Obama Courts the Nation's Mayors

Posted by , Drum Major Institute at 7:52 AM on June 24, 2008.

By Henry Moroz

This weekend, MayorTV sat down with mayors from ten diverse cities to talk about the need for a national urban agenda and to hear about some of the innovative solutions mayors have developed to confront problems as varied as immigration, the foreclosure crisis, and retaining young people in inner cities. Watch video of interviews with Mayor Douglas Wilder of Richmond, Virginia and Mayor Martin J. Chavez of Albuquerque, New Mexico now on YouTube.

On Saturday, Senator Barack Obama addressed the group and won strong support from the crowd by describing a “new metropolitan reality” that requires investment in cities as drivers of regional economic growth. His plan to create a White House Office on Urban Policy as a “one-stop” shop for the concerns of mayors and local officials created a supportive buzz that dominated conversation throughout the rest of the Conference.

In Miami, MayorTV sat down with mayors from ten diverse cities to talk about the need for a national urban agenda and to hear about some of the innovative solutions mayors have developed to confront problems as varied as immigration, the foreclosure crisis, and retaining young people in inner cities. From Philadelphia to Honolulu, from Santa Fe to Dayton (and even from Nashville to Toronto), the mayors enthusiastically described their efforts to reinvigorate a federal urban policy that has been allowed to deteriorate in recent years. We talked about policies to prohibit Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in schools, prisoner re-entry programs, and retrofitting concrete slabs to create jobs and improve efficiency.

Watch video of interviews with Mayor Douglas Wilder of Richmond, Virginia and Mayor Martin J. Chavez of Albuquerque, New Mexico on YouTube now! Mayor Wilder talks with MayorTV about regional economic development, community relations, and how urban areas have been misrepresented in the past. Mayor Chavez talks to MayorTV about multilingualism, the middle class, and a green economy.

You can read blog coverage of the U.S. Conference of Mayors here and tune into MayorTV later this week to see interviews with the Mayors of Cleveland, Dayton, Honolulu, Nashville, Providence, Philadelphia, Santa Fe, and Toronto.

Click here to visit MayorTV

Click here to read blog coverage of the U.S. Conference of Mayors

Tagged as: tv, dmi, mayor, obama

Lindsay Beyerstein a New York writer blogging at Majikthise.