Executive Director's Column

April is the month in poetry and literature that is about life, green trees, grass and buds flourishing, starting anew after long dark cold winters.

Green too, is the word we use for Earth Day/week and the “green” things we do to protect our environment and our globe, not just this one week, but every week.

April, in recent years, brings the color red. Red for the blood of our men, women, and –yes– innocent children that comes out of their bodies as they are shot by automatic AK47 and other weapons. Violence in America seems to raise its ugly head of death even higher in April.

It was on April 4th 1968 that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot in Memphis. Five days later on April 9th we walked behind the mule drawn casket all the way from Ebenezer Church to Morehouse College where Dr. Benjamin Mays said those beautiful words. I sat under a tree with Marlon Brando and Nina Simone.

It was the pretty month of April 1993 when the 80 people, 21 of them children, were massacred in Waco, Texas.

It was April 19th 1995, people were killed after a truck, parked outside the Murray Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City containing 5,000 pounds of fertilizer, ammonium nitrate, was ignited with a fuse. The driver locked the keys inside, lit the fuse and walked away and started to jog. At 9:02 am the entire north face of the building was reduced to dust and rubble. People were there ready to work; children had been dropped off at the day care center. 168 people were killed on the beautiful April day, including 19 beautiful and innocent children.

It was on April 20th 1999, a beautiful day in Colorado, that two students with high-powered firearms embarked on a massacre mission at Columbine High School and killed 12 students, one teacher and significantly wounded 23 others before committing suicide. Following this tragic event on that beautiful day, only the fourth deadliest school massacre in the USA, there was indeed, at least, national conversation. Denver Mayor Wellington Webb was our President; he asked Charlton Heston, the great actor turned gun fanatic, not to come to the National Rifle Association (NRA) meeting in Denver where Heston would raise his rifle over his head. We designed a portable “Wall of Death” like the Vietnam Wall depicting names of victims in 100 cities that were killed by gun violence in America during the year after Columbine. It got attention. It was displayed on the Washington Mall, the Denver City-County Building and at the Stapleton Convention Center in Los Angeles. It all started on an April day in Littleton, Colorado. The conversation lasted for a few months. They even developed and marketed a deadly video game which delves into the beautiful morning of April 20, 1999 and asks for players to relive that day through the eyes of Eric and Dylan the kids that used the deadly weapons, kept in the bedrooms of their homes, as they came to and fro attired in long black coats, and then used the weapons to kill those beautiful children on that beautiful April day in Rocky Mountain high blue sky Colorado in 1999.

It was on another day in April, on the 16th in 2007, at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia that the deadliest single gunman peacetime shooting occurred anywhere in our history. The killer had had some mental challenges before he hit the Hokie campus; he was treated for severe anxiety disorder in middle school, received therapy through high school. While in college he was accused of stalking two women students and was declared mentally ill by a Virginia Special Justice. But with his mental issues he purchased a 22 caliber automatic handgun and a 9mm semi automatic Glock 19 handgun. Hundreds of rounds were fired; hundreds of live rounds were found. Thirty-two people were killed that day; many others were wounded and the killer also killed himself. That was April just two years ago.

The violent springtime blood of 2009 started a little early this year. Even before the beautiful month of April, ten innocent people in a church worshiping God and a preacher were killed in Samson, Alabama on March 10. Four police officers were killed in Oakland, eight nursing home residents were shot to death in Carthage, North Carolina, five family members were killed in Santa Clara, California. On April 3, thirteen people teaching and learning to be American citizens were killed in Binghamton, New York. In Graham, Washington five children were killed on April 4, and on the same day of April 4, three police officers were killed in Pittsburgh. And in Miami over the last few weeks twelve members of three families were killed.

This past week in Frederick, a Maryland father shot his wife, his three children, ages five, four, and two. The father, using a small caliber gun, shot the older children, ages five and four, multiple times in their heads; the youngest, age two, received only one shot to the head. After the father shot and killed the children, the Sheriff said the father nearly decapitated the children, cutting their heads almost off with a kitchen knife and pruning saw. Then the father killed himself with a shotgun.

We have a few more days left in April. There will be more. These killings haven’t received the media attention that was given to previous Aprils. There’s a silence about it in 2009. Conference President Miami Mayor Manny Diaz has issued a strong statement urging congress and the White House to act. They could begin by banning the sale of AK47 automatic weapons. Police Chiefs and border patrolmen will tell you that the open sale of these weapons provokes more killing and violence.

The “elephant” in the room is the NRA, the National Rifle Association. You have to admire Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. This past weekend he hit the tv talk shows calling for a number of actions from Congress that would help save lives and prevent violence.

It is interesting how contaminated peanut butter gets so much media attention. Two people woke up in California and had stomach cramps and the salmonella scare kept contaminated peanut butter on the radar news screen for months. Paul Helmke, President and CEO of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, former Ft. Wayne Mayor, and former USCM President talks about the news coverage the peanut butter scare has received as compared to the death by guns this spring. Then after the peanut butter scare we read about contaminated pistachio nuts and the dangerous threat contaminated pistachios pose to the lives of Americans.

Mass murders continue this April. The death by guns and violence continues. You have to wonder what it will take to get, at least, some movement on this issue. Maybe it will be more deaths. Aprils are tough for America. Nothing has changed. We had hoped for a little more from Congress, The White House, The Justice Department and the media. Mayors and Police Chiefs speak out, funerals and tributes where flags are folded and given to widows and widowers of police officers and multiple caskets of innocent men, women and children are on display. We see them, we count them, wondering when it will stop. While there is the strange silence, the red blood of America flows due to devastation of death and violence in this April of 2009. There are some common sense gun safety things we can do. But right now even though violence came a little earlier this Spring, and the deaths come stronger than ever, in so many places, Washington is asleep. Washington is deaf to the gunshots. Washington is in denial of the deaths that will continue to come when today so many guns, illegal or legal, are in the hands of youths, the mentally ill, and criminals in America.

Happy Earth Day 2009!

Executive Director's Column

This week mayors met with Education Secretary Arne Duncan. He is a different kind of Education Secretary. He is refreshing in the way he is so fiercely honest about his feelings about mayors being in control of their public schools.

He is very much aware of the challenges some mayors face with a challenged school boards, drop'out rates, demands from unions and state bureaucracies.

He is offering to come out in our cities to help mayors involve their governors to help them with the billions of stimulus dollars that have been sent out to the states for education purposes. During the discussions with him, the mayors’ questions are raised, questions about the new “Race To The Top” initiative. Mayors are learning that there may be no funds from this stimulus program that goes directly to cities or school districts. Secretary Duncan reassures them that applications from states that do not include funding and inclusion of city schools will be rejected. He also offers some hope when the word waiver is mentioned.

In the private meeting, Secretary Duncan wants to know how he can help the mayors. He recalls that former Department of Education calls to his office in Chicago were usually not to assist, but to discuss audits etc. You leave the closed meeting believing that this guy is hell bent to reform the public schools of America. He believes in mayors and is convinced we can do USA school reform with mayors in control.

He comes from the Daley School. We remember like yesterday when Chicago Mayor Daley called me, and all the mayors, to want time at our national meetings to discuss school reform and to promote more mayoral involvement. Mayor Daley was our “biblical” Moses on this issue in that he led the way and nothing would stop him from working night and day to get to the promised land of school reform in the great city, Chicago.

At that time the Chicago public schools were in shambles, the state legislature turned the schools over to Mayor Daley – getting rid of what they thought to be a hot potato. They passed it on over from Springfield and served it up to Chicago. And that’s exactly what Mayor Daley wanted. It was through his sheer determination and laser vision that the Chicago schools were transformed into the example they are today.

After our private meeting this week where Secretary Duncan was quite honest about his position, he spoke openly on the subject in our U.S. Conference of Mayors National Education Forum. With national press attending, he was just as fierce. He reminded me so much of Mayor Daley himself as he spoke on the necessity for mayors to wade in and provide courage and leadership for school reform.

Secretary Duncan is refreshing in this town of Washington. So many are careful about what they say about this or that. It is rare that a Secretary will put his whole career on the line because he knows and believes that true school reform will not happen unless mayors get out there to lead the way in their cities. As Mayor Daley put his political life on the line for school reform, so is Secretary Duncan. And you want him to get it done nationally as Mayor Daley did in Chicago. Secretary Duncan is giving the mayors the commitment that he will be there for them as he encourages them to have political will, political courage, and political leadership on school reform to produce American high school graduates who will be equipped to compete with others across the globe.

This week with Secretary Duncan, we begin a new day, a new year for school reform. He came to us. He is saying to us, “You must do this. I want to help you.” Public schools now move higher on our priority list as we all have something to win because when its all said and done, its about the children, the students who will become the men and women who will make our country what it is to be.

Mayors need to understand that because of the Secretary’s position, the mayors now have a reason to call their school boards and to work together with them to get new money for school reform in their cities from the states. Duncan says he is not approving state plans without innovative city initiatives. We thank Secretary Duncan for his blatant honesty and his determination. We thank him for committing himself as mayors move forward to follow this man who has done it in Chicago – for Chicago’s kids, and now wants to do it in America – for America’s kids.

Energy Block Grants

The Department of Energy announced the city allocations for our new Energy Block Grants and mayors are most pleased with these allocations. We must remember they would not have this money had it not been for the leadership and tenacity of the mayors and staff of The United States Conference of Mayors.

Yesterday, I did a live webcast with Mr. Gil Sperling of the Energy Department. Hundreds of questions came in from all over the nation and Mr. Sperling did an excellent job of answering the many questions that were asked.

We appreciate the new relationship we have with the Department of Energy and we pledge to continue to work with them in a trusting relationship to give us the flexibility we need to develop our Energy Block Grants to truly meet local needs.

USMAYORS.org – Your home in the sky!

Please watch our website, usmayors.org to get updates and the very latest on our new Energy Block grants as well as all of the very latest information on the many streams of funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). If you have any questions or if I can be of assistance to you, please let me know. Again, thanks for your personal contributions and leadership in making the needed energy block grants that must be continued when ARRA expires. We will spend the money wisely. We will have best practices with measurable and positive results. And we will be successful to continue those block grants to meet the goals of our Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement, now signed by 935 mayors.