Melissa Harris-Perry: Michael Tubbs was elected Mayor of Stockton, California when he was just 26 years old. He was Stockton's first Black mayor and the youngest of any major city in American history. Tubbs became the first mayor to implement a guaranteed income pilot program, making him a mainstay of national progressive policy programs and the media. When he ran for reelection in 2020, Tubbs was soundly defeated in a municipal election decisively influenced by a relentless and targeted campaign of misinformation. Now, the former mayor is telling his own story in a new memoir, The Deeper the Roots: A Memoir of Hope and Home.

I sat down with Michael late last month to talk about the book and about his personal journey.

Michael Tubbs: Growing up, so much of my intellectual development happened through reading memoirs, particularly memoirs of people transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. I remember reading Black Boy for school, and that being the only book that all the guys in the class really read or reading Manchild in the Promised Land or Makes Me Wanna Holler or The Brief Short Life of Robert Peace, all those books really helped-- The Autobiography of Malcolm X, they all really helped me imagine what being an adult could be. I always said it would be cool one day if I had something to contribute, to be that bridge from adolescence to adulthood for somebody else.

Then as you mentioned, being the youngest, I've had so many crazy experiences from being born in a place like Stockton to being mayor at 26, being elected the same night Donald Trump was elected. I thought that was an interesting entryway to a commentary about the promise and the peril of America and how could those things both be true? I think governing at a time of Black Lives Matter, I'm being a young Black man, governing in a place of home, I'm trying to make sense of what the world has been for the past decade. I just thought it'd be important to have a marker now at the young age of 31.

We're back at this moment in time claiming there's something different about someone being born and post-rated, coming out of age during the Clinton years with pervasive notions of what poverty and criminality were, being incredibly dangerous for folks like my family and figuring out how to make sense of that. Very long answer, but that's it. [chuckles]

Melissa Harris-Perry: No, it's helpful. If you're going to be 31 and write a memoir, I think it is useful to be able to articulate the reasons why. I presume you've got a lot of living left to do and that this is maybe Installment 1. Actually, as you talked about the texts that you and other Black boys were able to engage on your journey to Black manhood, I never particularly thought of it this way, I wonder if there is a version of Black masculinity that says, "These are the kinds of books that are not only okay, but acceptable and necessary to engage." In a way that maybe like Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary is not what you want to be seen walking into a school reading.

Michael: Well, what's interesting, I read Judy Blume too. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. I thought that was very interesting. This makes sense of the woman and the young woman I grew up with, like my cousin and the girls at school to get into their heads and what they thinking about. No, I do think particularly in a educational context and in a societal context that defines Black people, in terms of your question, Black men as deviant, as criminal, as not belonging as others, as probably an undercast, there's a couple of books that speak to those experiences in very affirming ways and in very disruptive ways that really, at least for me, gave me a sense of real pride and a real sense of like, "Oh, no, I can do this," or, "Oh, no, my experience is valid," or, "Oh, no, it's not futile that people have found the way to navigate these things."

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yet, you also begin the book by saying, basically, your mom has said, "Do not go out into the world and tell our business." I got to say, I was like, "Oh, yes, I heard that many, like, Don't go tell them our business." Then you also give us a truly painful glimpse into the not just the racial cultural experience many of us had of being told not to tell our business, but the very specific ways or means of public shaming that have been used and deployed against your mother as a very young woman. I wonder if you might tell us a bit about not only your mother, but your mothers, your three mothers who formed the basis of this love that reared you.

Michael: Actually, I appreciate the question because it relates to the first question. I also want to write this because so much of the narrative from others was about the absence of my father being the driver and being the reason. I still do my wife's work, the three mothers. In the Tubbs household, we believe in motherhood. We believe in the importance in the essentiality of mothers. I want to make sure I took the time to honor my mama, auntie and grandmother, three phenomenal, very ordinary Black women. Single, young, not highly educated, religious, contradictory, loving, tough, et cetera, to really pay homage to them and illustrate that these folks actually are the people we need to be listening to.

It really make this democracy real. My mom in particular, I talked about how she had me as a teenager. It was funny, Melissa, because in writing the book, it was the first time I understood why she was always so anxious and angry when it came time for me to perform, particularly at church. It had to be perfect. She was unbearable to be around. When I wrote that first chapter and really thought about, "Well, look, guy, when she was young, her experience in front of church was being publicly shamed for being pregnant, of having to resign from her volunteer positions, of having to confess to everyone what she did in private."

Imagine the shame, the guilt, and the anger. Probably every time I was up there, she's reliving that. I think that's what our ethos of, "Don't tell anyone how my business came from." I think she really have a sense of deep shame and the way people use stories of teenage mothers or incarcerated fathers against people to make judgments on who their children will be. Also, I think she had deep anger. Why does should anyone care? It doesn't matter. You don't make excuses, you do what you have to do. It's funny because when I started the book like that, she read the first page and she was like, "Well, why did you write this? Why didn't you listen?"

[laughter]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Say a bit more also about your auntie and your grandmother, and who they were. I love that you use the language of phenomenal, ordinary, and that they were and are contradictions.

Michael: Oh my gosh, I love them so much, but they are so human, so paradoxical in all of the ways that are real. My aunt, she is two years older than my mother, the first person my mother told she was pregnant. Really, I was her kid too. It was interesting, I didn't realize it was abnormal till I went to college where I could go to my mom, my aunt or grandmother for anything that most people just go to their parents for. Whether it was lunch money, money for field trips, sign a permission slip, pick me up from school, there was no clear roles and responsibilities that were so like, "You can't talk to my kid. You can't pick my kid up. You can't make a connection for anything."

It was really a village. I think I was born out of necessities because of poverty, et cetera. My grandmother was the real spiritual bulwark. She was the one that really taught us service. She has [unintelligible 00:08:02] lessons home every month, singing, administering, feeding and learning, even when I was mayor. She would harass me every day about what we were doing about the homeless issue, if I would go with her and her church group to give out socks. She had foster kids in her home that she fostered for years and treat them just like she treated her grandkids. She actually worked at the community center which became the bedrock for a lot of my work at city council. She really taught me about leadership and service without ever using those words.

It wasn't till I got to college where I learned it was a discourse around service, that there was service learning. I was like, "We just did this. [chuckles] This is what you do." My aunt, she really stressed education. She always gave me books. Every time I got straight A's, she'd go to Barnes and Noble, and literally, who does this? Max out her credit card on buying me books. She bought me Frederick Douglass's autobiography. She bought me all of the Hardy Boys series. Any book I wanted, if I had straight A's, she would just max out her card and get it.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I actually cannot think of any better reason in all the earth to max out one's credit card except to buy books, especially to buy books for a young person in your life. I am down. Not that any of us should max out our credit cards, but if you do, do it for that.

Michael: Yes. That's the reason I said, "Auntie, in writing this," like, "Why?" She was like, "This made you happy. It's books. They don't hurt you." [chuckles] Okay. All right.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I was so interested, the writing here is lovely. I'm just going to pick a few moments what I wanted to zero in. At the start of the third chapter, it begins with a very short sentence. "My mom began to notice my anger." Why were you angry?

Michael: I was labelled angry from my first day in school. I'm looking at report cards say, "Angry, angry." I think when you grow up like young people, children may not have the language, but people are born knowing what dignity looks like. They're born knowing what's fair and what's just, even if they can't articulate it. I think I was angry at being poor. I was angry that my father wasn't there. I was angry at having racist teachers. I had to fight with on literally every single assignment. I was angry as how hard my mom had to work. I just had a sense of rage, like something just felt very not right.

Like very unjust, like something felt very fundamentally unfair. I was mad and I was angry. I think my mom noticed that because I was always in arguments or I would like to say in conversation with authority, whether it was her, whether it was my teachers, the principals, et cetera. I just would always have to question. I always had to push a little bit. If I felt something was unfair, I had to let people know and I didn't have the politician's death as a 12-year-old, so I would just say it and say it loudly. Then, back to the principal's office, I go.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You also write about a period of time not being the angry young man, but being a teacher for the first time or an educator for the first time actually while you were in college. Again, because there's some lovely writing here, the chapter about this ends, "I told them through tears that I would find my way back to Langston Hughes and home." Tell us a bit about Langston Hughes Academy and what you learned there? Also, what does it mean to find your way back to Langston Hughes and home?

Michael: Langston Hughes is a charter school in Stockton. [unintelligible 00:11:52] debates about the efficacy of charter schools, et cetera. Beyond that, it was a school where the principal heard me speak and was like, "I want you to work here over the summer." I had no interest in being a teacher because I didn't like any of my teachers. It paid like $5 more an hour than I was making at Barnes and Noble at the time, which was my first job. I said, "Okay, I'm going to do it."

When I walked on the school campus, I just fell in love with the students and with the possibility of education and that the students were shocked to have someone like me, so young from their neighborhood, fluent in their cultural intricacies, teaching and teaching content and being in authority in the classroom, but not as who are great folks on the school campus as well, but not as one of the maintenance people or as athletic coach, but as a academic teacher. They didn't have that from any Black males. Most of them in their whole experience and I was only 18, but they loved it. For me, it was a way of trying to do what I wish teachers had done for me and my friends.

Because with my students, I saw so many of my peers who were brilliant, who were facing hell at home or in community and would come to school and see those things calcified by institutional bias, by implicit bias, by being pushed out, et cetera. I just vowed to do it differently. I fell in love with it. It was hard, but I loved it. I loved the students, I loved their stories. When I left for college, I told them I was going to find a way to come back, but I meant like for a summer or for like a spring break thing.

Then eventually, four years later, that proved to be prophetic when I found myself back in Stockton after college working as a teacher at Langston Hughes and then my eighth graders were much small graders. Seeing their growth and development and in some cases, stagnation was also very edifying. It felt so good to do the hand-to-hand combat to see progress and see change every day and know it wasn't at scale, but that work in that classroom, trying to get those 30 kids to grapple with structure versus agency or trying to get them to understand institutional bias or to really talk to them about socialization and these other concepts I didn't learn till college felt so rewarding and meaningful.

Melissa Harris-Perry: If you were to just tell the beginning of your story, Stockton, and then the best known part of your story, mayor of Stockton, one might think you never really went much of anywhere and yet, in the middle part, everything in between those moments of Stockton, there's a lot of engagement with a lot of the world that is not Stockton, whether Palo Alto, California, at Stanford, or your experiences traveling internationally. Can you talk a little bit about how the non-Stockton parts of your story influenced and gave you a way to contextualize and think about what it meant to be back home doing the work?

Michael: The non-Stockton parts actually made me comfortable and actually going back home so soon because I was like, it's not just like my own only reference point in the world in Stockton, which is a great place, but a very peculiar place and a place that is unlike most places in this world, so you need to go see some things. My first time abroad was in El Salvador for Archbishop Romero's 30th anniversary assassination. That was just the first time I saw poverty outside. I thought I knew poverty because I grew up in poverty. You can't tell me about poverty then I saw global poverty and I said, "Well, wait."

That was the first time I learned how US policies really created conditions in other countries that lead people to flee. I remember one of our host family told me how they were preparing their son Henry to cross the border to America because there was no opportunity there. I couldn't disagree. That village had no electricity, MS-13 was running wild, there was like a one-room school for five grades. It was like, "What's the world is so much bigger? What opportunities there for him to do?" That was super challenging and about, "Wow, the US has a role to play, not just in what I see in Stockton, but also what I saw in San Salvador."

Then I went to Cape Town for three months. I thought Cape Town was going to be a big party, and it was. I had an amazing time, but it was also so challenging because I worked in the shelter for street children. There, they challenged all my assumptions. I remember them talking to me about fleeing home and being orphans and talking about how European and American tourists would use them for sex tourism and got them hooked on drugs, which led to some chemical dependencies or about how they're beaten by cops, but despite that, how they were so resilient and hopeful, and that they do not feel sorry for us. We're going to be okay. We're doing what we can.

Also, most semi-- Even though this word has been hijacking, it's terrible now, but as like most of my, well, people in college love the ANC, love Nelson Mandela, love the Rainbow Nation and the constitution with the enumerated rights to housing and shelter, et cetera. Going there, it really showed me how hard governing is, how going from paper to policies to implementation, particularly with hundreds of years of a history is difficult and how even Mandela was a man of contradictions, was a man who wasn't perfect as a leader, was a man who left behind some work to do in South Africa.

That was just eye-opening. It was the same time, we were beginning to become disillusioned with the White House at the time with President Obama, but seeing like, "Oh wait, well, Nelson Mandela could've changed South Africa just as the first Democratic-elected prime minister. It's going to take time. Those paradoxes were really challenging and really gave me a more, I think, nuanced view of change and what's possible or what's necessary and how to do it. Those two experiences, I still drawn them in terms of making sense of the work in Stockton and the work now, et cetera.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me about being disillusioned with President Obama.

Michael: My first vote was for President Obama. My first weekend in college-

Melissa Harris-Perry: You are so young, oh my goodness. All right. It's over, sorry.

Michael: -my first weekend in college was spent knocking on doors, registering people to vote. I was the first person at Barnes and Noble to buy The Audacity of Hope when it came out. I was like all in. I was an intern in the Obama White House, but at the same time, there was such gains he made on healthcare, on LGBT rights, on just saving our economy from a Great Recession. They were still like in the messiest of governance, concessions that were made, things were still moving slow, all problems weren't solved.

I think I was like, "Oh my gosh, if Obama can't do all these changes, is it possible?" It took time in South Africa a time in the White House to recognize how leadership in government is necessary, but not sufficient. There has to be a whole alignment of media, of civil society, of the business sector, of Congress to really push through the changes that are necessary. Still, I will always be an Obama fan, but now that that fandom is tempered with my own analysis of how to get things done and my own beliefs of where our country should be and my own thinking about how far we should go.

At 19 years old, I didn't have any of that, just like hope and change and yes we can and what's happening? Everything's not changed yet.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Can you tell me me about Donnell?

Michael: While working in the White House, my cousin Donnell was murdered at a Halloween house party in Stockton. That was jarring, not because shootings or homicides were foreign. In California and Stockton, in this country, the leading cause death for young Black and Latino men is 18 and 30s homicides and gun violence. This was home. This was personal. This wasn't a friend of a friend or someone I went to school with. This was a family member.

Do you know you expect to see your family forever? Really going back home for the funeral, going back home and having to eulogize my cousin as a 20-year-old to all these people in the church, seeing the nihilism really set in with his friends, and then knowing that in Stockton, that year, 55 other families felt that pain really caused me to think about, "Okay, well, there has to be more to life than to me working at Google, being in the White House, going to Stanford."

As a spiritual person, I was like, "God, what do you want me to do with all this because I don't feel good. I don't feel successful. I actually don't feel happy. I feel upset. I feel sad. I feel like everything's meaningless." It was in that grappling I decided the crazy idea that I would go back to Stockton during my senior year in college and run for city council at a time where the city had declared bankruptcy, at a time where we have more homicides per capita than any other city in this country. I thought, "Okay, well, this is the time to run."

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me out being mayor, both what you accomplished and talk to me being mayor, both what you accomplished and the painful way in which it ended.

Michael: Stockton California is home. I was elected at 22 years old. When my primary at 21, started office at 22, governing my old council district. There laid the groundwork for much of the work people saw when I was there, but we did small things well. We closed down problem liquor stores. We opened up health clinics. We brought in the first bank to an unbanked community in 50 years. We started experimenting with community policing. I worked with the police chief to create the Office of Violence Prevention, a non-police office focused on hiring community members to prevent crimes before they happen because cops can't do that, particularly homicide and gun crimes.

Then, when I was mayor, I was really laser-focused on solving structural issues. I hate poverty and I also think structural violence, the avoidable impairment of basic needs is literally the cause for so much forge in our society. I also knew being the first Black mayor of the city, being the youngest mayor of any major city in American history, Stockton's three times the size of south-bend Indiana, I knew that this is a special opportunity in that it needed to be different because I was there. We were different.

We ended the golf course subsidy. We piloted the first mayor-led basic income program. We became this sick and fiscally most healthy city. We prioritize equity. We're doing things in a green economy. We were actually creating a plan for homelessness and that was able to raise some money from the state to being able to address it, and then I lost. It was so painful because A, I'm a ruthless pragmatist. Even if the rules are unfair, before I can change them, I'm like, "Okay, let me master this so I could be in a position to change them so they become more fair." I was like, "All right, to be reelected as a mayor, I need to do a good job. I need to do this, this, and this."

I, objectively speaking, created a scholarship program to provide the next generation of kids, a guaranteed scholarship to trade school, community college or four-year school for the next decade that's still happening, even though I'm not there because I was very serious about building institutions, created all type of community organizations, CDFIs, et cetera, so that the work will continue. Losing hurt. Well, first I was embarrassed. I was like, the whole nation is watching and I lost. Number two, I was hurt because I thought did a good job. I did my best.

I literally spent all my time thinking about restraining my relationships with family, friends, my wife to really focus on this job. Then I was also upset because of why I lost. If it wasn't a scandal. It wasn't lack of performance. It was disinformation. I think what people get wrong is that it wasn't a campaign year of disinformation campaign. It was a four-year disinformation campaign started from the moment I was in office and rooted in anti-Blackness and rooted in lies and rooted about questioning the legitimacy. I was worried about the message I would send to the community.

The message that was sent to the state and particularly to the Central Valley because there's no real progressive, forward-thinking politicians. Our politicians people even know from the Central Valley of California and they just were relentless and attacked my marriage, which [unintelligible 00:25:36] on my kids, lied every single day about everything I was doing. I was stealing money. I was a crook. I was incompetent. I didn't live in this city. I was just every anti-Black trope. The fact that my folks fell for it, my community fell for it, the anti-Blackness was enough to change the direction of the city really hurt.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I guess that brings me to the last question, which is what is the work that you're doing now?

Michael: I am laser-focused on ending poverty in California. We're launching a whole initiative and policy agenda and everything on that next year. I'm also laser-focused on some form of guaranteed income being a national policy. I started a group called Merits for Guaranteed Income, continue to lead it. Now, we have 60 mayors doing what I did in Stockton four years ago when it was just me. Overall, there was a through line to my work. It's just really gained us a firm understanding and recognize the dignity of all people and that we can only be a great nation if we truly allow people to at least have their basic dignity respected and their basic needs met.

Going to do some more stuff in the storytelling space like this, look us for the example. We're going to continue to be in policy worlds and just do what I can with the time I have to just leave this place a little bit better than I found it.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Michael Tubbs is the author of the memoir, The Deeper the Roots: A Memoir of Hope and Home. Thanks for joining us.

Michael: Thank you so much for having me.

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