Michael Tubbs believes that children growing up in poverty are as limited in opportunity as the rose in Tupac Shakur’s poem, “The Rose That Grew from Concrete.”
“The issue is that we shouldn’t be planting roses in concrete and expecting them to grow,” Tubbs said.
Tubbs became the first Black mayor of Stockton, Calif. and the youngest mayor of any major American city in 2016. He spoke at Boston College’s annual Chambers Lecture for the Winston Center of Leadership and Ethics on Thursday.
Having grown up in poverty, Tubbs said he dedicated his political career to exposing how economic inequalities rob America of hidden intelligence and talent.
“Just think about the lost potential—how much brilliance we’re losing, and how many of the answers to the problems we’re facing are probably within somebody who is hungry,” Tubbs said.
Tubbs is confident that poverty in America can be managed through the redistribution of small quantities of wealth.
“The reason why there’s so much poverty is that there hasn’t been any sort of regulatory structure that allows for some of the wealth to be redistributed,” Tubbs said.
Tubbs said that his time as Mayor of Stockton gave him the opportunity to responsibly test the effects of redistributing wealth and set the groundwork for other cities.
“I’m fascinated by the divide between what we know works and what we do,” Tubbs said. “At first, it is important to establish a body of evidence to give other people the courage to try.”
After implementing systems to redistribute wealth in Stockton, citizens living below the poverty line experienced notable improvements in quality of life, Tubbs said.
“What we’ve seen is it allows people to transfer from part-time to full-time work,” Tubbs said. “We’ve seen the payoff of debt—we’ve seen it allow people to have a baseline. It’s hard talking about ceilings, but we can at least talk about the floor.”
Although Tubbs was not reelected as mayor in 2021, he said fluctuations in his political status have no effect on his commitment to fighting the crisis of poverty in America.
“I think oftentimes, particularly when you’re smart and successful and go to great schools, you have a pretty clear point of view about what you’re willing to win for,” Tubbs said. “But I think the most important question is, ‘What are you willing to lose for?’”
In a world with countless opportunities for public service, everyone has a duty to look out for their neighbors who are suffering, Tubbs said.
“I think no matter what you do, as a citizen, as a beneficiary of acts of service, you have a responsibility to do something,” Tubbs said. “You can’t let your ability to do anything cause you to do nothing.”
Tubbs addressed the students in the room and encouraged them to take action for the issues they are passionate about while they are still in college.
“So much of the work I do now started in dorm rooms,” Tubbs said. “The things I read and the conversations I had are the same things in the conversations I had as a mayor.”
