Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
U.S. Conference of Mayors
Washington, DC
January 24, 2019

...accept the distilled reality that's offered on cable television, we hear we are two Americas, that there are red states and blue states; you think that we're rural or urban, immigrant and non immigrant.  Those of us who live in cities, who govern in cities, know that that is patently false.

But they are right about one thing.  There are two Americas—Washington and the rest of us.  And this city is led by a great mayor.  I'm not talking about local government here, where things are getting done in Washington.  I'm talking about our national government, which is broken.

You know as 60,000 teachers and their supporters were walking through my city in the pouring rain, which in L.A. is kind of like a snow day for us, it's pretty challenging, their courage, their enthusiasm, led me out to the streets to start talking to some of them.  And I took five teachers out to lunch.  And one of them was telling me she's a 30 year veteran teaching in one of the poorest schools, poorest neighborhoods, next to a public housing project in Los Angeles.  She said, I still love being a teacher.  Something that resonated with me because my grandmother answered President Johnson's call to be part of the teacher corps in Milwaukee.  But she said but with everything that's happened in this country, and cutbacks in our schools, I don't love coming to work anymore.  Some days I even hate it.

I was so inspired to see those teachers out there like in the Women's March and the March for Our Lives, but something is seriously wrong when hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans are taking to the streets to demand leadership from our nation's capital.

But I think that thing that that teacher told me is a fitting metaphor for our country right now.  I've never loved this country more than I do right now, but I hate what its political system has become at the national level. 

I'm a mayor though.  Like you I get to drink from the well of American democracy every day.

We literally drink the water it's our responsibility to keep clean.  My children and foster kids play in the neighborhoods I have to protect. If something happens to one of us, I have to make sure that the fire department is equipped with the equipment they need to save our lives; it's personal.  And we keep moving this country forward, no matter what.

Yes, our nation's capital is broken, but the spirit of America is alive and well in our towns and in our cities across America, the real America as I call it.  And I see that spirit every day. I saw it in Tornillo, Texas, when a group of us, Democrats and Republicans and non partisan folks came to the same place where my grandfather was carried over the border in my bisabuela's arms, my great grandmother's arms, as a baby.  To say that the opportunity that he was given, who then got his citizenship and became a veteran and helped win World War II, and the reason that I'm standing here today, that that is the American vision, not one in which children are ripped from their parent's arms and thrown into cages.  That is not our America.

I saw that spirit on Tuesday night, like in many of your cities, when we started a homeless count to make sure that we tell people not only that they will be counted, but that they count, that we will find them.  The start of caring for each individual is knowing that they're out there.  And last year, thanks to local funding but unfortunately not much help from Washington, a strategy we deployed is finally given us the first downturn in homelessness in our city, and so many cities around this country that are crying out for that help.

I see America's spirit in Youngstown in Ohio, where Mayor Brown is using 3-D printing to rethink what manufacturing can be at the same time that Washington policies are shutting a GM plant down in his town.

I see that spirit in Dayton where Mayor Nan Whaley has cut opioid deaths in half because she wants to see fewer of her people die.

I see that spirit in Cincinnati where Mayor Cranley has led a model of community schools that we drew from to settle the strike in L.A. because it's been so successful.

And that's just one state, Ohio.  We could go through 49, others to hear where America is alive and well.

That's America.  And in fact that America is in our founding documents, my friends.  You go to the Constitution, it talks about power going to Washington, not coming from Washington.  In fact, in the Declaration of Independence it states whenever any form of government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government.  That time, my friends, is now.  It's time to demand that Washington follow our lead instead of the other way around.  It's time that our nation is led from the bottom up and not from the top down.  My friends, it's time to flip Washington on its head.

The reality is that America's future is in our backyards.  Mayors fix the cracks in our roads and bridges that are the scars left by Washington's neglect.  While Washington talks and talks and talks about an infrastructure plan, we're actually passing them.  The same night we elected a new president and talk with both candidates to get a $200 billion package through, American cities passed $230 billion.  Mayors like Bob Buckhorn in Tampa in this last election got billions of dollars to do what's right for our people.

And I went up to the Hill today, and like Speaker Pelosi said yesterday, America's mayors need more than tweets, we need help on our streets.

I'll stay with the Dr Seuss theme.  We don't need more screens; we need clean streams.  We've got to figure out ways to do the work that we see in our cities, and that our people demand.  While Washington has left the minimum wage untouched at $7.25 an hour, in many of our cities including L.A. we're paying $15 an hour to reward hard work finally.  While other people, and by the way that's not a blue issue because Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri and Montana increased their wages at the ballot this year too.  It's what America wants.  While Washington drowns young people in debt, we're making community college free.  In L.A. we saw an increase of 56% in the first year of our public school graduates going to community college when we lifted tuition as a barrier.

While our president thinks that this should be the only nation that withdraws from the Paris Climate accord, with Mayor [inaud.] and Walsh and Turner, climate mayors and so many of you if you haven't signed up sign up, 406 cities and 48 states and counting representing 80 million Americans said if he's out, we're in because we're here to solve problems and save our future.

My time's up but let me close in two minutes and I want to speak about infrastructure because yesterday that was going to be with my speech was about.  I'm so honored to chair our Infrastructure Task Force; I just came from meetings on the Hill and am going back up and meeting with the Speaker shortly here after about that as well. 

And to get together with Mayors Benjamin and Buttigieg and Cranley and Whaley we started an initiative, a do tank called Accelerator for America focused on helping economic revitalization and infrastructure.  And we did a poll in conjunction with the U.S. Conference of Mayors just a month and a half ago of 1,000 Americans.  It found that 89% of Americans want Democrats and Republicans to work together.  Real people of both parties said 89% in this country want Washington to get back to work together.  What's so hard about doing that?

I know that if this room stormed Capitol Hill, we would get the shutdown taken care of in a few hours.  We would be back at work.  We have cities today, like our's, that are literally starting to pay federal employees to make sure that a Super Bowl can happen in Atlanta, they're going to start paying TSA agents—as we're going to be announcing tomorrow as well out of our own funds— because these are real people who protect us and safeguard us, and they deserve to be at work.

So I'll leave you with this vision.  Imagine a Washington that listened, not to mayors, but to Americans.  That listened to the local communities that make this city, sorry, make this country so ambitious, and so attractive.  A nation full of kind and caring, not cruel and corrupt leaders.  People who demand that this should be a moment when America should be at the top and defining that future of tomorrow.

When I was driving home after pulling that all nighter, I was in my car feeling the sun rise in the east and backlit, like my city.  The moon that I had seen two days before was still hanging in the western horizon, and I looked at it almost like it was challenging us at a moment we had come together through the fighting I had just survived the six days, seeing people who felt that they could not work together not only come together, but embrace each other.  And I hadn't felt that hopeful in a long, long time.  If you're feeling down about America, just come to our cities.  Just see who we are and what we are about.  And know that listening to and working in America's cities, I feel it, I hope you feel it, that our best years are yet to come.  Thank you all so much.