Podcasts about mayor michael tubbs

When the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) gave 125 people $500 a month with no strings attached, researchers found that recipients spent money the same way everyone else does: On food, gas, childcare and bills. The experiment, led by then-Mayor Michael Tubbs, drew criticism from people saying the money would disincentivize work, and that recipients would spend it on alcohol or drugs. Researchers found the opposite: The extra cash reportedly empowered people to get full-time and better paying jobs. San Francisco has launched several guaranteed income pilot programs of its own. In this episode of Fixing Our City, Tubbs and a guaranteed income recipient describe how the payments can help people reach financial stability. | Unlimited Chronicle access: sfchronicle.com/pod Fixing Our City is part of the San Francisco Chronicle's SFNext Project. Got a tip, question, comment? Email us at sfnext@sfchronicle.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mayor Michael Derrick Tubbs is a community leader, an educator, an author, and the former Mayor of Stockton, CA. Michael joins Sophia on the podcast today to talk about growing up in Stockton, what it was like attending Stanford university and then going on to become the youngest mayor of a U.S. City, his new memoir The Deeper the Roots, and so much more! Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Rabbit Grin Productions Associate Producers: Samantha Skelton & Mica Sangiacomo Editor: Josh Windisch Artwork by the Hoodzpah Sisters This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mayor Michael Derrick Tubbs is a community leader, an educator, an author, and the former Mayor of Stockton, CA. Michael joins Sophia on the podcast today to talk about growing up in Stockton, what it was like attending Stanford university and then going on to become the youngest mayor of a U.S. City, his new memoir The Deeper the Roots, and so much more!Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Rabbit Grin ProductionsAssociate Producers: Samantha Skelton & Mica SangiacomoEditor: Josh WindischArtwork by the Hoodzpah SistersThis show is brought to you by Brilliant AnatomySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For this episode of the Poverty Research and Policy Podcast, we hear from Professor Amy Castro about the concept of Basic Income, and what she and her team are learning from data coming in from pilot projects around the country.  Professor Castro is Founding Director of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research and an Assistant Professor of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. --- Transcript:  Judith Siers-Poisson: Hello, and thanks for joining us for the poverty research and policy podcast from the Institute for research on poverty at the university of Wisconsin-Madison. I'm Judith Siers-Poisson. For this episode we are going to be talking with Professor Amy Castro about the concept of Basic Income, and what she and her team are learning from data coming in from pilot projects around the country.  Professor Castro is Founding Director of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research and an Assistant Professor of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Castro, Thanks for joining us today. Amy Castro: Thanks for having me. Siers-Poisson: What do we mean when we talk about a guaranteed income? What is it and what is it not? Castro: Yeah, it's a great question because there's a lot of terms that are floating out there in the public imagination that also in the literature. So, there's three basic terms that pertain to this body of work. First is UBI or Universal Basic Income, and that's the one that people are probably the most familiar with given Andrew Yang's presidential run. UBI is exactly what it sounds like. It's universal. It's an unconditional amount of cash that goes to every single person in a city, a state, a town, a county, whatever that jurisdiction may be. We actually have not had a UBI experiment here in the United States because obviously universality know would apply to everybody. We have not had that yet. Second is basic income. Basic income is again an unconditional amount of cash that is given to a group of people, and it's enough to cover your basic needs. The third category, which is primarily what I study, is guaranteed income. It's not enough money to cover your basic needs but is a fixed amount of cash that's recurring, so you can rely on that money coming each month each week, whatever that cadence may be. And I think that's key about all three of these categories. A characteristic that carries across all is the unconditional nature of it, meaning you receive that cash because you're human, you don't receive that cash because you fit a means test criteria or because you are doing something like participating in a workforce force training program or a financial literacy program. You receive that cash because you are because you exist. And that's really the ethos behind guaranteed income or basic income. Siers-Poisson: And it seems like that point is what distinguishes it from, say, what people used to lump under the umbrella of welfare in the past. Castro: Exactly. And I think that that's why, you know, on the one hand, people are so excited about this idea. And then on the other hand, why there is so much backlash, right, is that we truly are talking about giving away money, no strings attached. And traditionally here in the United States, when we talk about the provision of cash or goods to people who are struggling to make ends meet, we layer it with all sorts of restrictions as to how that money can be spent and who can have access to it. And what's attached to those restrictions are social constructions ideas that are not rooted in reality, they're rooted in ideology most of the time around race, class, gender, marital status. And they're used as ways to shame and blame people who access these programs. And it really serves as a social deterrent for people to access them. In contrast, basic income or guaranteed income functions completely differently. If you're enrolled in one of these programs or pilots, you receive it because you're human. And the idea is that people know best what they need and what their households need. And secondly, if we think about need, right? So like financial scarcity or financial need, needs fluctuate from month to month and cash is the only benefit that's flexible. So if needs are flexible, we want to have something that's dynamic to match it. And cash is really the only thing that does that in comparison to something like food stamps or SNAP, which can only be used for restricted items such as food that fits a pre-set list that's set by a bureaucrat. Siers-Poisson: So you just explained that this goes to people because they're people, not because they qualify in some way, but then who was targeted for these guaranteed income programs? Castro: Yeah, it's a great question. So, you know, it's a fancy way of saying it would be what is the recruitment criteria, right? Because we're running experiments scientifically. So we are designing and studying these programs to see what happens when you provide people the money. So one of the big questions that we get any time we're running a new pilot—and right now we're running or at various stages of running twenty-eight pilots across the US at my center—is who gets the money right? And so that's a complicated process that for us happens across three different sets of stakeholders. First, we have our community-based stakeholders, which is what the community wants to set as far as eligibility criteria. Second, you know, elected officials who may or may not be working with us and that are really spearheading the program and helping to kind of get it off the ground. And then third, those of us within the research space trying to determine how do we best leverage this project to answer research questions so that we are informing policy with data. So that recruitment criteria really varies for us from state to state and from location to location. I would say the majority of the projects we're working on right now are focused on people who are struggling to make ends meet. Oftentimes, they have children in the household, and oftentimes there are people who have had some type of a pandemic-related incident with their work: their hours being cut, something to that effect. But that's a general statement of each pilot is slightly different. Siers-Poisson: I want to get into the nuts and bolts of how this works, but first, I want to touch on something that you just said and that's getting feedback from the communities that you are in. And I think that especially the communities that we're talking about are communities that have maybe historically been treated with less respect in the ways that they are given support or help, if they are at all. When you also layer on things like systemic racism and the history of understandable distrust of systems, how do you go in and build those relationships that are necessary to have any hope of being successful? Castro: That's such a great question. You know, first I'll own, before I say how, and sort of jump to say how we resolve that problem, or we try to resolve that problem, because I'm by no means saying that we fix it. The first thing I just want to own is that, you know, as a scientist and as somebody who has social work training, this is the hardest part of my job. You know, it's really easy as a scientist to stay in a position of control. And that's how we're trained, is that you hold your research design so tightly. You are the expert, you know, best it needs to happen. You determine the hypotheses, you determine the design and it is in your hands. And it is very comforting, right? You can lean back into your methods training, lean back into your degree, lean back into your institution or your brand, and label yourself as the expert and that feels very safe. But the more you involve the community in your design, the more you are letting go of really being in control. So when we think about the posture of science and the posture of how we engage with community stakeholders, it's crucial that we sort of hold our integrity as a scientist in one hand while on the other hand, being willing to relinquish control to some degree to involve community voice in the process. And when we look back through social science, we see, you know, decades of places where we've been unwilling to do this and we start measuring things, designing programs and policies, without the community input. And then we wonder why it doesn't work. This happened with TANF, or Welfare to Work as we designed this program, assuming it would work without bothering to think, “Hey, what happens if you expect the mom to work and take three busses to get to the other side of a city?” That literally makes absolutely no sense, right? So I will say that at the outset, it's the most rewarding part of what I do. It's also the most terrifying because it means I'm not in a position of control. As far as how we resolve it, there's no way to do it that's going to make everyone happy. I'll own that from the start. But a couple key steps. First is making certain that we are involving ourselves from the very beginning of a project with community-based stakeholders and organizations who know their community well. So this means doing that legwork of meeting with CBOs, nonprofits, and also the constituents themselves and the people who receive benefits from those programs to understand best how a program ought to be designed. So in some cases, we involve people in giving us feedback on how we design that recruitment criteria, or another way of putting it who gets the money, and getting that feedback. And then crucially, another way that we involve community stakeholders is in release of findings. So in Stockton, for instance, all of that data that's been released on spending that people can see, that is seen by a group of focus groups of community stakeholders that are not elected officials, that are not people in power. They're regular humans who get to see that data first and work with us to think about how we display this data to the public. Siers-Poisson: So let's get down to those nuts and bolts of how these programs work. First of all, how is the amount decided on? You did say that guaranteed income is not supposed to provide for all expenses, but even given that, it seems like the cost of living in different parts of the country or even parts of a state would need to be taken into consideration. So how do you find that that amount that is going to give you some kind of results that mean something? Castro: That's a great question, and it's one of our most vexing open research questions. So first, Stockton was set at $500 a month. The rationale behind that $500 a month is that the question of whether or not you can absorb a $400 unexpected shock or financial emergency is a standard question or threshold within economic mobility research and something that's standard in a lot of our large datasets. So it sort of made sense to start there. A lot of other cities who have built on the Stockton model have kind of just lifted that amount of money because that's what Stockton did. We have very limited control as to deciding the disbursement amount. And of course, those things are also restricted by the amount of funds that are available to a given pilot. However, some of our larger places and bigger cities with higher cost of living like, for instance, the L.A. area, we're talking about $1,000 a month. So it's really an open question for research and for policy as to how should we adjust unconditional cash based on cost of living. It's not something we have a good answer to yet, and I'm hoping that we will within the next three or four years because, yeah, cost of living is different from one state to the next, from one city to the next. And that's absolutely something that needs to be taken into consideration when we're talking about moving from pilot to policy. Siers-Poisson:  So Stockton, which is the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, or SEED, I believe, as you said, that was the first pilot of this specific type of guaranteed income program. How did it come about? Why Stockton? Castro: So it's incredibly interesting. So first, Mayor Michael Tubbs really spearheaded the launch of that project in partnership with Economic Security Project. So Economic Security Project or ESP, which is headed up by Chris Hughes, former cofounder of Facebook, and Natalie Foster, they had been sort of looking for a city that was interested in potentially testing this idea. Now everyone is kind of running to try find a basic income pilot but go back to 2017, 2018, people are like “you are crazy. You're going to give people money? No strings attached? That's absolutely nuts.” And here's Mayor Tubbs, who you know is, I believe the youngest, if not one of the youngest, who's 26 years old, elected as mayor in Stockton. You know, Stockton had nowhere to go but up. They had experienced the worst that capitalism has to offer. They were once the foreclosure capital of the United States, while also absorbing the cost of housing from the bay area. So it made it sort of an ideal spot to test this idea because one, you had a mayor who was interested and willing to try anything right, willing to take the risk. But second, it really is a bellwether location. And when we think about sort of the way that risky lending has really dismantled the middle class and resulted in tremendous losses in wealth, particularly for, you know, Black and Brown households, Stockton was an ideal place to test policy proof of concept because it really kind of fit that Venn diagram of all these, these different forces that are really contributed to the loss of wealth, the United States. Siers-Poisson: So you had, I think it's fair to say, a visionary young mayor who was interested in trying this. So where did the money come from? Castro: The money came from two kind of different categories. So first, you have the disbursement money, so the money that actually goes to the people. That funding came primarily from the Economic Security Project, along with a number of other philanthropists who donated, smaller family foundations, and also some individual donors. And then the science—this is crucial because this is a model that we, we maintain across all the things that we're working on—the funding for the science came from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. And so we really like to keep a strong firewall between those two sides. So there's not coercion. So, RWJF, you know, really to their credit, specifically, the evidence for action arm of RWJ, really took a chance on our project and funded the research side. So the evaluation dollars were coming from sort of that traditional form of funding. Siers-Poisson: And so how many people were enrolled, and do you think of them as people or as households? Castro: Oh, great question. Yeah. So we tend to talk about sort of the findings at a household level simply because that's how people live, right? They live in networks, they live in households, but the money is not going to specific household, it's going to a specific individual in the household. So we had 125 people in the treatment group, which is another way of saying the people who got the $500. And then we also had a control group who were taking all the same surveys, participating in the same interviews as the treatment group, but not getting the cash so we could compare one group to the other. Siers-Poisson: When did it start and how far along are you now? Castro: So the research ran for two years. Our last payment was in February of this year. So we had one full year of pre-pandemic data or disbursements and then one year of payments during the pandemic or after. We've only released the first-year findings. The second-year findings, that is the total findings, will be released to the public in late spring of 2022. Siers-Poisson: What were the key findings from that first year in Stockton? Castro: So we really saw changes in three key areas. First was income volatility. One of our driving research questions is can guaranteed income disrupt income volatility, which is your money going up and down each month, which really locks people out of financial instruments and being able to plan for the future. We saw less income volatility in those who were in the treatment group in comparison to control after one year. We saw that that sort of stabilization in family finances allowed families to plan for the future. So in the treatment group, after one year, we saw that monthly income volatility really dropped. And one of the ways that we look at that is asking this question: “Can you pay for unexpected $400 emergency expense with cash?” At the beginning of the experiment, in the treatment group, only 25% said that they could do that, along with the control. And after one year, those receiving the cash, 52% of them said they could absorb a $400 unexpected shock, while only 28% of those in control said that. Now this finding is really important because on the face of it sort of obvious, right? If you give people more money, they're going to have more money. But what's key to understand about this is two things. First, that liquidity in the household allowed people to both plan while also absorb the unexpected things that happen to all of us: the flat tire, the missed shift at work, the unexpected copay, which then tends to spill over in a household and cause strain elsewhere in the budget. Second, that liquidity was really pooled across fragile family networks, such that stabilizing those resources in one household actually had a spillover effect into other families where they normally would borrow money and food for those households, which is really key and interesting. And then the second area that we saw big shifts was in our second research question, which was ‘How do changes in income volatility impact health and well-being?” And what we found was that people receiving the cash were less anxious and depressed, both over time and compared to the control group. They reported improved emotional health and well-being, energy over fatigue, again, both over time compared to the control group. Now key, Judith, it's still staggering for me to even think that this is one of research findings is that at the beginning of the experiment, almost everyone in treatment control met the clinical criteria for either anxiety or depression, as measured by some pretty standard measures that we all use at the doctor's office. Most of us have taken these. And so what we saw was that after one year, we saw that treatment group move from meeting that clinical criteria for mild mental health disorder into the category of likely to be well, and that did not happen in the control group. And all we did was provide people with unconditional cash, which is fairly extraordinary. Then finally, our last question was “How is guaranteed income generate agency over one's future? Are we seeing people have greater control and self-determination?” And the biggest finding that we had here was around employment. So, you know, we've talked a lot about assumptions around poverty, and those are certainly very politically driven. And one of the criticisms we often get is “well if you give people cash, they're going to stop working and they'll just quit their jobs en masse,” which is kind of silly if you think about it, because you can't live off of $500 a month anywhere, let alone California. And what we saw in the treatment group was that at baseline, 28% of people in the treatment group were fully employed and after one year, 40% were fully employed, and we did not see that same shift in the control group. Literally the opposite of what politically we're told will happen if you give people cash. And again, when we leaned into our mixed methods design and followed up with qualitative data to understand, OK, how did this happen and why? It was really interesting. Two things that happened first was that the cash removed material barriers to seeking employment that people could not address prior. So in many instances, people who moved from knitting together multiple part-time jobs to one full-time job literally couldn't take a shift off of work to even apply for another job, and the cash allowed them to do that. So it removed some material barriers: cost of transportation, being able to skip work. So if you think about it, it takes time to apply for full-time jobs and you're not guaranteed that you're going to get it. And there's also that protracted period of going through H.R., resigning one position and starting another. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you literally don't have time to do that because financial scarcity generates time scarcity. And so really, removing those material barriers allowed people to apply for positions that they knew they were eligible for and just couldn't didn't have the time to do. Second was an increased capacity for risk taking. So what we saw was several months into that first year of treatment, as people's anxiety dropped, as their scarcity dropped, they had more bandwidth to breathe and really plan for the future. So being able to set certain goals for themselves and take risks knowing that they had the cash to fall back on. So those are both a material thing, you know, as well as a cognitive capacity thing and really sort of being able to reimagine what they wanted for their future. Siers-Poisson: You were able to see how people were using the money by tracking the purchases. And actually, we should say people received the funds on a monthly basis and a debit card, right? Castro: Correct. So in Stockton, the $500 was disbursed each month on a prepaid debit card. So that debit card was reloaded each month right in the middle of the month, and we chose that date. I think it's a crucial thing that gets lost oftentimes in kind of the excitement around guaranteed income is the timing of the money. So most social safety net programs, specifically SNAP benefits or food stamps, they run out by the second or third week of the month. And so what you see is food security at the front of the end of the month and by the end of the month, families are really scraping to get by and having to borrow from friends and family simply to feed their kids. So we intentionally chose the middle of the month, you know, we're really looking to disrupt income volatility, your finances going up and down consistently within the home. So that was kind of chosen to smooth that piece over. Siers-Poisson: So what have you learned from the format of this, that on a debit card, you can see exactly where money was being spent and how much? What are you seeing? Castro: First, I'll say, what's happening with the spending data or how people are using the money, is not one of our primary research questions. We don't really care. I have to be totally honest with you. I mean, how people spend the money is not a research focus of ours. We're far more interested in how spending the money impacts people's lives and impacts their health and well-being. However, again, we echo back to what I said prior. The community is certainly interested in how the money is spent. And when we talked with those focus groups, specifically a group of housing activists who live in Section 8  housing, they were insistent. I mean, absolutely insistent that we were release spending data. And when we asked them why, rather than saying it was because they thought it should be monitored, it was because they had such faith in how people who looked like them would spend it. They said, “No, we want the world to see exactly what it's like to struggle to make ends meet. And we know exactly how low-income moms and dads are going to spend this money,” which is why we took that step. So, you know, the thing around on the spending data first, you know, most of the money went to food. So approximately 40% of the money that's tracked each month on that debit card went directly toward food purchases. And then the next category after that, I believe, was big box stores. And we're talking about things like utilities. Now key, a large portion of the money was transferred off of the card each month into cash or into other bank accounts. And this is the beauty of a mixed-methods design is you can follow up with families to determine why they did that. So when we followed up with people to sort of figure out like, “Hey, what's this about transferring the money into cash,” it was really interesting. Several things first, like I said before, Stockton experienced the worst the capitalism has to offer. They were targeted consistently for risky lending schemes. They still are. Scams are really prevalent in the community, so they had no reason to trust us whatsoever. So the community is sitting there like “I'm constantly targeted with risky things. Why would I trust you?” So people would quickly move the money off the card into an account that they know and that they trust where it felt safer. And then also, you know, a lot of folks are still conducting their everyday lives in cash. So spreading cash around family networks, paying babysitters, things to that effect. Siers-Poisson: I wanted to go back to that focus group being adamant about releasing those results because I'm guessing that they, and other people who are living similar lives to theirs, are very aware of those critics. The people who say, you know, they can't be trusted, they're going to spend it on alcohol and drugs. Do you think that was part of it too? Not just that they were confident that their cohort was going to spend it responsibly, but they wanted to be able to show people like, “Look, this is who we are, not who you think we are.” Castro: Yeah, that's a beautiful way of putting it. I mean, without question, is that they really wanted people to see, you know, so less than 1% of the money on the card that's tracked each month, meaning sort of those merchant codes, these are the same codes that we all have on a normal debit card, you know, went to alcohol and cigarettes. Now, is it possible that people pulled the money out in cash and actually spent some money? Yeah, I'm sure they did. You know, like I bought wine last night, like, don't we all do this? This is a whole kind of point of giving money—that they can be human. But yeah, like they were adamant that they wanted people to see what it was like and they were really clear. And saying, “there are these stereotypes that people have about families who are struggling to make ends meet, and this is a chance for us to show the world really that what it's like to be me.” And I have to say, that group was not just that group, but there are several that we worked with. The challenge of relinquishing control and giving them a true voice in the process has been one of the best decisions we ever could have made as a research team because I wouldn't have chosen to do that. I'd have just chosen to leave it be, not talk about it, not step out into that space. And they really have the confidence and the boldness to say that that we had an ethical obligation to do so. And I think they were right. Siers-Poisson: Have you seen any negative effects in in the data? Have there been any unintended consequences that you, you wish hadn't happened? Castro: That's a great question. Some of that we'll be talking about more as we release the full report. I'd say the number one sort of unintended consequence that would definitely have a negative impact has been interaction with benefits. So this is not just been true in Stockton, this has been true across all the other pilots that we're working with is that within the United States, our social safety net is very punitive. We have something called a benefits cliff, which means that for every dollar that somebody receives, we pull back some of their benefits. So families constantly are in this horrific calculation. “If I take this, you know, I want to take this extra shift at work because I need the cash and because I don't want to lose my job. But if I do that, I might lose my benefits.” And so you're constantly making this calculation, which leaves over less cognitive capacity for other things like goal setting and well-being. That's one issue. But second, it means that families are constantly trapped or penalizing them for working more. So what this meant in Stockton and across all these unconditional cash experiments is that we sometimes have to tailor our recruitment criteria and design to make sure that people aren't losing benefits. So we in many instances where people were randomized into the treatment group to receive the $500 they showed up for the onboarding. They went through the informed consent process and realized, “I'm at way too high of a risk for losing my health insurance, or my housing voucher or my SSI,” and just felt like “I'm too vulnerable. I can't take the risk.” So that is an unintended consequence that we haven't resolved yet. We do our best, but it's one that we're consistently contending with, and it's incredibly frustrating. And what ends up happening is that all of our data is about the people who are willing to take that risk or who were able to take that risk versus those who were forced because of the benefits flip issue to not enroll in these experiments in the first place. Siers-Poisson: I have to say on a human level that I would assume that would be crushing to someone who thinks that they're going to be able to take part in this and then realize it's too much of a risk. Did you get any feedback on it? Castro: Oh man. Yeah. Yes and no. I mean, on one hand, yes, there's times it's crushing and right now my center is embarking on a huge clinical trial with low income cancer patients, and it's a far more vexing issue in that experiment than the other ones. So, yeah, like at times, it is totally crushing. I think what's even more sobering was that people weren't surprised. You know, those who had to decline or who didn't bother were like, “well, of course, the systems turned again. Why would this work in my favor? The world's not set up for me. I don't matter. Government doesn't see me.” It was like, “yeah, of course. Of course it went that way.” And so we had a little bit of both. Siers-Poisson:  One of the things that I was thinking about, especially when you said that the Stockton experiment dispersed its last round of funding earlier this year. Do we know what happens when a program ends and those people who for a couple of years have that regular influx of cash no longer has it? Castro:  Yeah, it's a great question. You know, it's something that we're still sort of obviously collecting data on for all the experiments that we run, we collect data for six months after and then in some cases, there's administrative data that goes on for many years. So I can't give sort of an empirical answer to that quite yet. What I will say is, from a values perspective, this was something that we had to resolve as a team when we were building out Stockton early on, and there really wasn't anything to go on and asking ourselves the question like, “what does it mean to extend hope to somebody and then pull it away?” Like, “How dare you?” Is that even just, is that ethical?” And when I felt caught on that and my team felt caught on that, we went to our Associate Dean of Research, Dr. Solomon, who's a brilliant social work researcher. And she kind of got in my face a little bit, honestly. And she said, “Amy, you are a social worker. What is wrong with you? If you trust people to spend the cash, and to be able to enroll in the experiment, programs are closing on folks all the time. You don't trust them to weather the end?” And it was one of the most profound things of mentorship that I could receive at that moment in time, because she really challenged my biases. Like, I had this bias like people couldn't handle it. And that's not to say that there's not harm that's caused when something ends. But, you know, what Dr. Solomon pointed out, was the poor constantly having things pulled out from underneath them. There's tremendous resilience there. How dare you assume that they'd be worse off? Why don't you wait and see what happens? So right now, we're waiting to see what happens. Siers-Poisson: You talked earlier about how much of a paradigm shift this is of giving people money, trusting them to spend it as they need. And to me, there's definitely an element of trying to restore some dignity to life for people who have, in many cases, had that taken away from them and respecting them and their choices. How do you see efforts like this working to change the narrative about people living in poverty? Castro: Oh, I mean, it's crucial. Right, so here's the thing scientists tell terrible stories, we're bad at it. If we were better at communicating with the public, people would be vaccinated and COVID would be a little less right now. Right. We're bad at telling stories, we're good at staying in our ivory towers and measuring things. To me, it is without question crucial that we that we deal with narrative. So when we look back throughout U.S. history, we know that when policy windows open and we design new poverty alleviation methods, or we design new policies that really move the needle, we have two things that happen. One, we have consensus on data. So we actually know how to design a good program based on what's happening. And that's colleague to colleague, data to data, right? But then second, we see a shift in public mood. And if you do not tackle that public narrative around deservedness, around shame, around blame and you don't deal with public mood, all you do is migrate shame, blame, and assumptions about race and class from one social program to the other. So one of my driving concerns right now, as guaranteed income programs and conversations take off across the country, is making certain that we are keeping our eye on that narrative change work and not assume that this is some sort of silver bullet that's going to get rid of hundreds of years of racism in the United States, because it's not going to. If we don't do that narrative change work, we're just going to migrate the myth of the welfare queen off of TANF and onto guaranteed income. How do we do that? We're still working on it. But what we do know is that privileging voice, privileging community voice in the process, definitely helps us with this, along with dealing with a lot of things like discourse analysis and leading into narratives and putting people's stories out there in the press and in measured ways where, you know, if you want to change the narrative, change the narrator. It doesn't need to be me being the one who's in front of the mic all the time telling those stories. Siers-Poisson: You said earlier that Stockton was the first pilot project, and there are so many more going on right now that you have a hard time keeping track of how many. So what does success look like as these programs are kind of mushrooming around the country? Castro: I mean, everybody sort of defines that a little bit differently. For us within the center, we define success as first of all, were we able to design and experiment with integrity? So were we able to answer the research questions that we set out to answer with the design that we implemented? That's first and foremost, success. Second, to answer on a values perspective, really, we're pretty clear about what we're trying to do. We want to see policies on unconditional cash. Now again, that is not a silver bullet. But what I think success would look like to us as a center is having policies and unconditional cash that are informed by science, informed by data, and not just informed by somebody's good idea. So for us, we really want to see this movement from pilot to policy, but that those policies are evidence based and that they're rooted in science and rooted in real people's lives. Siers-Poisson: Professor Castro, thanks so much for sharing your work with us, and we'll definitely be looking forward to talking about the results from that second year of Stockton. Castro: Yeah, happy to. Thanks for having me. Siers-Poisson: Thanks so much to Professor Amy Castro, Founding Director of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research and an Assistant Professor of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. If you would like to learn more about pilot programs around the country, check out the website for Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. That's at mayors for A-G-I dot org. The production of this podcast was supported in part by funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, but its contents don't necessarily represent the opinions or policies of that office, any other agency of the federal government, or the Institute for Research on Poverty. Music for the episode is by Poi Dog Pondering. Thanks for listening.  

Last week, Andrew Yang released a book about his ideas on transforming our political and economic systems. Yang is most well-known for popularizing the idea of a universal basic income but it's a concept that's been around for centuries and now it's having a moment on the local level. In light of this, we wanted to revisit an episode from earlier this year where we covered a similar topic: guaranteed income. Guests: Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui of Cambridge, Massachusetts and former Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, California with Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. 

Happy New Year! In the first episode of Catalysts for Change in 2021, Jill talks to Mayor Michael Tubbs, Mayor of Stockton, California. Having collaborated with key movers and shakers in the Democratic Party, Mayor Tubbs has been a major figure in politics, as well as a significant supporter of guaranteed income programs. A lifelong resident of Stockton, Tubbs grew up poor and was raised in a single parent household, before going on to graduate from Stockton Public Schools and, then, Stanford University. At Stanford, Tubbs majored in comparative studies in race and ethnicity, and spent time as an intern in the Obama White House. After graduating from Stanford, Tubbs successfully ran for a spot on Stockton’s city council in 2012 as the youngest person ever elected to the position. Three years later, Tubbs was elected Mayor of Stockton. As Mayor, Tubbs started and implemented the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, a Guaranteed Income program that gives 125 residents of Stockton $500 a month. Out of this work, he founded Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, organizing Mayors around pilots and advocacy of guaranteed income for the underserved. Stockton’s guaranteed income program has become a national example, with many other cities and programs following Stockton’s lead, including the Shah Family Foundation’s work in Chelsea, MA.  A key advocate of guaranteed income strategies, we talk to Mayor Tubbs about Stockton’s guaranteed income program, how it became a reality, its impact and importance over time, and more about Mayor Tubbs’ work in Stockton.  If you would like to read more about Mayor Tubbs, as well as the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, check out the links below. Here is Mayor Michael Tubbs’ biography  Here is the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration website Here is a link to a recent Boston Globe article about a new guaranteed income project in Chelsea MA Here is a link to Michael Tubbs’ Twitter Here is an article about Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Millions of Americans faced economic, housing and food uncertainty even before the pandemic. Two years ago, the mayor of Stockton, California piloted a universal basic income program in an effort to ease the pain of his constituents, sending monthly assistance checks to some people. Now, more than two dozen mayors are expanding the program, funded through private donors. Mayor Michael Tubbs joins Michael Hill to discuss. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

On this episode, we are joined by Michael Tubbs, the youngest, first African American, and current mayor of Stockton, CA. Mayor Tubbs discusses why he founded Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and the importance of all citizens having access to economic safety nets during our current pandemic and beyond. The hosts for this episode are Clint Odom, NUL Senior Vice President of Policy & Advocacy and Toni Wiley, NUL Director of Advocacy. From the National Urban League, For The Movement discusses persistent policy, social, and civil rights issues affecting communities of color. Discussed in this episode: National Urban League Black Black America African-American News Information Advocacy Universal Basic Income Guaranteed Income Stockton CA Safety Net Housing Housing insecurity Unemployment Welfare Institutional racism Social contract Working poor Dignity of work Human dignity COVID-19 Coronavirus Subsidies Bail out Mayors Black Lives Matter CARES Act LIFT Act Essential workers Poverty Foreclosure Eviction Kamala Harris Rashida Tlaib   Mayors for a Guaranteed Income website: mayorsforagi.org Mayors for a Guaranteed Income on Twitter: @MayorsforAGI SEED website: StocktonDemonstration.org Mayor Tubbs on Twitter & Instagram: @michaeldtubbs  

This is a Friday Patreon Exclusive! Go to patreon.com/toureshow to hear the whole ep! For $5 a month you get 4 Patreon Exclusives a month!Patreon.com/toureshowInstagram: @toureshowTwitter: @toureNewsletter: blackmindsmatter.substack.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

DL and Jasmine host Mayor, Michael Tubbs who became both Stockton’s youngest mayor and the city’s first African-American mayor. Michael Tubbs is also the youngest mayor in the history of the country representing a city with a population of over 100,000 residents.Included in Fortune’s 2018 Top "40 under 40," Forbes' 2018 list of the “30 Under 30” and The Root's 100, Tubbs’ leadership, paired with an ambitious agenda, has received national recognition. Mayor Michael Tubbs has secured over $20 million in philanthropic capital to launch the Stockton Scholars, a place-based scholarship that aims to triple the number of Stockton students entering and graduating from college. Mayor Tubbs also brought Advance Peace to Stockton, a data-driven program that works to reduce gun violence in communities. Additionally, with an innovative public-private partnership supported by a $1,000,000 seed grant from the Economic Security Project, Tubbs launched the nation’s first municipal level basic income pilot, the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

Mayor Michael Tubbs is Stockton’s first Black mayor and America’s youngest mayor ever to lead a city of greater than 100,000 residents. Since his election in 2016, Mayor Tubbs has pledged himself to revitalizing and reinventing the city of his birth, spearheading a bevy of new programs to fight violent crime, boost the college enrollment rate, and lower unemployment. In 2019, he launched the country’s first mayor-led guaranteed income pilot; this summer, he mobilized 24 other mayors to advocate the same.  Today, Mayor Tubbs discusses his childhood in Stockton -- how his own hard journey at once epitomizes and indicts our obsession with American exceptionalism. He talks about his struggle to cultivate trust with his constituents, and the lessons he’s learned leading an ideologically diverse city council. He shares the work Stockton has done to reform its police department, after municipal bankruptcy forced a critical rethinking of police funds. And he describes the history and impact of Stockton’s successful guaranteed income pilot.  For more, stream Stockton on My Mind, HBO’s new documentary on Mayor Tubbs, on HBO and HBO Max. Learn more about the array of initiatives he’s spearheaded through his nonprofit organization, the Reinvent Stockton Foundation, and check out his 2020 re-election platform, to learn what he's envisioning for his city next.  

Since Stockton, California, Mayor Michael Tubbs was elected in November 2016, he’s launched an innovative Guaranteed Income pilot program and created a runway for his city’s success. Mayor Tubbs joins Jonathan to discuss the program, how cities across the country are implementing similar initiatives, and why it’s so important for local governments to invest in their communities. Mayor Tubbs is the co-founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, and the subject of the new HBO documentary “Stockton On My Mind.”   Follow Mayor Tubbs on Twitter @MichaelDTubbs and Instagram @michaeldtubbs. Stream Stockton on My Mind on HBO and HBO Max. Learn more about Stockton’s Guaranteed Income pilot program at www.StocktonDemonstration.org. And keep up with Mayors for a Guaranteed Income at www.mayorsforagi.org and on Twitter @mayorsforagi.   Find out what today’s guest and former guests are up to by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN.    Listen to more music from Quiñ by heading over to TheQuinCat.com. Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook. See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.

Our guest this week is millennial Mayor Michael Tubbs who at 26 years-old became the youngest Mayor of a major American city in 2016, and the first African American mayor of Stockton, California. Now at age 29, Jack and Mike catch up with him to discuss his new HBO Documentary Stockton On My Mind, reparations, being in the room where it happens, brown and black unity amongst many and if he has any plans to run for President. Mike and Jack also discuss whether there is enough Hispanic-American contributions to create a Smithsonian Latino Museum, the Los Angeles Times Latino journalists pen an open letter for better newsroom representation, and how white men are being hateful of Latina women. Subscribe, review and share! iTunes: https://apple.co/32hShVT Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2ZwbAZz iHeart Radio: https://ihr.fm/32kX6h1 Pandora: https://pdora.co/2DDeWS7 TuneIn: https://bit.ly/2WpoKG2 Reach out to us! Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/BrownBlackPod Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/brownblackp... Follow Jack Rico on Twitter - https://twitter.com/jackricofficial Follow Mike Sargent Twitter - https://twitter.com/mikeonscreen Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, CA and Scott Santens join us to talk about the case for Universal Basic Income (UBI).

While presidential candidates like Andrew Yang muse about giving all citizens a universal basic income, Stockton is actually trying it. Since February, a pilot program there has been giving 130 Stockton residents $500 a month to use as they see fit. Mayor Michael Tubbs, who at 28 is one of the nation’s youngest big city mayors, explains how his own upbringing in poverty helps him see how the program could work -- and potentially go statewide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, we feature the voice of Michael Tubbs. We have broken the episode down into two parts. Part one takes place back in the summer of 2016 when I caught up with Michael Tubbs who was at that time the youngest City Council member in Stockton history and one of the youngest elected officials in the United States. Michael was as you heard in Episode 11 from Tama Brisbane working to change Stockton’s history by making history. Michael was making a run to become the youngest and first African American Mayor of his hometown. In Part two of our episode, we wanted to sit down with now Mayor Michael Tubbs and revisit all of the work he was doing in 2016, his campaign promises, his vision for the City of Stockton, and find out what have been the outcomes of these efforts.

Nicholas Hatten is the Founder and Executive Director of the San Joaquin Pride Center (SJCP). A proven leader and agent for change, Hatten has challenged the San Joaquin County and Central Valley to evaluate how it can best serve its LGBT+ community. He forged a collaboration with the Los Angeles Pride Center and other LGBT+ agencies that resulted in a million-dollar Covered California Outreach & Education grant, the first time the Central Valley area was included in LGBT+ specific healthcare work. As an organizer, Nicholas was instrumental in empowering local LGBT+ youth to advocate for anti-bullying resources and a focus on better school climates for LGBT+ youth on campus. This resulted in the Stockton Unified School District is the very first district in the state of California to include "LGBT" specific language in their LCFF/LCAP budget in 2016. As the recipient of one of three California Reducing Disparities Pilot Project grants, Hatten is now collaborating with California's Public Health Department on a model for increasing acceptance of LGBT+ youth in schools and within the community that will reduce the rate of incidents that lead to mental health illness among our youth. The mission of the San Joaquin Pride Center is to serve the diverse LGBTQQIA community in San Joaquin County and the surrounding areas by creating a safe and welcoming space, by providing resources that enrich body, mind, and spirit, and by educating the public in tolerance and respect for all people within the LGBTQQIA community. https://www.sjpridecenter.org/ Donation / Fundraising Your support of our Pride Center will help us continue to provide vital services to our LGBT community such as our LGBT sensitivity training, legal referrals, peer groups, and outreach and advocacy within the larger County community. https://www.sjpridecenter.org/donate

Rebekah Fenton a pediatrics resident at Seattle Children’s Hospital and longtime friend of Michael Tubbs, shares her insights into both her support of the creation of the Phoenix Scholars as well as Michael Tubbs’ drive to support access to a college education for low-income first-generation minority high school seniors. Listen to Teenagers: Gun Violence is a Public Health Problem: https://medium.com/@rdlucien/listen-to-teenagers-gun-violence-is-a-public-health-problem-2eb279b56c31 The Phoenix Scholars is the model that Michael Tubbs utilized to create the Stockton Scholars which is a guaranteed college scholarship for any Stockton Unified School District graduate. The Stockton Scholars is a program of the Reinvent Stockton Foundation which Michael Tubbs created and is managed by Michael Tubb’s friend, associate, and Stockton Unified School District Trustee Lange Luntao. Please listen to both Episode 5 [Link to Episode 5 landing page] to find out more about Mayor Tubbs’ and Trustee Luntao’s efforts to address the Stockton Unified School District problems. Find out more about Phoenix Scholars: http://www.phoenixscholars.org/our-program.html Donate to Phoenix Scholars: http://www.phoenixscholars.org/donate.html

This week, we hear about a radical idea to end poverty: Universal Basic Income. Lauren talks to the team behind an experiment with Guaranteed Income taking place in Stockton, CA the one-time foreclosure capital of America where 1 in 4 people live below the poverty line. Featuring conversations with Mayor Michael Tubbs, Natalie Foster of the Economic Security Project, and the co-principal investigators on this experiment: Dr. Amy Castro Baker of the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Stacia Martin West of the University of Tennessee. Guaranteed Income and Universal Basic Income—where money is given with no strings attached represents a radical shift in the way we think about the social contract. Could this be what a Feminist Economy looks like? Special thanks to Mia Birdsong for providing voices of Stockton residents, from her “More Than Enough” Podcast. Additional thanks to First Lady of Stockton, Anna Tubbs and Sukhi Samra, Executive Director of SEED. Learn more about the Stockton Demonstration.

Michael Tubbs has devoted his political life to fighting economic inequality in Stockton -- the Northern California city where he was born and raised.  Elected Mayor in 2016, Tubbs has worked to reinvent the formerly bankrupt city. This past year, he spearheaded a universal basic income pilot program. Already identified as a rising figure in the progressive movement, Tubbs isn’t even thirty years old yet, making him the youngest mayor of an American city of more than 100,000 people. On February 13, 2019, Mayor Tubbs came to The Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk with Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of Pod Save America and a former senior advisor to President Obama. Join me now for a conversation with Mayor Michael Tubbs.

Mayor Michael Tubbs is joined by Matt Haney, Supervisor-Elect to San Francisco’s 6th District, to discuss Haney's decision to run for office, his work as a San Francisco Unified School Board member, and what it means to enact change on a local level.

Bonus! Naomi Klein & Roeseann DeMoro https://www.patreon.com/posts/23210628 I report back from the Sanders Institute Gathering in Burlington VT, where I spoke to... wait for it... Senator Bernie Sanders himself! I also interview Naomi Klein, 83 year old former Mayor Gus Newport, 28 year old current Mayor Michael Tubbs and hotel security guard who moved from Louisiana. Plus I bring you clips from panels with Nina Turner, Ben Jealous, Jim Zogby, Susan Sarandon, Roseann DeMoro and the call for the #ProgressiveInternational from Yanis Varoufakis. #sandersinstitute #sandersgathering

Mayor Michael Tubbs preached a sermon titled “A Biblical Sample Ballot“ on October 28, 2018 at Stanford Memorial Church.  The readings for the sermon was Matthew 25: 31-46, from the Hindu Tradition by Rabindranath Tagore, The Invocation of God by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Luke 16:19-26, and Isaiah 58: 5-9.

As listeners of the podcast will almost certainly know, Stockton, California is planning a basic income trial for 2019. Jim spoke with Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs and project leader Lori Ospina about new details regarding how the program will be structured, how recipients will be selected, and the challenges and responses so far to the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration. For more information, you can go to StocktonDemonstration.org.

The pod is in New York City for the second annual Smart On Crime Innovations Conference—an annual convening to change the criminal justice system to be fairer and more just, comprehensive, and effective. Ed and Daniella were lucky to be joined by Valerie Jarrett, formerly the senior adviser to President Barack Obama, and Michael Tubbs, the 28-year-old mayor of Stockton, California. Mayor Tubbs offers his personal philosophy for how leadership at the local level can move the needle on criminal justice reform, and Jarrett provides her take on the ongoing sexual assault allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh and what they portend for the future of the Supreme Court and the country. Finally, we all find common ground in a certain hit television series. And attention: spoiler alerts within, but don't worry—they're from last season.

Young people change the gun debate in a matter of days. NRA talking points ring hollow at a CNN town hall. Black Panther helps register voters. And Jon demands a gay superhero. A guy with laser eyes and a boyfriend. What’s the problem? Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, Black Lives Matter activist Alicia Garza, and comedian Jenny Yang join Jon in Sacramento to break down the week’s news and mock Marco Rubio because he deserves it.

Hosts discuss Newsweek & International Business Times Raids, Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, CA new initiatives, Mayor Rufus Davis of Camila, GA battle with his city leaders, and looming government shutdown.

In November 2016, Mayor Michael Tubbs was elected to lead Stockton, Califronia by a 70% margin. The mayoral wunderkind joined Chuck Todd to talk about his ambitions for the city, and what he'd like to see from the state's governor. 

In November 2016, Mayor Michael Tubbs was elected to lead Stockton, Califronia by a 70% margin. The mayoral wunderkind joined Chuck Todd to talk about his ambitions for the city, and what he'd like to see from the state's governor. 

Maddie and Lucas provide a brief update on the status of the Trump administration, including the executive order on immigration from seven muslim-majority countries, and then go on to discuss the protests of Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley as well as some campus news. Also, SPJ's chief of staff, Micaela Suminksi, interviews Michael Tubbs, a Stanford alumnus and the youngest ever Mayor of Stockton, CA, who offers his thoughts on the power of local politics in the age of Trump.