The Democrats now gather in Denver, where they will talk and talk, and Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon will be listening for words yet unheard. She will not be alone. For long months now, the mayors of America have been listening to the presidential candidates,
Barack Obama and John McCain both, and hearing almost nothing about life as it is actually lived in big cities.
The places like Baltimore are the great afterthought in this campaign. In their most cogent moments, the candidates talk about this miserable economy, or these miserable wars. In their worst moments, they play us for fools with insulting TV spots invoking the likes of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears.
Nobody talks about cities with crumbling bridges and roads, and schools where kids compute math in kilos. Nobody talks about neighborhoods where the houses are abandoned by the score and the junkies move in, and the homeless sleep over open grates in winter and churchyards during the balmy months.
In the places like Baltimore, we have drug addicts by the tens of thousands and, 40 years into so-called wars on drugs, we have neither candidate talking about a way out of this nightmare. There was also a war on poverty. Have the candidates not heard?
Poverty won. And, what happens in the city of Baltimore sends ripples across the entire metro area and beyond.
A week ago, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert reported Manny Diaz, the mayor of Miami and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, declaring, in a speech at the National Press Club, “Washington has abandoned us.”
There’s always some excuse to spend money elsewhere. For decades after World War II, we had the Cold War. Then, when the Berlin Wall fell and communist Russia allegedly breathed its last, we were told of an alleged “peace dividend.” Money previously blown on armaments could now be spent to revive crumbling cities. The cities are still waiting.
Now, just as there’s early talk of an American pullout from Iraq, we have the Russians invading Georgia and the old Cold War rhetoric getting placed back into everyone’s vocabulary.
And the presidential contenders find cities an afterthought once more.
So Dixon will be listening this week — and next week, when the Republicans gather — for somebody, in all the multitude of words that will be spoken, to drop a syllable here and there about urban America.
It won’t change her vote, of course. She’s a Democrat, and she’s been behind Obama since the early going. But she was saying the other day that she’s spoken with him several times, and he’s said things that she hoped to hear — but she’s waiting to hear him say them in public.
“We’ve had many conversations on the phone,” Dixon said. “He understands cities, and he knows what Washington’s failed to do.
They’ll say they’re taking care of water and sewage problems, but then there’s no funding for it. Right now, we’re getting minimum support from the federal government. If it wasn’t for us having a strong congressional delegation, we’d be crippled.”
Obama has promised her, says Dixon, that he will put money into cities — and that he’ll establish a Cabinet position to focus on problems ignored for years.
“In public,” she said, “neither of the candidates has stressed the needs of cities. That message has to be out there nationally. I told Obama we’re making progress in Baltimore but we’re still the third most violent city in the country. We need more funding. We’ve got houses falling down, a deteriorating infrastructure. We have transportation needs. You put money into fixing these things, and you’re creating jobs at the same time. We’ve got to have that.
“We’ve also got to change the approach to drugs. I met with [President] Bush’s drug people. I told them, these nations supplying drugs to America, they’re going to keep doing it as long as it’s such a big part of their economies. We’re focusing on local dealers, when it’s the international trade we have to hit.”
Dixon said she and Obama are “on the same page” on many of these issues.
And McCain? “I have no idea what McCain thinks about cities,” she said. “I’ve never heard him talk about cities.”
She’s had the advantage of telephone calls with Obama. But the rest of the nation hasn’t been listening in. Those who live in cities are waiting for a word here, a syllable there. What do these guys want to do if they’re elected? The wars are important, the economy’s important.
But so are the lives of hundreds of millions who live in cities, and wonder why nobody’s mentioning a word about them.
