Michael Tubbs: The Deeper the Roots

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Higher Ground

Tv & Film, Film Interviews, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2021

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At age 26, Michael Tubbs became the youngest mayor of a major city in American history. He joins us this week around the release of his breathtaking new memoir, The Deeper the Roots.

Born and raised in Stockton, California, Michael offers the historical context of his city (9:42), the politics around his birth (11:15), his early experiences of homelessness (12:40), the day he met his father in prison (14:45), how he discovered just how ordinary lawmakers were (18:54), and the familial tragedy (23:30) that brought him back home to run for city council (28:00).

As the first Black mayor of Stockton, we discuss the misinformation that enshrouded his term in office (33:10), the city’s “culture of mediocrity” (39:33), the upcoming midterm elections (49:15), and his earliest encounter with President Obama (54:36). To close Michael reads one of his favorite poems by Tupac, The Rose That Grew From Concrete (58:46).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm Sam Forgo so
0:27.5	welcome to the show. Oh, Today I am joined by author and former mayor of Stockton California, Michael Tubs.
0:53.2	Back in 2016, at age 26, with an endorsement from President Obama,
0:59.2	Tubs became the youngest mayor of any major city in American history.
1:04.0	He was also Stockton's first black mayor.
1:06.9	The city saw a 40% drop in homicides in 2018 and 2019.
1:12.0	He brought in $20 dollars in nonprofit grants to fund a scholarship
1:16.3	program to increase the number local high school graduates who attend
1:20.2	college and he turned Stockton which has more than 300,000 people into the second most fiscally
1:26.8	healthy city in California.
1:29.9	Where he found national media attention, though, was as a champion for universal basic income.
1:35.6	In early 2019, Tubs created a pilot program for UBI, which gave 125 stocked in residence $500 a month on a prepaid debit card.
1:46.2	No strings attached.
1:47.8	As NPR reports, a study of the period from February 2019 to February 2020 determined that full-time employment
1:56.4	rose among those who received the guaranteed income and that their
2:00.4	financial, physical, and emotional health improved.
2:04.3	The issues of poverty and job security are personal ones to Tubs, who grew up in Stockton
2:10.3	in the 90s.
2:11.7	At times facing homelessness homelessness his mother worked several jobs to make
2:15.9	ends meet while his father was sentenced to life in prison. Tubs describes his
2:20.8	checkered childhood in his new book The Deeper the Roots, a memoir of Hope and Home.
2:26.7	The book is also of triumph and tragedy, record-breaking highs and back-breaking lows.
	...

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