggest to you that we’re better as a country when the tables open, with better as a country, when we give each other a lot of room, we’re better as a country when we’re celebrating our differences and expecting each other to disagree with each other. When we when we really do respect individual liberty and religious liberty as well. We just better because that’s essentially who we are. And

[1:16:14 Speaker 5] I think that would kinda we’re having this moment and sometimes

[1:16:17 Speaker 4] moments in history, to the history professors, you know, they last a long time. 10 years is like a snapshot in history, but for us who are living through it, it feels like the doctors got the needle in your arm, you

[1:16:28 Speaker 5] know. So I would I would

[1:16:30 Speaker 4] just caution us. Not that the issues of today are not emotional, but

[1:16:36 Speaker 5] I’m not sure

[1:16:36 Speaker 4] this is the worst time in our whole history. I think we’ve had other difficulty times and I would say to people not to not be afraid because there’s a lot to be afraid of. But handle this level of fear with measure and handle it with purpose. Don’t handle it with clap back lets us be like them kind of fear. And let’s let’s have enough faith in ourselves to know that we’re strong enough to celebrate our differences and to and to move ourselves through this very difficult time in a thoughtful way because it will be an end to it. There is absolutely going to be a way to get through whatever it is that you think we’re going through to get to the other side. But how we get there, whether we get there alive, how many people lose their lives along the way? I think it’s a debatable thing, but it requires all of you, as I would like to say in my neighborhood, we woke and pay attention because this is a different moment. We are We are not in a regular moment and it’s important for us to recognize that not so that we can overreact, but so that we can react appropriately and and civically and thoughtfully and civilly, but with the kind of passion that you know we should come to expect of each other. Thank you all so much

[1:17:46 Speaker 3] weight before you all go. I

[1:17:54 Speaker 6] want to thank all of you for coming. Just effect that you’re here says something about you because when you come and you learn and you get exposed to different people who have different ideas and today we were blessed because we have somebody who has not only been there rolled up the sleeves, got into the arena as we say has gotten bloody, but also very articulate and very inspirational. So thank you all so much for coming and thank you, Mayor

[1:18:19 Speaker 3] thing.

[1:18:28 Speaker 1] Thistles. Policy on Purpose, a podcast produced by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. We take you behind the scenes of policy with the people who help shape it. To learn more, visit LBJ dot utexas dot edu and follow us on Twitter or Facebook at the LBJ School. Thank you for listening