Jumaane Williams

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Welcome to The Ticket.

I'm Isaac Dover.

Protests continue around the country over police violence.

It's been incredible to see how quickly the politics around the issue has changed.

Only a few weeks ago, few people had even heard the phrase defund the police.

Now it's a slogan animating politics.

So today I wanted to talk to someone who's been working working on these issues for years.

A progressive politician who's worked to remake the system, gotten actual results, and thinks this is actually a unique moment for broader change.

Jumani Williams is the public advocate for New York City, the second highest elected post in America's largest city.

He was a tenant advocate and activist who rose through New York politics as a vocal critic of the city's stop-and-frisk policing.

He spent a decade representing part of Brooklyn on the city council, and as a council member in 2013, co-sponsored the Community Community Safety Act, which established an inspector general to oversee the New York Police Department and create an enforceable ban against bias-based profiling.

The bill was passed over the veto of then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

Weeks later, a federal judge ruled stop and frisk unconstitutional, dealing a final blow to the program.

Now Williams holds the second biggest job in New York City government.

You may not have heard of the public advocate before, but it's often a stepping stone to bigger things.

His two predecessors are Letitia James, now the state's attorney general, and before her, Bill de Blasio, the current mayor.

I should also note, the job doesn't put Williams in the de Blasio administration.

In fact, he's been a very public critic of the mayor.

The public advocate is essentially the people's representative running the city council, and he's not been shy about using that role in his own way.

He's been out in protests, marching with New Yorkers, often negotiating with police to give them more time and space to be heard.

I wanted to talk with him because a lot of cities and states around the country have taken a new look at police reforms, and he's actually gotten reforms done and hopes to see even more.

So we called this podcast the ticket in part because it was meant to be me

going around the country seeing politics as it was playing out in this election year.

Obviously that was all pre-pandemic when political reporters were traveling, when candidates were traveling and that's all pretty much shut down.

At least it had.

When Williams and I spoke, I was on my way back from attending the first presidential campaign event that I've been to in three months, a small event that Joe Biden did in West Philadelphia.

Williams was also in transit.

He was just arriving back in New York from testifying before the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington.

And just an audio note: because of all that, his Zoom had some trouble early on, so you'll hear his end of the call switch then to phone audio.

Here's our conversation:

Jumani Williams, thanks for being here on the ticket.

Oh, thanks for having me.

So you refer to yourself as an activist elected official.

Can you explain what that means?

Absolutely.

I very intentionally didn't want to drop my activist title.

I was told very often that I was too much of an activist, that I had to change when I got into the council.

I had to be different.

And I always said the best elected officials are activists.

You have been arrested in protests.

You went to trial.

That is not the usual thing that we get out of politicians, which I guess is your point.

So, I believe in using every tool in the toolbox.

I've always been a believer, kingly and nonviolence.

I believe that civil disobedience is a tool that is necessary at times.

I believe I have a certain privilege.

I'm a cisgendered straight male.

I'm an elected official.

And I believe the more privilege you have, you have a responsibility to try to protect folks.

And I use every tool.

I went to trial for trying to prevent Robbie Ragbear from being kidnapped by ICE and sent him home.

Subsequently, thankfully, what we did helped him stay in this country.

But I really believe that that was worthy to go to trial for.

Did you worry about putting yourself into the justice system at that point?

Like, that's a choice that you got yourself involved in that way.

My thing is always, particularly in time like this, that if you're still comfortable, you're not doing enough.

And we have to...

make ourselves uncomfortable in a time like this.

And

it seemed like I can't keep saying that to people and not doing my stuff.

And that definitely seemed like a case where you need to push.

Because,

you know, God forbid if my family was ever in that situation, I'd want someone to help them.

You've been an elected official for over 10 years now.

These encounters with the police and with the justice system have been essentially on purpose.

You've gone to these protests, you've done these things, you've put yourself into this.

Did you have experiences with the police beforehand, living as a black man in New York City?

Oh, yes.

I want to say I've been black for a pretty long time.

I came to my own in New York City, you know, under the Giuliani era.

So I had a lot of interactions.

What people often do is confuse and conflate frequency with normalcy.

So, you know, like anyone, most of my interactions have been positive.

But it's also normal that if you're black and brown, you will have a lot of ones that are not.

So I've had quite a few that were not.

I have been arrested three just for nothing.

I believe one was for block and free movement while I was waiting on the train.

I've had a number of experiences like that growing up in the city.

And so when you know it's what a surprise is

always frustrating, but not a surprise.

Right, but it shapes your worldview.

Because you've got it that's always there in your head somewhere that this could happen or that you've got to make sure to do this instead of that so that it doesn't happen, right?

Oh, yes.

I think what people forget is, you know, well, one, you never know what someone's journey has been in life, what somebody's journey has been to get them to where they are right now.

And sometimes people forget about the journey if you are black in this country.

There are things that you have to do that many people don't.

Like

just trying to make sure you get out of the traffic step, like having people cross their purse when you walk by, like being followed in the store.

And you have to adapt psychologically so that you can just keep going.

Yeah.

You know, as you say it, I'm thinking about obviously my own experiences with this.

And when I was covering the presidential campaign in New Hampshire, I was driving at one o'clock in the morning outside of Manchester, going back to my hotel.

And I was going a little bit over the speed limit.

I got pulled over.

And I asked the cop to

let me off

because I was like, come on,

I was a little bit over the speed limit.

It's late.

I'm just trying to get to my hotel.

And the comfort that I felt, even proposing that to the police officer, who, by the way, did not let me off at all and I had to pay the ticket.

But still,

as

with my experiences with the police,

it didn't occur to me to be in that moment anything other than sort of plaintive with the officer.

So, and I think, you know, many folks, I mean, I've had officers, you can have a conversation and they try to cut you a break.

And so I think those conversations are normal.

I think the primary difference would have been in what you described, the fear that I probably would have had being late at night on the highway and no one's around.

So that would have been the main difference is that, okay, I know I got to bring all my windows, turn on the light, put my hands on the one and two,

and speak very, very specifically, clearly, no person.

Like the fear that comes on it is very real.

And if you're driving the United Driving Highway, you are very aware of your surroundings.

And you think, oh man, I hope I don't break down here.

So those are thoughts that you have that people may not realize.

Psychologically, that's something that you have to just feel.

Yeah.

You have been part of the protests

at all sorts of moments along the way here the last bunch of years.

And it seems like

we get to these explosive moments after Ferguson.

Obviously, there was Occupy Wall Street even, the Eric Garner death.

And I want to talk about that in a moment.

But let's just start with, does what's happening now really feel different?

Or is that just like the immediacy bias that we all have where it's like, oh, this time is different?

I feel like this time is for several reasons.

And

one indication was when NASCAR said they're no longer flying the Confederate flag.

That to me is like, oh, might be something a little bit different happening.

You know, on top of that, the rainbow of colors that are now screened in Black Lives Matter seems a lot different.

than even just a few years ago.

And, you know, we've always said if you're going to attack the systems of privilege, the people who feel the privilege the most need to be out there pushing against that's happening.

But there's also other layers.

People have been home for two months, watching as a pandemic disproportionately went through their communities, killing people they know and with me

being just left to fend for themselves.

And then on top of that, you have Breonna Taylor, Ahmed Aubrey, George Floyd, Amy Cooper trying to call state violence down on Christian Cooper for watching bird watches at the Central Park.

So all of those things together, the fact that you have Donald Trump as president of the United States, clearly, in my opinion, not even hiding the hooded cheeks metaphorically.

So all of those things make the moment a little more ripe.

And while I am nerfed that, you know, the further away we get from this, we're going to have collective amnesia again.

But I'm hoping we can really use this moment.

to garner some transformational change.

It took New York more than five years to fire the officer whose chokehold killed Eric Garner.

Minneapolis fired the four officers who were responsible for George Floyd's death the next day.

They're now facing charges.

Is that progress?

I want to say it took Bill de Blaggio five years to do this.

And I want to just point out that there are officers who are responsible for Eric Garner's death that have never brought to account.

And there's officers who killed Darwin Smalls and others who've never brought to account.

So a lot of things we have to get done.

If you want to say things in certain areas better, I mean,

you have to say that.

But it's usually when people say we've made progress, it's usually to pacify, to say stop pushing for more as if people are simply not deserving of equity and justice.

So the police department I came in with as a city council member is different than the one that we have now.

And I have to admit there are some things that are better.

But the parts that we haven't moved much on are really bad, transparency and accountability.

And you know, when we look at the country,

back, you know, when I did a press conference for Amy Cooper, I reminded folks 31 years ago in that same park, a woman was brutally raped horrifically.

And instead of trying to find the person who did this, they found any black and brown people they could and sent them to jail and they were innocent.

A New Yorker took out a full-page ad saying that they should have a death sentence, even when they were found guilty, saying they must have did something.

That man is the president of the United States of America.

So how do you gauge progress, really?

All right, let's take a short break.

We'll be back with more with Jumani Williams in a moment.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Let's talk about police reform.

This is now where the the conversation has moved in a lot of places around the country.

You have pushed through these actual reforms in some measure.

It's obviously not to the extent that you want them to be.

If you were to give advice to people around the country who are now starting this process, what would you say to them about how to actually go about getting reform

done?

Well, I try to not use the word reform as much as possible.

I'm going to get used to it.

I try to say we need entirely new systems because the system that's laid out now is working how it was designed to work.

If you look at how the system of policing was born in this country, you look at how this country was formed.

And it's not coincidental that these problems are going on.

And I always say if the forefathers walk up, they might ask why we had a black president or why are there women voting.

But other than that, they would say a pretty good job of pushing forward the system that we began way back when.

And so we need an entirely new system.

And we have to rethink what public safety is.

So, you know, quote-unquote reforms are great, and we should we get them.

We have to have accountability and transparency.

But if we're not rethinking fully and totally what public safety is,

then it's going to manifest some other way because we have to address the issues that we keep sending police to deal with.

And sending police to solve everything in our society is not fair to the police officer, and certainly not fair to the community that the police officer is going to because they're not equipped to solve everything.

So, if we keep equating public safety with policing, we're not doing that great.

What do you do about police unions?

Because they're the ones that are usually aligning very strongly against any changes.

Police union heads in, at least in New York City, would make great police chiefs in the Jim Crow South.

They have been terrible in trying to have discussions for better policing and safety streets.

Just horrific.

And they've just never wanted to come to the table.

This is the first time.

After after weeks I've heard somebody in the police union mention that this was not a good killing and they're usually just defenders,

defending police officers.

They have played a very bad role here.

But I believe workers should have unions and they should organize.

And so my hope is that members organize for better reach and a better voice because they're not doing a good job.

And, you know, unions have way too much powers.

I'm happy to see them scrambling now as many people are really, for the first time I've seen, saying we're not going to be bullied by your power and your strength.

And a lot of that came from units threatening or pushing this narrative that the only thing that's keeping us safe between the whole hands and thugs is this blue line.

And really that generally meant, you know, we have to keep black and brown folks in check or the whole system's going to, the community is going to fall apart.

And people are starting to see, no, that's not true.

Part of the problem is how we think about how to use police.

That we send police to school, we send them to answer mental health calls, everything.

And I think some of that's being peeled back.

How much we can peel it back and for how long is a different conversation.

But I really hope we can peel it back long enough to really get in there and have the honest conversations they need to have for everybody to say.

Police cannot solve anything.

We have to stop asking them to.

It's just unfair to them.

And the results to the community are disastrous.

I think, to a lot of people

might look at this and say, like, this is, you're talking about this from the perspective of somebody in New York.

New York is one of the most Democratic states in the country.

New York City, I came up covering New York politics.

There are not a lot of Republicans around.

In 2013, when Bill de Blasio won as mayor, saying that he was the great progressive champion, and there were a lot of other progressives who were elected then.

You were already on the city council, but you got a lot of new colleagues who were progressive.

I wrote a story then with people saying, like, maybe this is going to be the great progressive experiment for the country to see.

And obviously, I know that's not the way that you see what happened over the last seven years play out, but

how does that happen?

If you can't get the kind of change that you think needs to be there in such a democratic state, in such a democratic city, where progressive Democrats,

it's almost like, what kind of progressive Democrat are you?

Not like even, what kind of Democrat are you, or Democrat or Republican.

How is that something that makes it so that anybody else around the country could look at this and say there's going to be progressive change in the way you want it to be?

Well, I declare that Democrats have been part of the problem.

100%.

Democrats like Andrew Cuomo, sadly, the Bill of Blaster that I interviewed for the job seven years ago turned out to be a totally different bill of laser.

Democrats have suffered for the same status quo protection program that Republicans have suffered from.

And And that's been a problem.

They look at the response to the protest.

If your response to the pandemic and to the protest have the same impact, not the same verboseness, not the same ostensible bigotry that

obviously more intelligent than Donald Trump because he's just not intelligent.

But if it has the same impact to the same communities, what's the difference if we're a Democrat or Republic?

And that's a question we really have to ask ourselves.

So much so that the Democrats have now risked the entire country on Joe Biden, on more of the same.

Who has said that we want to go back to a time before Donald Trump?

And most of us are saying, no, the hell we don't.

That time didn't work for a lot of them.

We need a new time.

You had Democrats so afraid of some kind of different change, they were willing to back Michael Bloomberg.

This was Democrats elected.

Stephen Black elected, saying we're going to go Mike Bloomberg just so we can keep our own system

of status quo.

When you look at Biden, though, obviously

you were hoping for Bernie Sanders.

When you look at Biden now in this point,

Democrats have or that the country has

other than Donald Trump.

Does that mean that he's the right choice for president?

Between those two,

there is no choice between those two.

It's Joe Biden.

That's it.

But at some point, people have to put somebody forward that people want to vote for, not because they want to vote against the other person.

And I would have hoped we learned our mistakes from four years ago, but we haven't.

And I hope we haven't risked too much.

People always say we only vote for the lesser two evils.

I do have to say this is a different time.

You know, Donald Trump is an existential Trump to everything we know, and not just in this country, but along the planet.

And so there is no choice.

I hope at some point Democrats learn a lesson.

I really wish there was a viable third party in this country because the monopolies that these two parties have are damaging to the country.

I'm not sure that Joe Biden would like it to be his bumper sticker that Donald Trump is an existential threat to this country, so you have no choice.

But that seems to be where you are.

I want to close with this.

We started off talking about you being an activist elected official.

You were at sort of the front end of people who were more activists getting into politics.

Obviously, you started out as a city councilman, so working your way up.

There are, over the last couple years and now more this year, people who are trying to bring progressive change into the systems.

Some of those people running in primaries in New York that are coming up in a few weeks and around the country.

When you look at it

from the vantage you have of a decade of trying to do this, what would you say to them of, okay,

if you win, congratulations, but here's what you need to know about what this is actually going to look like?

I just want people to know it's more difficult than they think.

The two things that have always surprised me, how hard it is just to do the right thing, the thing that everybody agrees with, and people will not do it for.

That has always just been amazing to me how little you won't do it for a title for a couple of dollars that don't even go that far.

And so my hope is that people come in, and look, I'm a human being, so I can't act like I'm above reproach reproach on everything but i feel like my batting average is pretty good but i do you know i want folks to understand that our seats are not more important than the people we're representing it's just not and there are points where you have to risk it and i i always went by that and by remembering that i didn't get elected to get re-elected and i did not get elected to go to higher office i got elected to do a job for the people of my district and now for the city.

Now, don't get me wrong, I hope that I get re-elected, you know, and obviously I wanted to hire officers.

I hope it works, but that can't be the primary driver of the decisions that we make.

And I hope other people who are coming in understand that.

Because it is hard to do the right thing.

It's hard when the mayor, the governor, the speaker calls, and they promise you this and they promise you that.

You just got to block it out and stay focused.

And sometimes if you're by yourself, but it's the right thing to do.

It's okay.

You know, 10 years ago, I was...

crazy lefty Germany, who was an activist, fighting against a billionaire mayor and a very powerful police commissioner.

And 10 years later, I'm the second highest elected official in the city of New York.

That's wild.

It is.

And it's why I thought you would be, for many reasons, the right person to talk to for this episode.

So I'm glad we were able to do it.

Jumani Williams, thanks for being here on the ticket.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

That'll do it for this week of the ticket, Politics in the Atlantic.

Thanks to Kevin Townsend for producing and editing this episode, and to Catherine Wells, the executive producer for Atlantic Podcasts.

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