LA Inaugural
On Friday I attended the inauguration for Antonio Villaraigosa, the new Mayor of Los Angeles. It was a beautiful day. In addition to such luminaries as Jesse Jackson, David Hasselhoff, Warren Christopher and Cardinal Roger Mahoney, thousands of ordinary Angelenos filled out the south lawn of city hall and cheered their new mayor. I had the honor of swearing in the City Controller, Laura Chick.
Mayor Villaraigosa was interrupted several times by applause as he hammered away on his four main themes: crime, schools, traffic and environment.
Undoubtedly, Mayor Villaraigosa will soon hire more cops and persuade the leadership of L.A’s schools to make improvements in the learning environment that now leaves so many behind. Nevertheless, dramatic improvements on both fronts will be held hostage to our national policy of neglect at home in favor of over-extension abroad.
As the Bush presidency winds down, mayors in every major city will have a unique opportunity to increase their presence on the national stage. They directly witness the deteriorating quality of life in urban America and can help re-energize a domestic agenda, emphasizing investments in those places left behind in the grand march of globalization.
With respect to transportation and the environment, much of the solution lies at the state and national levels. Here is where the funds are to support public transit, clean fuels and road improvements we desperately need. Certainly cities can do much on the environmental front.
Yet, with China and India building hundreds of new coal plants and Bush denying Global Warming, big changes will have to occur in Washington before we make lasting progress.
So all the best to the new mayor of Los Angeles. May he act locally with great success and join other mayors from throughout the country in a renewed push to recapture at the national level the dreams he articulated so well on the steps of the Los Angeles city hall.
http://jerrybrown.typepad.com/
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