Transcripts For CSPAN2 Rahm Emanuel The Nation City 20240713

CSPAN2 Rahm Emanuel The Nation City July 13, 2024

Good evening. Happy wednesday. How is everyone feeling . Great. Happy friday. Just making sure you guys are paying attention. Welcome. My name is megan, new executive director of chicago ideas and having been born and raised in this amazing city and now raising my own family just down the street in the south loop i feel incredibly proud to call myself a true blue chicagoan. Anyone else feel that way . [applause] it makes me even prouder to now be a part of this fantastic city team who works each and every day to challenge our city in the world beyond to share ideas and inspire action and ignite change. Chicago ideas is all about deep curiosity and pursuing connectivity so in that spirit, who does not love a good friday night a speaker, id like you to take a moment to turn to the person you dont know and introduce yourself and share why youre here tonight and share what you are most trusted source of political news might be. It might be a little bit of an oxymoron so i will give you 60 seconds. [background noises] all right, it will be chuffed for me to get this room back. If i can, everyone, if i can get everybody to i love that you are all getting to know each other. Plenty of time after the program is over. This will also be good time, as i mentioned connectivity, i dont necessarily mean the cell phone variety so this will be a great time for me to ask everybody to please take a quick check of your cell phones and make sure they are silent. While you are doing that i would like to mention that chicago ideas would not be possible without the support of our fantastic members and we like to take a moment to recognize and thank all our members in the audience tonight, can you raise your hand forgive your wave, members, amazing. Thank you. Those of you who are not members may be thinking to yourself why am i not a member and what does that look like . Do i get from my membership . Im glad you asked for our members enjoy yearround benefits like complementary tickets, ticketing presales and member only experiences throughout the city. In fact, we have an event coming up in april that the members who enjoy the presale benefit might be really interested in hearing about and molly cant go into really specific details because the announcement is on wednesday i can tell you we have a 15 time grammy Award Winning performer who has written a book and who plays the piano as a hobby, you might say the girl is on fire. [laughter] maybe. That is about as far as i can go but the Member Benefits will make that presale opportunity something really spectacular and that is in april so we have great stuff coming up so consider the membership. You learn more about becoming a member if you go to our website at chicago ideas. Com and now onto the main program for tonights conversation is going to be one that you will not soon forget and one that will keep you thinking for a long time. So, if you hear something that resonates with you during the brand we encourage you to share your thoughts with your Digital Community using our chicago ideas. Id like to thank our partners at cbre for making tonight possible. I like to welcome to the stage the vice chairman of cbre, brad [applause] how we doing tonight . It is friday night and we are doing great. Alright, i love the energy. Megan mentioned my name is brad surratt and on behalf of i want to thank you all for being here. I like to recognize megan and lets give them a round of applause for putting on tonights event. [applause] i cannot tell you how excited i am to be here tonight kicking off the tenth anniversary of chicago ideas. In over the past decade its been see the the chicago ideas had in our onl over the country and even the globe. They brought us words of politicians interviewers, philosophers and the list goes on and all of them challenging us to think a little different. Tonight is no difference. Tonight we are joined by two chicago leaders who will discuss the roles of cities and the mayors who lead them that will continue to be the engine for change in our country and the world and its my honor to deduce melody hopson and mayor rahm emanuel. [applause] this will be fun. We have so much to cover. Bahrain the bahrain the i feel fine. Looks like the medication kicked in. I want to start with you have a new book obviously and i want to talk about it so i want to talk about how the book opens which is the beginning is about family and it is about your grandparents and their parents and it is it pulls you in because their story is so compelling. Its the story of immigrants and they came to america at a young age from Eastern Europe and you said there were these photos in your relatives houses that were in black and white and they conveyed messages to you. It doe message they conveyed is that we sacrificed and struggled and left by the family that we never saw again. That sacrifice will not be dismissed. You will work hard to get an education and you will make something of yourself. Its one thing to say that visually but how does that form and shape you, not in theory, but in practice . First of all, i know theres nothing subtle in a jewish home. Down in the tv room or the family room in our house was grandmas purse, grandma sophie, mothers side, her purse and her passport and her two sisters and all three of them i think are a whopping 4. 7 on the richter, they are 47, 48 but their passports and on either side across the wall are the blackandwhite photos of relatives that never made it to america and whether it was the holocaust for them or my uncle in palestine they never made it. That was the subtlety and the message basically that its a very haunting image and its a reminder of our responsibility. That was a very important part of our life and the part that which is true about our relatives is about grandpa is my mothers father [inaudible] if you look here i got cheated on the dna pool but he has 64, 300 pounds, Eastern European and steelworker, truck driver, amateur boxer. I do not have any of that dna. I got all the stuff that went to israel and i did not get any of the Eastern European side. [laughter] he meets my grandmother on the west side in douglas park at a dance that if you know the history of chicago in the Jewish Committee all the Jewish Community that is non german was on the west side while the german jews were on the south shore and that is just while we had come in the club and German Jewish and everyone else. They happen to grow up in although via. They did not know. And theyre arguing about politics, the reason he was called big bangor was because he banged on the table when he wanted to be heard. That was his voice. What this piece about you would make something of yourself because when you look at you and your two brothers,. See mickey got the famous doctor youve got the famous agent. I would not recommend his bedside manner to anybody. [laughter] i dont want to get too close because my dad just died and i all get my parents to their credit raised us with a sense we had a responsibility to do something with our lives. And you cannot just pass through. Were they saying this you . Two yes there is nothing, it was not implicit it was explicit. I was a total slacker because when you walked into our house, you walked in about your distance is the refrigerator side and what is on that . When everybody comes in our house, right there. Your report card. [laughter] and it stayed up until the next report card comes. That one comes down, the other goes out. You could see zeke aaa, and then there was my report card. [laughter] and that was it. My parents, the did dinner tables and the necessity, you participated in sports but you had to be on for sabbath dinner friday night 6 00 oclock. We had guests, family members who lived with us and i was going to get to grandpa and a second on that. And dinner we discovered u. S. C biting at my dinner table. You couldnt sit and listen had to participate. Grandpa wendy lived with us and grandma, he retires, he once graham was very sick and even though hes lived his whole life in chicago, he wants to die in israel. Its his dream. And so he had to wait to get his papers so hes living with us and grandma for two years, theres a funny story about that. He would get up every morning for 30 make us breakfast, box our underwear, slippers high top socks. He would read the paper had a fourth grade education and then he would just hit you and that was his way of saying i love you. [laughter] and he would yell at you, it does weird thing, the hitting and the yelling was an expression of affection. What i dont understand is this is a big missing piece. So i guess the chaos, i get so as discovered by Blue Cross Blue Shield . [laughter] i get the grandfather, the shorts, you paint a very vivid visual. But then you say it would surprise us all that you were a quiet. Believably quiet. A quiet sensitive child summary observing this melee going along . I cant believe that. Im not making it up i was a very, very child quiet. Select what up until when . So in fact they took me for testing because i was not talking for a long time. I was just a very, very quiet child. Now i wont shut up and im making up for. But my biggest the change in my life occurs later when im 17. Say lose the finger, so i lost my finger, or half of it. It gets you special parking. I lost my finger, i did not go to hospital. I had gangrene, to bone infections five blood infections. Sows in your arms as a chanter to lose a customer so the nurse saved my life. I was in the hospital for seven weeks, i lost three roommates who all died. Its not like the clouds opened, the sun comes through beethovens ninth starts playing. But you do, in those seven weeks, i walk out about 20 pounds lighter but im a changed person. And everybody, mainly zeke and my mom and i would say on a changed person. So suit team out fighting customer so i did came out determined to make every day counts. And that i was going to do something with my life. So so that might your voice was louder than i have been . [laughter] i actually think i wanted to find a purpose for my life. And originally, i was going to do ballet, i thought about child psychology Early Childhood education, and it worked on a campaign and i said this is what i want to do in life. So so lets jump to politics. Its 1980, your political director of democratic king rational Campaign Committee you join the clinton campaign, we know, the rest is history a lot happens. [laughter] i love you melody i love you melody. Origin get the shoes melody. [laughter] i cant believe it. Its so scary. Wheres george . Okay stop stop. You get yelled at for eight years straight, you can imitate a pretty good. [laughter] what did you learn from them . Like i could do get your backpack i could be here for eight days. Bill clinton is one of the most incredible talents, and he had a capacity like i have never seen, to look at something and drill politics policy, communication, i will give you a funny story. He is sitting across, youre in the cabinet room. The president s back is to the window part of the cabinet room. The chinese premiers they are, the chinese premier has all of his leaders we have our cabinet there. And, theyre trying to work something out, if you know anything with the chinese and the ministers, they read, you respond, they respond to you, everything is literally typed out for the entire hour. There is literally zero creativity, zero flash. They are having a trouble he does not know, the chinese for warehouse can handle something. And clinton goes a living tell you how to do this. [laughter] and he sits there and walks the chinese premier through how to handle selling this back in china and heres the politics and here you how to have in the lit data data. And the premier everything is literally choreographed out, there is no free moments starts laughing hysterical. He says listen, near down this president thank i need you to come into advisor to me. [laughter] clinton had a capacity to walk through anybody elses shoes politically, understand their difficulty, think about their policy and think about how to persuade them. If he was gifted and talented beyond that, what did you take away from that that you could apply to make you better . Up until him i was always doing politics. Bill clinton had something that is totally and i think its relative to the book and relative to this. Bill clinton always said the biggest thing that is always underappreciated and politics is ideas. And that if you understood ideas, you could make politics. And i take away this, i used to say this always to my kids. And this is true about everybody but its very true for mayors, governors, president s, chief executives. Yes be idealistic enough to know to do what youre doing and ruthless enough to get it done. [applause] i added the ruthless part. [laughter] if you go back and think about great president s, so that you write about. Talk mike kennedy, lincoln, ragan, roosevelt et cetera. Lincoln does not start as an abolitionist, they think hes too moderate, hes always compromising, he always know how far he could get ahead, but not outrun public opinion. And he is counseling during the politics at the end of the day he knew slavery was wrong. He doesnt deal at the emancipation proclamation and teed into. Any weights and holds it for four months because there isnt a battle ninos as if he announces it beforehand is can be seen as a loser is ending slavery is a win to win the bore. You have to know what youre doing why youre doing it and you have to be tough enough to see it all the way through. And clinton, and i think all chief executives are capable, but clinton taught me to it have a northstar, and i then immerse myself in policy from him. Which is why this book, and the other book i wrote her all about policy, that you have to have ideas to really illuminate what youre going to do. And then you have to be really tough enough to see those ideas all the way through. There are things i talk about us we go on about chicago that were those very influential kind of mentor he was for me but that concept. So its interesting because i would say its interesting that you say as a mayor you actually have to have ideas. You have to get things done. There is nowhere to hide. People are there so they will come to your home and find you. [laughter] and i did right . So you think the future of society, right now, around the world is with mayors in the city. Explain the premise for everyone. Of how important mayors are. So the basic premise of the book is why iran, but also i believed my whole career until this moment is about president clinton, congress and president bomb and the National Government. When the mayor opens i want to grow up in chicago, the mayor is the office. And i was on one trajectory in congress so i wanted to come home and run for mayor i thought is the time to do something. Did they think that was odd . David rubenstein called me and begged me not to leave. One of the most powerful positions in government have this unbelievable platform why would you become mayor and david is very mild in the city. I said david, mayor of chicago you dont get it that you dont understand and there is a premonition that there is a shift so one third of the book is about the center of gravity of our politics is moving out of washington out of london, to local. Because of dysfunction . Part of it is dysfunction all of the weaknesses you see are federal. Dysfunction, disinterest. Match up against all of the strength you see local. Intimate, immediate, and impactful. And we have been here before. What is interesting about this moment is not only things returning locally but then local government is now taking up more and more real estate that only use before the federal. So local governments are leading the charge on climate change. Local governments are leading the charge on immigration and when i say its not just talking about it from a welcoming city to our libraries having immigration to deal citizenship local governments are taking on the leadership on growth and inequality. I will give you one example, on research, which always used to be the federal government, mike bloomberg, read about this comes up with this brilliant idea of putting Cornell University on roosevelt and ten years later, new york is now rivaling the west coast on text starts. We are now doing it with the discovery center. Research centers they come with the Research Center by local government, has always existed and played its important role, it is taking on more and more things as the federal government steps back. Is that good or bad . I would like to answer your first third question and then ill get to that one. [laughter] ill say one quick thing. Third of it is Political Science third of its political politics and a third of it, the famous Winston Churchill when he lost his election right after the war right towards the end they say howdy think history will treat you and he says very well i says ask him how do you know and he said i plan on writing it. Thats a third of that book. So thats what it is. So two things i would say is it good or bad . It is both. Its both simultaneously. So when you think about where you work, where you live, where you play, what schools your kids go to, how to get from home to school your communities, all of that is your local government. None of it comes from the National Government. The National Government is disneyland on the potomac right now. It is not part of your life. Thank you. Thats number one. Number two is, i have been to thousands of conferences about high school is no longer enough, captive two years. So we came up, and i see a number of the staff of cabinet members here, we came up with the chicago star scholarship. To get a b average and high school, college is free. [applause] first city to do it. Thousand kids of done it. Boston, denver, louisville, san francisco, oakland just to name a few and theres other cities replicating it. Now we have 8000 kids in growing in chicago who have already used it and going on. Do you think betsy devos was called . [laughter] you think betsy devos. Chicago, forget all the mayors and their seven governors doing it. Come out to washington on here about it. Now i think thats horrible. I am not saying that Free Community college is the most important education policy, but my mother think its in the top three done in the United States of america. If you do think three quarters post high school. And seven cities in the United States has started something that is equivalent to this era, with a

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