Civic Cipher 100822 The Importance of Local Government with Harry Curtin (Part 1)

met at a city council meeting. We're electing a new city council person in my district where I live, and he just had some really important things that he brought up in the debate. I guess it would be called and I thought of inviting him up on the show to talk to us today about some of his policies and some of the things that I think we need to discuss in this forum here. He has led a

billion plus dollar in technology and transformatory transformational initiatives. He's also been an advisor to many of this country's the most successful corporations, and of course again he's now running for city council and District six in Phoenix. We have Harry Curtin with us today. Thank if you want, Thank you, yes, sir. And then of course we have a lot more to stick around for as well. We are going to be

discussing Benjamin Banneker for our way Black History Fact. We're also going to be talking about how you can become a better Ally. There is a lot going on with Alabama and the way that their district lines are drawn for voting. A lot of folks feel like they are trying to weaken the black vote and there's a lot of eyes on that, and there are a lot of national implications for that. So we're going to break that

down for you as well. So that and of course plenty more to stick around for on today's episode of Civic Cipher. But first and foremost, like we always do right around now, I'd like to artist off with some Ebony excellence. So this week's Ebony Excellence is sponsored by Let's Keep Growing hair Care Products. They make organic hair and hair care and growth products which are available through Walmart and of course Let's Keep Growing dot Com. And

I'd like to take this week's Ebony Excellence. Normally, I pull a story from somewhere really cool and I share it with you. But this one is a little bit more personal. It's a little closer to home. Gentlemen, I know by the name of Iron Daniels aka Rockadala. I don't want to shout him out because he recently released a feature film. It's called The Unhitch King, and he is an example of a person who came up through adversity and has a we'll call it a street level story.

But over the past several years he's focused on his passion for filmmaking and the most recent result of his efforts is called The Unhitch King. So it's really special to see someone start from where he started and now has a film in movie theater that you and I can go and see again. It's the culmination of a

year's long effort, and it's a comedy. It's hilarious and inspirational, and of course he's an example of exactly what a person can do with their life despite the many challenges of their youth, to rise above and become a master of their craft and ultimately make a national splash. I'm very proud of Iron Daniels. We all are. We know him as Iraq, we know him as Rockadalo. He has many names in where I live, but now that he's on a national scene, we have to call him Iron Daniels,

so we will do just that. But again we're very proud of him, and we employ to go check out as movie. I'm sure you'll love it. And if you can't make it to a theater near you that's carrying the film, bear in mind that it will be making its way to streaming platforms nationwide after its theatrical run. So that for this week is a more personalized Ebony Excellence. And once again shout out to our sponsor. Let's keep

growing haircare again. Let's keep growing. Now, Harry Curtin is with us today, Yes, sir, so let me tell a little bit more about the story. So I was invited to the meeting. We have a current city council person in my district and he has termed meaning that he cannot run again because of term limits, and so I believe there were six people on a stage. I was invited to this event by one of my neighbors who knew I was politically active, and of course that I

host the shows. And her name is Niki, So shout out to Niki. She's a listener of the show as well.

She invited me here. Had never been to something like this, And of course I'm sitting and I'm listening to everyone, and I very early on realized that I was one of two black people in the room, one of whom was on the stage, but the only one from the community city there and listening for obviously, there are things that affect our community, but there are other things that affect black people, specifically that and brown people, and they

don't affect other folks. And so I was listening with that ear because a lot of times, and as I could see, those ears weren't present in that room, those questions would not could not be asked with any authenticity, because there would not be any lived experience underneath systemic

or oppressive systems or whatever, invisible or otherwise. And so, listening to this panel of six people who all are very eloquent, very well versed understand sort of what the needs of the city are, one person stood out to me as being empathetic and really addressing things on a human level. There was a person who was really technically like, you know, we're going to get business, and business is going to do great, and that's all love good, and

there's another person. We need to be safe, and we need to our first responders, and of course that's all well and good. Other folks you know about water and other folks you know they have every teachers. All of these things are necessary. We're human beings. This is the way our society works. This is how we grow and

prosper and thrive as a society. But I think that the thing that stood out to me was the individual I found myself listening to had more to say about how individual human beings are affected by different things and how experiences might be different. And when we start there, we can develop policy that has a real impact and really feels like it resonates with folks. And that person, of course, was you appreciate that? Yes?

it's really been a long story. I mean for probably ten years, I've been thinking about it. You know, I've gone through an evolution of that process and thinking about it. Sure, you know, I think ten years ago I thought, well, that's what you do, you go run for office. And then as I grew up more and more I realized, well, I think I just want to help people. And in business,

I found that the things I love the most. You know, you mentioned some of the things I've done, and I've really been instrumental in really large scale projects and things that have really made a difference, some billions of dollars a loans for people that could and they couldn't get loans before. There's all sorts of areas I've worked that

have been really special to me and powerful. But sometimes it feels like I'm just making a lot of people money, and I haven't really gotten to the root of helping people the way I want. But that took me years, you know, to kind of go through this process, and eventually I got to Okay, Well, this city council position. You know, legislature can be really noisy. There's a lot of members, but in your city council, there's a small

group of members making big decisions. In Phoenix, you've got you know, a billion one point six billion dollar budget plus that are decided by eight people, plus an air that's your city, you know, that's police, fire, that's streets. This is what you see every day. And so I said, well that's something I could maybe get my handle on. You know, I've got a grip on that I can work with the people, with a small group of people and get some things done. I see it, you know,

I see a connection. I think I also saw that Phoenix isn't too far gone. You know, I think some cities are so old. I grew up in Buffalo, New York. It's so beer, it's so slow. I don't know if I can fix anything there, you know, but this is still a young city. We have good infrastructure. We did things right from the beginning, but we're just starting to slip. It's like everything's getting slower and more bureaucratic and more about politics and decisions, and every city does that. What

about if we're not that way? You know. So that's part of the reason that it I came here. But one of the course for me too was not only my kind of business. I think experience and knowing that I could solve big problems was growing up as a kid. Yeah, you know, I grew up. It was hard for me. I grew up. My mom was severely mentally ill. She's still institutionalized right now in our institutions. My whole life bipolar and manic depressive, very intelligent woman, very capable, but

this disease has really overtaken her. And my father very nice man, but severe alcoholic and always brought us really financial burden because of that, you know, power going out, a lot of government cheese. You know. I lost my sister in the mid eighties, my oldest sister. They're a terrible rape and murder that ended up being national news. The guy ended up going on the road and we had police protecting our home and it was really intense, and I really ran out of there as soon as

I could. I got on a motorcycle when I was eighteen. I ran for the West Coast because it was as far as I could go from all these memories and really started to pick myself up and work and get a job, get two jobs, get three jobs, and then start to just forget about that past. And I think, now I'm at a point in my life I've got some skills. Well, I don't want kids to go through what I went through, so maybe I can put those skills to work, you know, So sure.

of morals and values and things like this. I remember, I'm forty years old now, so I remember once upon a time that for the most part, everyone kind of was pointed at the same outcomes, hoping for the same outcomes. I just had different paths.

I just think it's broken. You know, they don't have to when I get down to it, Man, I got friends that are Republicans, Democrats on far sides. You just talk as people you find really, yeah, you want the same things. You want safety in schools, you want all these things we want, but we politicians continue to just rip us apart. It's just not right, and it's a main reason I'm driving at this and trying to make it more human, you know, telling my story. I have

a passion for fixing problems. I have a passion for people. That's why I'm here. I want I want. I hope that message picks up. You know, whatever happens with this, I hope somebody steals it, you know. And we kind of because I can't just sit back.

group of people. And you know, we ended up just talking just we ended up meeting just randomly on the street, and we took a liking to me and I you know, he's telling me about his story, I'm telling him about mine,

and again, we had a lot in common. So it was really interesting to see, you know, me this tattooed, you know, younger looking sort of individual who clearly doesn't come from the means that this man comes from just having a real right Yeah, and so you know, and I'm five eight, you know, on a good day, you know he were just different people. But you know, he

loves his children. You know I love my sons. We talked about that, schools, you know, things like this, and it wasn't even a political conversation, was a human conversation. You would have never he didn't lead with his politics, and or did I. We just were two people that met. I was familiar with him, and then as it turned out, he had heard of me from being on the radio for such a long time, as like, oh, I'm familiar and yeah, you know, so I'm glad you made that point.

So let's do this. I'll be honest, I'm newer to the political arena me too. In brief, well, you may know the answer to this better than I do. Yeah. In brief, let's describe what a city council person does.

for people to handle. But this is what's been going on and part of what I've and I've learned that through this process. You know, what's been really interesting is that people that are in the development space sometimes you know why they you know a lot of times, but they know that that's part of the problem, like they can't get projects done because of these frameworks that were set up a long time ago, and they want to they want to sell us, they want to make it affordable.

You know that's good business, sure, sure, but yeah.

They lack the frame of reference to personal experience or access to conversations to even.

any person on an individual level, it's human nature. I imagine any group of human beings that were.

It's kind of like absolute power corrupts absolutely, and so we have to they have to be given the breadth to change in the in the latitude, to you know, evolve.

I fear that a little bit because I'm wondering what's coming for me. If I get this opportunity, I'm going to be changing things. Yeah, maybe drastically. You know what does that mean? How are they? You know, it's it's not going to be easy to do that in a place where it's not used to changing, right. But I think for me, that's really my biggest asset is being

able to get into these problems. And it's funny when you see a big problem, what people think is causing it is usually wrong when you get into the facts, right, if you really spend the time, you can find out what's really causing it, and you can come back and actually address the problem. And we can talk about some problems I don't want to get too far off, maybe homeless or police and yeah, talk about yeah.

graduate means folks are saddled debt. And there's just kind of this whole backwards thing where if you look back, you know, thirty forty fifty years ago, it wasn't that way folks could really get out there and make something on themselves. And so yeah, let's talk about you know, let's you said homelessness, let's talk.

And you know, I can't speak for other cities, but I'm sure they're experiencing some of that same thing as well. La has always had it. San Francisco we alway knew there. Those have gotten worse. We didn't really have it. Now we got problem. The main problem with the homeless and how we're not really addressing it appropriately is one we're not owning the problem. So owning the problem is knowing how many homeless you have in your city, having accurate

in for data about how many homeless you have. Sure, right, the city isn't taking leadership role to say, okay, we're going to set up stations around the city, you know, the off food, water, whatever it may be. So we continually kind of collect this data, know how many people we have. If we don't know how many people who have, how do we solve the problem right? Right? So then once you have the data, you break it down really into three buckets that you're dealing with in the homeless situation.

Dealing with severely mental ill which is actually from all the experts I talk to, is a bulk of the problem. And the reason why that's the bulk of the problem is that ninety percent of our mentalist psychiatric hospitals have been closed in the last forty fifty years. We pushed them all on the street. Okay, this was a Reagan era policy, and that essentially is carried on. The Next thing we're dealing with is addiction. People on our stand aways.

in place. Right, I can expand sechre after hospitals, addiction facilities. I was at a woman's recovery faily a couple of years ago or a couple of weeks ago, excuse me, And there was a woman there that thirty years she was on off the street, I mean drug She came before a good home. Just things didn't work, you know, just spiral out of control on the streets, Heroin, you name it. Two years in this facility, she has a home, she has a job. We saved a life, and right

now we're spending money this city. I mean it's been documented forty or fifty thousand per homeless. I'm hearing expert saying eighty thousand per homeless. And that's because police, fire response, hospitals, all this stuff adds up. Man, that's two grand every time somebody shows up. You know, somebody said twenty grand I think when we're speaking, and that's just way off, right. So we're spending money. Let's put it towards a solution that works, right. And then so the third bucket is

that housing. We've got to get building housing. We're just not doing it right. It's too slow, it's too political, and those people and those people's problem are a little easier solve, you know, but we need those three buckets. We then need to provide the right solutions to then solve it and we can make a real debt. I'm not saying wipe it out completely, but man, we can hit them. You know, money is being spent.

so forth. So this is obviously something that we know very well and just glad that you have a plan for that. So we will definitely talk about that more on the second half of the show.