• Talk in detail about the group projects

 Overlap from the last class discussion:

• The last lecture focused on racial succession, the rise of minority mayors, and the dynamics of bi-racial coalition formation.  We talked about the following topics in detail:
• Immigration, internal migration, and the “delicate task of urban governance” (Judd and Swanstrom, pp. 400-432).
• How city governments handle this delicate task of governance
• Racial and ethnic struggles in American cities have given rise to three (3) major movements:
• The Urban Liberalism movement
• The Urban Populism movement
• The Urban Conservatism movement
• We also talked about some of the political strategies employed by Urban Liberals, Urban Populists, and Urban Conservatives.

• Today’s lecture goes into more detail about the rise in minority mayors in American cities.  We will address the following questions:
• Why did Black political strategies move from protest to (electoral) politics in the decade of the 1970’s and beyond?
• What has been gained and what has been lost in this transition for the Black community in the areas of public leadership, civic capacity, political consciousness, institutional development, and the delivery of effective policy benefits?

• Systematic exclusion from formal mechanisms of participation
• Led Blacks to engage in insurgency
• Dominant theme: racial group uplift, positive social change, and political incorporation

• Black social movements and national political developments: Raised Blacks’ political consciousness and increased opportunities for participation
• CRA 1964, 1968; VRA 1965; War on Poverty Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Urban Populist Movement all contributed to the Black’s transition from protest to politics.

• Electoral politics: arena for institutionalizing Black protest
• Emergence of belief that groups could promote their interests via electoral politics

• “New Black Politics”: effort to organize Black political interests around the power of the vote
• Assumed that increased descriptive representation would also increase substantive representation
• Goal of electoral politics: Put minorities at the center of the decision-making process and institutionalize Black power
• Once this incorporation is achieved: can also influence the private sector and create new opportunities

• Impact was most profound in urban centers with heavy concentrations of minorities i.e. Philly, Gary, New Orleans, Chicago
• Early Black mayoral candidates used this philosophy to mobilize the Black electorate and get into office
• Thought mayoralties would give minorities direct power
• Championed community empowerment
• Reflected an increased racial and political consciousness among Blacks
• Increased Black candidates and voters
• Successes of Black mayors
• Began to change the character of urban governance: secured money from federal government
• Increased money going to Black companies and contractors
• Increased the number of minorities in higher level/administrative positions
• DC: moved closer to home rule
• Increased major representation for minority interests

Losses:

• Transformation in ideology and strategy of Black politics
• Deracialization (1989): Agenda-Setting and Electoral
• Demobilization of Black electorate
• Less focus on Black interests
• Less focus on community advancement
• Growing intragroup cleavages
• New Black Politics Framework: marked by convergence of interests of growing professional-managerial stratum in Black community with those of pro-growth Whites
• Stifled true Black empowerment
• Relegated Blacks to junior partners in White-dominated coalitions
• Suppressed grassroots efforts to gain power and control
• New Black political class: void of activist politics
• Individual Ambition
• Co-optation
• Constraints on mayoral capacities

 KEY POINTS:

• As Blacks moved into electoral politics: lost the radicalism and insurgent vigor necessary to sustain demands against the system
• Black political participation mainly occurs during election time
• Those Blacks who have been successful at the electoral game become responsible for “policing” the community on behalf of White benefactors
• Critical shift in Black politics from critical left to passivity.

 Minority mayors and the dilemmas of Rainbow Politics:

• Blacks were not the only minority group paying more attention to the vote.  Asians, Latinos were experiencing electoral shifts of their own.
• Most minority mayors were elected in cities with diverse racial and ethnic populations
• To be effective, mayors in such cities have to find ways to ease racial/ethnic tension and (when necessary) building working coalitions between these groups.  We talked in the last class about this “delicate task of urban governance”.
• The most popular tactic adopted by minority mayors (especially Black mayors) for dealing with this challenge is to become a conservative fiscal manager.
• Many mayors focused on controlling the budget (keeping taxes low)
• Dr. Nelson argues that many cities have opted for growth politics,
• There is a systemic nature to business and corporate interests—they tend to stay organized.
• Urban growth strategy promotes business interests, which in turn, they argue, promotes interests of the entire community—this drives public policy.
• This puts minority mayors in a fragile position.
• Oftentimes, minority mayors must pursue of pursuing growth strategies at the expense of minority agendas.
• These conditions have led to establishment of deracialized agendas that require compromise in order to hold delicate coalitions together.
• Much scholarship is directed at assessing the behavior of Black mayors in this predicament
• Judd and Swanstrom touch upon several of these issues in City Politics: Private Power and Public Policy (1998).
• Historical:  How the reform movement brought down machines (Chap. 4)
• The rise of suburban interests (Chaps. 6 and 10)
• The rise of sunbelt cities (Chap. 9)
• [Contemporary]:  (Chap. 8) The rise and fall of national urban policy from Kennedy to Clinton.
• (Chap. 11): Fiscal Crisis and Problems of Governance

• In Left Coast City, Richard DeLeon argues that several factors stand in the way of San Francisco realizing its growth potential.  Most of these factors are based on problems for mobilization:
• Low resource base = There are huge income, family structure, and living arrangement differences between Whites and minorities and among minorities themselves
• Weak informational networks = Because of the great diversity of SF politics, it is difficult for citizens to become politically informed because there is so much to learn about and (oftentimes) there are few places to find this information.  Note: political sophistication is related to efficacy (the less competent you feel about the political workings of your city, the less likely you are to be politically active).
• Inconsistently mobilized groups = DeLeon talks about SF having a “politics of everything”I = Many San Franciscans (most of them non-White) are poor and unemployed because they lack the skills to make them qualified workers.  Being outside the “training networks” for jobs also means that minorities are outside the “recruitment networks” for political involvement—no one asks them to get involved.
• Poor leadership and weak organization = This might be due to the fact that SF’s progressive coalition was composed of “3 Lefts”:
• Minority and working-class liberals
• White, middle-class environmentalists
• Neighborhood populists
• While it may be possible to mobilize each of these groups into an electoral coalition, it is difficult to satisfy each of these groups as your governing coalition. (i.e. mayor Agnos lost the election in 1991 because his large-scale city development projects were not supported by environmentalists and neighborhood populists).
• A low sense of political efficacy = Disparities in poverty and housing quality can lead to an overall lack of trust in the political system (which can lead to decreases electoral participation).
• Weak history of success = To be successful, coalitions have to have a combination of group self-interests shared ideologies.  This is the glue that holds coalitions together (Soneshein 1993).  Both factors have been consistently lacking in SF politics.
• Individual rather than collective goals = The liberal tradition of SF contributes to this “plurality of individual interests” mentality.  This tradition impedes collective action.

• DeLeon’s argument: the “slow growth” in SF is a function of their inability to form successful coalitions.  In other words, “slow growth = f(SF's anti-regime).
• What caused this slow growth in the first place?
• The SF slow growth movement was a response to the pro-growth movement in the 1960s:
• Pro-growth movement sought to “ Manhattanize” SF’s downtown center and transform the city into a Pacific Rim trading and financial center
• Mayor Agnos (mid 1980s) was able to pass strict development controls
• Fixing the anti-regime nature of SF politics: What are solutions to above?
• Mobilization, education, radical political ideology, political organization, political recruitment, obstruction of individual projects, etc.

• In San Francisco (Left Coast City) community groups have been able to slow and even reverse growth in San Francisco.  In S.F. they have established effective alliances—moderates and radicals, moderate and liberal mayors.  They have established “linkage politics” where corporations agree to invest in the city and communities for the privilege of doing business there.