Continued is our discussion with Randall Woodfin. If you missed last week, click here to catch up.

In May 2017, The Political Revolution’s Steven Johnson and David Dai met with Randall Woodfin, candidate for Mayor of Birmingham. They met at Octane Coffee in Birmingham and talked about Randall’s history, their mutual work in education, politics and the issues facing Birmingham. David and Steven each hold a Master’s of Education from the University of Alabama and Randall Woodfin currently serves on The Board of Education.

Volunteers for The Political Revolution teamed up to create interview questions and worked with Steven to create this text and audio reproduction of the conversation that followed.

Over the next two weeks, we would like to share that conversation with you for your reading or listening pleasure.

Thank you for supporting progressive candidates!

Audio available on Soundcloud:

Steven : That’s what’s interesting to us cause of course we’re education people. A lot of people think you can fix the education system by just hiring some good math teachers at the high school or something. But we gotta build our kids up from the early stages. Like if they don’t understand numbers before they come to middle school, they can’t learn algebra, if they can’t understand algebra they can’t learn pre-calculus – then?
That’s one of the things Tuscaloosa, AL actually does well, they have that TCT trade program where its a trade school – you can graduate with a welder’s certificate or a cosmetology certificate and you can start working right after high school.

Randall : We have to do that. That’s not for play, right? You want a school system to cooperate with that, but you gotta put all your parents in the room and have a real conversation with them. You want what’s best for your child, we do too, this is how we are gonna get there.

David: So let me pick your brain about this. You mentioned early childhood. Up to five years, that stage, supporting learning centers, then supporting our juniors and seniors in co-ops

Randall : I didn’t tell you about the middle part

David : Right, how are you going to catch them at that stage

Randall : So, this is where our recreational centers come in, I think they should be repurposed, expanded several fold. One of the folds is right now – and our libraries as well – our libraries stay open until 8 on Mondays and Tuesdays, every other day they close at 6.
When you’re in the hood and you talk to parents, you find out most parents actually really do care about their child. But the challenges they had in high school is a reflection they have of the school system.  Then you find out they are working 1 or 2 jobs, a lot at night. Why can’t our library system be open later? Why can’t our recreational centers be open later? Not just for the recreational portion, but for the smaller children. Why can’t they be safe havens in regards to continuing to invest in and support them after school?  Why cant we provide workforce training and adult literacy for their parents in the same space? For our libraries, why can’t we say OK –  ten weeks off in the summer just doesn’t work for our urban school system. It’s a whack model, right? Nobody’s forming up here [inaudible] a variant culture mindset of “take ten weeks off in the summer to go be on the phone and chill – just sittin around chillin.

Because they’re not in a suburban system that’s not successful, where even if they’re not in school there’s still some learning going on. We gotta close the summer gap. In that space, I believe we offer a 6-10 week reading program. The goal is to make sure children read at grade level minimum – minimum. Partnering with our education foundation that helps us raise that money, but actually going after national philanthropic money too, those foundations. We offer a real summer program for our children – for every child who’s not at grade level – which in Birmingham is almost a majority. No child can be idle during summer.
But yes, I started here and you saw me at [the Board of Education] at the end of the [school] year…..what we are saying is, for every child that’s coming in, let’s do something to let them enter at their grade level. For every child who exits, let’s give them an option, for the children who are here, lets close the gap.

David : Right, and I was wondering about how you were gonna go about closing that gap

Randall : It’s the summer. It’s the summer. Every school system’s children – some aren’t created equally

All : Right, exactly right

Steven : Tuscaloosa city sent out a big pamphlet of 40-50-60 summer programs for the kids. And when I was in school, we had zero. You had no opportunity, of course I mean, I had a job in high school but you worked your job, you went home and played video games, watch sports and –

Randall: I don’t wanna take that away from you, I say let’s do both.

Steven: Right, that almost makes too much sense, you know what I mean?

Randall : My fundamental thought is this, if a mayor of a city doesn’t champion education, nobody will. The superintendent’s job is narrowly focused on making sure children learn, right? The mayor’s job has to encompass that as well. Its big picture because this is your youngest generation. These are the people who – and in our town, I’m telling you, it’s scary. I was in court two Thursdays ago. I was there for a youthful offender hearing on a client of domestic violence, 19 year old. But I get there first, sign a list so I can go first. Everybody on the list is a youthful offender status hearing – judge is going to deny or grant it.  We already know the charge. But the judge doesn’t take me first, he takes all these armed robberies first. He denied every single one of them youthful offender status. They’re all between 16-18. These are juniors and seniors who are either in high school or dropped out of high school and robbed somebody. He will treat every one of them as an adult. Why am I saying that? As a mayor I don’t have a choice but to invest in education. I don’t have a choice but to put young people to work. I don’t have a choice but to close that gap because young people who are idle or who don’t finish school or are just out here in the streets? They are the ones who are hurting themselves or hurting other people. And how you fight and address crime? You make sure children have opportunities.

Steven : Had a question about infrastructure, which we talked about –

Randall: Our infrastructure is shitty man – don’t quote me on that, alright?

All : Laughs

Randall: I don’t know if you can say shitty, but I dont care, its the truth, that’s the deal right. If you letter graded – we would be easily be a D, maybe a D+ and here’s why. There’s no way you can only take care of your infrastructure only on an election year, unless the following – either every year needs to be an election year or we need new leadership. I’m serious. We’ve seen more dilapidated houses be torn down this year, the last 6 months, we’ve seem more overgrown lots be cut this year, more streets paved in the last 6 months. Press release, ribbon cuttings, everything you can think of. At some point at the municipal level we have to pivot from optics, shine, camera, press release, press conference – none of that matters to people represented who are still hurting. And that’s a disconnect and it’s not a jingle. I just think that leadership style doesn’t work.

Steven : Yeah, you’re right, and that’s what I always – you always hear people talk about gas prices on the national level. It’s always interesting how in an election year, gas prices drop about a dollar a gallon right before the election starts and people are like “oh the President did a good job of dropping energy prices”, and I’m like well…he realizes what’s going to happen this year if he doesn’t do it, right? So yeah, that’s unfortunately too true.

Randall : Nobody else is going to take care of your instructure. Not the church, not the paint, not the foundation, that’s literally the city’s job. And…ya gotta do it. We don’t. And so infrastructure is not just street paving, right? It’s not just curbs, sidewalks, lights. There’s another portion of this where we talk about corporate responsibility, we talk about personal responsibility – well there’s city responsibility too. A lot of these lots where there is either a vacant house or overgrown, the city owns. I’ve gotta a lot of nerve as mayor trying to tell the individual person about their own property to take care of when as a city the property we own – we’re slumlords. That’s a disconnect. There are over 10,000 dilapidated properties in the city. When the current administration brags about tearing down 2 a day – last time I checked – 365 x 2 – that doesn’t put a dent in 10,000 houses. As soon as you get those two another one becomes vacant and all dilapidated so now you gotta tear down those too. What’s our plan, right? Why haven’t we been aggressive in tearing down dilapidated properties, really investing in our land bank. Repurposing some of these empty lots. Creating side lots, creating pocket parks, creating – partnering with someone, I don’t care who it is. When I talk to young people, there are a couple things going on in their mind. Employment, opportunities, housing opportunities, my child’s education. Whether you’re mayor and not being intentional about those things – what are we talking about?

Steven :  I had this question because in Tuscaloosa I felt like, as a college student – you know people live there, Tuscaloosa is a pretty decent sized city but you don’t feel like it when you’re in college with everything else going on – I had to question that.  Birmingham there are a bunch of different cultures and a bunch of different socioeconomic statuses. I want to know if you had any plans to try and unify the community – I read on your website you had some plans for the community – that’s interesting to me

Randall : So – relationships matter. When you pay attention to how people govern, it tells you a lot about the pulse of that city. I think Birmingham has a unique opportunity – and I believe – I put it in three legs too. One leg you have private sector, right – the for-profit banks, utilities, and all these other groups. Then there’s another leg, what I call non-profit community and faith based and they play a pretty pivotal role in Birmingham. And they’ve done their job – corporate responsibility could be better.
But its this leg over here, government, public service, in my opinion it has to bridge all three. This is is where your vision has to be for the city, this is where your plan has to be, this is where your priorities have to be. These two will come on board.  I feel like these two have just been doing their own thing in spite of what’s over here and they have been waiting on some different leadership here and vision. Part of that vision is bringing these different groups together.
UAB (University of Alabama) is not just an example of bringing college football back, its not just an example of being a leader in medicine, it is a community within a community. When those children leave Lawson State or Jefferson State Community College – UAB should be waiting on them, any lane they wanna go in. When you talk about UAB and total research, now Birmingham can create its own identity as far as being in biotech. You can bring all that in. When you talk about all this stuff focusing in midtown, separating UAB from downtown, UAB is breaking that barrier down and saying “no we’re gonna actually come all the way into town”.  We should embrace that. Not just from an employer standpoint, not just from a medicine standpoint, not just from a students in college standpoint. I feel like Tuscaloosa as a city is tied to its university. The city of Birmingham is too. That’s just one example.
We’ve got a lot of different cultures here. The mayor’s office is responsible for saying “this is what we are going to do for all people who live in the city”. Cause the way I frame it, the city of Birmingham is only as strong as its lowest quality-of-life neighborhood. And in that space, whether people not feeling safe, or their property values are doing this (gesture) it’s my job to connect the entire city. And I believe you can do that, it’s not just smoke, right? The mayor is responsible for uniting people in the city, and I’m not just talking about uniting a slogan – people tend to use that as a slogan. I’m talking about really bringing people together, and I think there are all types of ways to do it via social,via employment via what the city’s purpose in people’s lives and its role is – we’re not doing it. I know that’s a long answer but –

Steven : Well it’s not an easy issue. Wish we could just say hey everybody let’s go hang out in the middle of town and we can all be together but it’s not that easy, right? Especially when –

David : I was gonna say in an area like this where you’ve got so many different cultures, how can you support those – there’s a lot of distrust among people. How can you bridge that gap and create more of a unified trusting relationship between the different cultures.

Randall: So let’s keep answering that. This table will represent Birmingham and it’s good to see Birmingham be part of a national trend where the city center is growing, right? You see that in Nashville, you see it in Mobile, I don’t know what other cities y’all have visited, Chattanooga, Austin, Detroit, DC, Atlanta – but what you also see in those places – those cities I named? The historic neighborhoods that touch the city center get a residual on growing as well, revitalization. North of our town, this is new, right? North of this looks the same or worse. West of I-65 looks the same or worse. East over the bridge looks the same or worse.
How do you unify people? Take care of where people live so people outside of this ring feel some type of way about the growth here because what they are saying is –  we aren’t experiencing growth where I live on my block, on my street or in my neighborhood. Here – it starts in two areas, and nobody else is going to do it but the city – basic services and public safety.

If you really fight crime and make people feel safe where they are – but also empower people to take care of where they are because that’s where they live and you provide the basic services.

Making sure we can provide a grocery downtown because it all of a sudden has a critical mass population. These areas I just named been had a critical mass population, why are they in a food desert?

Let’s be intentional about the tax incentives and abatements we offer to lure grocery stores in those areas as well, and pave their streets as well, and clean their neighborhoods as well, and make them feel safe as well.

That’s how you unify people.

Take care of people where they live.

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Part 3 will be published next week, thanks for your support!