June 13, 2026 • 30 mins
Kamal Johnson is a former mayor of Hudson, New York, community leader, and youth advocate.
Raised in Hudson and elected as the city’s youngest mayor, and first African American to hold the position. Kamal built a reputation for leading with honesty about issues many public officials avoid discussing openly — trauma, violence, poverty, mental health, generational survival, and what it means to try to heal while carrying the weight of leadership.
Before serving as mayor, he worked for years in youth development, mental health, and community outreach, supporting young people and families navigating many of the same challenges he experienced growing up. His work has focused on violence prevention, youth empowerment, economic equity, housing, education, and creating systems that actually see people instead of just managing them.
In the first half of the conversation, we discuss his inspiration to get into politics, universal basic income, police training, and unresolved trauma in impoverished communities.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am
your host, rams this job, he is Ramsy's job.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I am Qward You I tuned in a Civic Psycher.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Yes you are. And today we have a special guest
in the studio. Q is going to function as the
executive producer of today's episode, and we are having a
conversation with an individual we're very much looking forward to
talking with, So stay tuned. Kamal Johnson is a former
mayor of Hudson, New York. Community leader and youth advocate.
(00:36):
Raised in Hudson and elected as the city's youngest mayor
and first African American to hold the position, Kamal built
a reputation for leading with honesty about issues many public
officials avoid discussing openly trauma, violence, poverty, mental health, generational survival,
and what it means to try to heal while carrying
the weight of leadership. Before serving as mayor, he worked
(01:00):
for years in youth development, mental health, and community outreach,
supporting young people and families navigating many of the same
challenges he experienced growing up. His work has focused on violence, prevention,
youth empowerment, economic equity, housing, education, and creating systems that
actually see people instead of just managing them. Kamal's story
(01:22):
sits at the intersection of politics, healing, fatherhood, black masculinity,
community leadership, and generational change. Through both his public service
and writing, he explores what it means to break inherited
cycles while still confronting the emotional realities that come with survival.
And he is our guest today. All right, Caamal Johnson,
(01:44):
welcome to the show Man. How you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I'm doing great. Thank you for having me and Sinanor
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Absolutely well, you're an inspirational person and we're excited to
talk about you know, your story and share that with
our audience and also some of the things that you're
up to. So obviously I gave you a little bit
of background, but you know, around here, we find it's
always helpful to start our stories at the beginning, so
(02:10):
you know, let's fill in the gaps for people just
coming to the conversation learning about who you are and
the work that you're doing. Tell us a little bit
about yourself, maybe about where you grew up, went to school,
what inspired you to get into politics, becoming the first
African American and the youngest mayor in the history of Hudson,
(02:31):
New York.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
So I grew up in the city of Hudson, where
I was, you know, able to become mayor. You know,
I spent my entire educational career there before going to college.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
And you know, I was dealing.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
With a lot of things, you know, family wise, from
incarceration to poverty, to addiction to all of those things.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So as you can imagine, I wasn't the best student.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
And it was one time when I was in eleventh
grade in English class, my teacher, Miss Brust, I was
always getting kicked out of the class. I was always
you know, talking and getting in trouble. And she pulled
me outside one day and she said, look, you could
you are like the mayor of the classroom. Like everything
you say and do people gravitate too, and they always
(03:22):
have to listen to what you say.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
And she was like, why don't you use that to
be a leader?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
And me, you know, being a fifteen year old, I
took it as a joke and I created a sign
that said come on for mayor, and I hung it
up in her classroom and then it became a nickname.
So then I started getting involved in the community, and
I started seeing a lot of changes due to gentrification,
(03:51):
you know, due to a lot of changes when you
have a small city that becomes popular. And I started
saying to myself, you know, maybe you know this thing
being a mayor isn't just a nickname. This could be
something that you know, I could pursue. And so I did,
and you know, it was. It was an amazing journey.
(04:13):
I love sitting down. It's a full roller coaster.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
So you know, it's funny because Q and myself we
have a teacher, a year's long teacher who was very
instrumental certainly in my life. And you know, my teacher
was a college teacher, so I got her a little
bit older. I was maybe eighteen nineteen, but she was
(04:42):
one of those people that really saw more in me
than I saw in myself. So would you say that
that's kind of a similar story for you.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I'd never seen myself as a leader until that moment,
and you know, it was just mind blowing to tell
that story in front of her in an auditorium at
my old school. And you know, it really showed that
when you're in phases of leadership, words matter, and you know,
(05:13):
what you say can really change a person's life. Because
I grew up here and you look at his family.
Of course he's getting in trouble. Of course he's going
to be like that. It's in his bloodline. But this
kind of changed the whole trajectory for me.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah. I often say that it's usually a person that
serves to inspire, you know people and pour into people,
especially at a younger age, and inspire them to, you know,
really take some meaningful action and really kind of sees
(05:50):
the reins of their life. And in your particular circumstances,
you were, if I understand correctly, you were kind of
dealing with a lot certainly, you know by the time
you became mayor, so you know, talk to us. You know, again,
you're the first African American mayor in the history of Hudson,
and you were elected the youngest mayor in the history
(06:13):
of the of the city. So what was different about
your maybe your public life versus sort of the burdens
that you might have been carrying in your private life.
And you can go back further than that if you like,
but you know, I'm sure that this part of the
story really matters.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, a lot of the issues that I cared about
when I started campaigning were issues that I ever experienced
personally or people.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Around me were experiencing.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
So you know, I wasn't detached from the community like
you see a lot of politicians.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
You know, I was living in it.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
I'm one of four boys, and I'm I'm the only
one of those four boys to not be currently incarcerated
or ever be incarcerated.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
My mom battled.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Addiction for a deep part of my childhood, so you know,
I had all these things weighing on me. You know,
as I'm going into leadership, and when you live in
a community, especially where you go talk to the black community,
you're dealing with a community that's been lied to often.
So when you go to them and you say, you know,
(07:19):
you want to change all these things you want to do,
you know, all these initiatives and policies and programs, they
feel like they've hurted all before. So for me, the
line I kept getting was it doesn't matter who's in leadership.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
You know, my life is still going to be the same.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
So I wanted to start with programs that, you know,
reach people at the bottom instead of the trickle down economics.
I wanted to deal with the people who are directly
facing the issues and focus on them, put them in
the forefront, and create programs and things so that you know,
their lives to be better. And at the same time,
(08:03):
you know, I had to deal with my own trauma.
I had to deal with now becoming a public figure
and having you know, a class where people are going
to bring up my brothers, They're going to bring up
you know, things that have happened in life, and you know,
it was it was tough, but I don't regret my story.
(08:24):
You know, it made me who I am and you
know I was able to lead well because of it.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Well I'm I'm I'm a little curious and this might
be a bit of a departure for us, but a
lot of what you were talking about, you know, reaching
people kind of at the bottom and having an approach,
a mentality of understanding that the people themselves are not failures.
(08:57):
There's a system in place that has taken from these people,
lied to these people, and has failed to address the
systemic reality of the oppression that continues to subjugate and
marginalize these people. And you know, once upon a time,
(09:21):
Q and I we had to explain kind of the
root cause of much of the crime that is associated
with the black community, right, And it's not necessarily pathological
in mass you know, a lot of it is just
crimes of poverty, right. And when our show first started,
(09:47):
it was, you know, during twenty twenty protest, George Floyd
all that sort of stuff, there was this concept, Hey,
if we defund the police, then we can reallocate those
fiscal resources into programs that actually are proven to reduce
crime rates. And these things seeming they might seem unrelated
(10:08):
to crime, but indeed they have a drastic impact on
crime rates and impoverished communities. And they include programs like
head start, transportation, job opportunities, et cetera. And so having
the conversation, I know that the marketing of it. Q
always says, the marketing of it was so alarming that
(10:30):
you know, people thought, defund the police, Oh my god,
we're not going to have police. But the concept, the
thinking behind it was, hey, pouring more money into police
has not made us safer, will never make us safer.
Addressing the issues that are affecting these people makes us safer.
And you've, based on what I'm reading, you've kind of
worked in a lot of these spaces, mental health spaces,
(10:52):
and as you mentioned, getting folks sort of at the
beginning or at the bottom of the rung, at the
beginning of their journey, you know, before they get too bad.
So talk a little bit about that. Maybe if some
of those concepts have worked, or maybe if they didn't work.
In your view of you know, I guess leadership.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Two specific initiatives come to mind. You know, during the
murder of George Floyd, I was, you know, taking the
reings as mayor, you know, I was became mayor of
January first of twenty twenty, and then we went into
a global pandemic, and then we went into civil unrest.
And here you have me, this, you know, young, first
(11:37):
time black mayor, and all eyes on me. And I
knew dealing with the police station system, I was gonna
catch a lot of flak. But I knew the current system,
you know, wasn't working. So what I wanted to do
is have actual programs and trainings that effect the people
(12:00):
in the community, not just you know, quiz where they
asked you a few questions and it's like, all right,
we're all.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Not racist, we're good.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
But actual trainings that officers can use and apply. And
one of the first things that we did was we
had our arresting parents in front of in front of
children training and change that whole process on how that happens.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
I also took fifteen percent out of the police budget,
which of course was not you know, didn't go over well,
it was popular at all, and we added that into
our youth programs. We also put that money to trainings.
I also hired the first you know, woman and African
(12:50):
American police chief. We wanted to make sure that while
we're changing the culture of policing where when we want
to add black and brown faces, don't want to send
them into a culture that you know, they just assimilate
with and become part of the culture that is terrorizing
the people. So, you know, that was some of the
(13:13):
moves that we made. I also spoke with this organization
called the Spark of Hudson and they introduced me to
Andrew Yang, who was running for president at one point,
and they came up with a program of universal basic
income at first, I was like when it was brought
(13:34):
to me, I was like, no, this sounds great, but
I don't want to be that mayor. It's like, oh, everybody,
you know, it's gonna get money and they're gonna do
this and this. Like I wanted to do things that
were realistic. So I went on an educational tour and
I took the community with me and learning about universal
basic income. And then we were able to launch a
(13:55):
pilot program where one hundred and fifty people in our
community even five hundred dollars a month every month for
five years. And with this, we're giving them, you know,
financial literacy education and you know, different opportunities. And this
isn't life changing money, but it's enough money where if
(14:17):
you're a person that needs to get over five hundred
dollars extra is going to help you. So initiatives like
that is what I believe strongly in investing in the people.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Who need it.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Well said, I'm gonna circle back just a bit because, well,
first off, kudos to you on the universal basic income.
We'll call it a pilot program because that whether people
like it or not, that's going to need to be
(14:51):
a conversation that we're going to have to have as
a country at some point in the near future. I'm
sure at the time when you were considering universal basic income,
we did not expect artificial intelligence to hit as quickly
as it did, nor as hard as it has. And
so you know, again, at some point this country in
the world indeed is going to have to grapple with
(15:14):
concepts that seem asinine. Universal basic income does not seem
asonine to us around here, but you know, in terms
of having that conversation, certainly with conservative minded folks, it's
to them, it's it's very much asonine. So I salute
you for that getting a program like that off the ground,
because if nothing else, the data that will come from
(15:36):
that will inform hopefully decisions that will affect you know,
you know, people into the future, and so you know,
for you, that will absolutely be your legacy. I do
want to circle back, though, because we talk a lot
on this show about police, and we talk a lot
(15:58):
about police training, and there are a handful of studies
I suspect because there can only be a handful of
studies that get funded and you know, people can like
get across the finish line, but there indeed are only
a handful of studies, but they all suggest the same thing.
(16:20):
These studies suggest that police training simply doesn't work. And
I think you kind of made this point a little
earlier in your in your previous statement saying, you know,
the simple quiz check the boxes, yes or no? Should
I do this? Should I do that? Okay, I passed,
I have a passing score. I'm not racist, and now
I don't have to, you know, take that quiz again
(16:43):
for another you know, two years or five years or
whatever recertification. Right, So, perhaps that was the sort of
training that was being monitored in these in these studies,
and again these are academic, like, university level studies that
were being performed. We shared the day on the show
plenty of times for folks who want to go back
and check. You know, it's in the archives. But the
(17:06):
one thing that we kept coming back to was that
police training didn't work. Sensitivity training didn't work, racial bias
training doesn't work. None of that stuff works in the
heat of the moment. What people have done in this
country is given a weapon to police and then sent
(17:29):
police to every single call, be it a bad guy
with a gun or a cat stuck in a tree, right,
And so you show up with a device, a contraption.
It's the only purpose, the only the only reason it
exists is to end of life. That's it. Lethal weapon indeed,
(17:51):
But that's that's it. You're not gonna like shape wood
with it. You're not going to make dinner with it.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Life.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
So in every single interaction with police across the country,
police indeed are the ones who always across the board
introduce the lethal element into the equation. Sometimes individual citizens
introduce that element, but all the time police introduce it.
(18:20):
And Brian Stevenson is a person that we look up
to around here. He's the CEO of the Equal Justice Initiative.
He has a way of framing this way of thinking.
Now he works with like you know, prison and incarceration
rates and the wrongfully incarcerated, typically black and brown populations.
(18:43):
But the thinking I think is consistent. And I hope
that you follow him here. I'd love your thoughts. He says, listen,
if we have He's basically says, there are certain things
we need to get perfect right. We cannot have any
room for error. And if there is error, then we
(19:04):
need to address it, and we need to identify the error.
And ensure that the error doesn't happen again. And so
as example is, if we have ten airplanes that take off,
and for every ten that take off, one of them crashes,
then nobody would fly and that would be unacceptable to
(19:25):
a government, to a society, to everybody. And everybody's comfortable
with that logic, right. But if you look at the
amount of police shootings that take place, if for every
nine shootings, nine times the police, or every ten times
I should say police in someone's life with their gun
(19:47):
if one of them was not entirely justified, the same
approach to policing doesn't work. And you know, our supposition
is that a lot of the silence that's surrounding police
and the error rate that they have when interacting with
(20:08):
black bodies, black and brown bodies, I should say, not
just killing people, but shooting people, abusing people, beating people up,
all that sort of stuff, right, innocent people. The reason
that there is a stunning silence surrounding that is because
of racism. Now, I want to bring this home for
you because I know that said a lot. But when
(20:29):
the data shows that police training doesn't work and the
error rate disproportionately affects black and brown bodies and there's
not much I should say, there's nothing in the way
of accountability when it comes to police. That was the
basis of the Black Lives Matter movement. Talk to me
(20:50):
and our listeners about what the training programs that you
implemented did differently or what you believed would come from
your specific iteration of police training on the ground in Hudson.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah, for me, it was important not to just announce
all this training. For me, it was important to start
to change the culture of how you look at policing
in the city of Hudson, Okay, So we looked at
it through a wide lens. We focused on our young people.
So you know, we we put in a program called
(21:28):
Handle with Care. So anytime there's an arrest where a
young kid is present, but what happen is, you know,
that kid would go to school and then he would
act out, and he would have all these things that
are going on, and he would get suspended. Teachers would
kick him out the class and do all these things,
but it wasn't getting down to the root issue of
(21:49):
what happened. Handle with Care basically, a note would go
out to the school and to the teachers and anyone
who deals with this kid, and it wouldn't have pacific information,
but it would say that this child has been involved
in a traumatic incident, handle them with care, and then
(22:09):
we would bring in the supports to help that child
deal with that. Also, we had to look at how
our police perceived the community. You know, when I first
got there and I sat down, and you know that
this was the first meeting, I was nervous about being
mayor because now I'm sitting across all of these people
(22:30):
who now work for me, who I've only known growing
up as raiding my house or erecting my family and friends,
And I wanted to say, see, like, what are we
doing in the community. Where is our impact? How are
we knowing the community and the people we're serving and protecting.
(22:51):
And one thing I noticed is like they were going
to the black parties, they were going to all of
the events around the community, but they were just standing
there like security. So for me, it's like, no, no,
we're not going to stand there with our arms crossed.
Don't show up with your weapon. You know, where your
summer uniform if it's summer, you know, the shorts and
(23:12):
the bike outfit and inn you know, get in the
dunk tank, play basketball with the kids, talk to families
because you know, the best policing is when people say,
like they know the cop on the street and he
walks to beat you know, he's doing all those things.
So we made all of our officers, you know, do that,
(23:32):
and I basically told them like, if interacting with the
community is a problem for you, you don't need to
be a policeman in my community. And then we looked
at our local jails and this is where I worked
with an organization called Greater Hudson Promised Neighborhood, who does
amazing work around incarceration. And one of the things we
(23:55):
saw was that when a parent gets arrested, they're not
just out of the picture. It's not like you caught
this quote unquote bad guy. Like this effects an entire family.
So we would watch the visits and you know, kids
would have to see their parent between a glass. You know,
(24:17):
they weren't able to hug them, they weren't able to
you know, read with them.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
So we created this and enhance visit.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Program, which Promised Neighborhood took to another level that was amazing.
You know, they do great work, but the kids were
able to see their parents and come in there and
hug them, sit on their lap, play.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Games with them in an open room, and not.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Have to feel like, you know, there's all these people
with guns around them, and you know they have to
be nervous. But we wanted that parent to still feel
part of the community, part of the family.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
You know.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
We had tutoring sessions where they were you know, helping
kids with homework and all of that, and so, like
we wanted to look at the whole picture. And part
of that also meant if we have some officers who
you know, are seen as bad officers, then we have
(25:16):
to pinpoint who they are and get them out of
our community. We know, body cameras are great, which I
also initiated. Every cop has to have you know, body
armor and you know body camera. I mean, but that
also doesn't tell the whole picture because a lot of
times when we see these atrocities that happen, you know
(25:37):
they're from bodycam footage.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
So we wanted to.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Make sure our officers have a relationship with the community
that they're protecting.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I appreciate that response. I know that, and you probably
know this better than most folks, But I know that
governments tend to move very slowly when it comes to
progress in the scale of a lifetime of a person.
Right the country's government systems, they move very slowly. And
(26:11):
so it looks like programs that you just suggested and
initiatives that you just suggested. So my hat's off to you,
because even though that sounds like very obvious, I'm sure
that was a ton of work to get that off
the ground, to get people to participate, change their thinking,
and you know, that's moving in the right direction. And
(26:37):
reasonable people, reasonable black people, reasonable activists, people like that
understand that progress takes time. It just takes time of
you and your grandfathers and your children, and it takes
everybody's start, but it does take time. And so again,
hats off to you. We're going to break in a
couple of minutes, but I want to ask you another
(26:57):
question before we go. You've talked openly about, you know,
trauma and leadership, so it talk to us a little
bit more how to unresolve childhood experiences show up in
adults who maybe appear successful on the outside. And I'm
guessing that this is something that you can speak to personally.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, definitely, you know, when you're in the business of
community work, you know, whenever the phone rings, nine times
out of ten, it's bad news. It's somebody needing help,
someone needing support, maybe they're being evicted. And for me,
dealing with these issues, and like you said, government moves
(27:37):
very slow. So you know, I faced fiction before, and
I've had to look at my family when you know,
they post that notice on the door. So for me,
I wanted to fix things right away, but their process
for getting people help was so long that we ended
up having to create other initiatives to move things along.
(27:58):
And then with me being the first African American and
being thirty four at the time, and people saying he's
too young, he's in experience, he's all of these things,
you become kind of the martyr, like whatever you do,
it's gonna be passed.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
On to the next generation.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
So if I don't do a good job, it's gonna
be ten times harder, you know, for the next person
who's of color that wants to run for mayor or
any city wide race. And in my community and in
our county, it was unheard of for somebody young and
(28:40):
black to be at the helm. So dealing with that
and also dealing with life that doesn't stop.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Life doesn't stop.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Because you know, you take a place in leadership. So
I remember one time my younger brother got arrested and
the media posted my picture on the newspaper as if
I was arrested, And you still have to come in
front of the people and lead. You still have to,
you know, deal with the trauma that you know your
(29:10):
brother is going to be going through a long system
that's going to be unfair to him. But also at
the same time you with the show face and be
someone that's going to talk to the people and stand strong.
And then you also have to go home and be
a parent.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
So you know, all of.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Those things combined, it was It's tough. It's tough, especially
on black leaders.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah, yeah, we we know that well around here. We
work closely with a lot of black leaders around the country,
and it's one of the things that we do understand.
But you know, kudos to you for making it through
all that and still got your head up high. So
(29:54):
we're going to come back with more with Mayor Kamal
Johnson after these message Juice though, stay tune
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am
your host, rams this job, he is Ramsy's job.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I am Qward You I tuned in a Civic Psycher.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Yes you are. And today we have a special guest
in the studio. Q is going to function as the
executive producer of today's episode, and we are having a
conversation with an individual we're very much looking forward to
talking with, So stay tuned. Kamal Johnson is a former
mayor of Hudson, New York. Community leader and youth advocate.
(00:36):
Raised in Hudson and elected as the city's youngest mayor
and first African American to hold the position, Kamal built
a reputation for leading with honesty about issues many public
officials avoid discussing openly trauma, violence, poverty, mental health, generational survival,
and what it means to try to heal while carrying
the weight of leadership. Before serving as mayor, he worked
(01:00):
for years in youth development, mental health, and community outreach,
supporting young people and families navigating many of the same
challenges he experienced growing up. His work has focused on violence, prevention,
youth empowerment, economic equity, housing, education, and creating systems that
actually see people instead of just managing them. Kamal's story
(01:22):
sits at the intersection of politics, healing, fatherhood, black masculinity,
community leadership, and generational change. Through both his public service
and writing, he explores what it means to break inherited
cycles while still confronting the emotional realities that come with survival.
And he is our guest today. All right, Caamal Johnson,
(01:44):
welcome to the show Man. How you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I'm doing great. Thank you for having me and Sinanor
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Absolutely well, you're an inspirational person and we're excited to
talk about you know, your story and share that with
our audience and also some of the things that you're
up to. So obviously I gave you a little bit
of background, but you know, around here, we find it's
always helpful to start our stories at the beginning, so
(02:10):
you know, let's fill in the gaps for people just
coming to the conversation learning about who you are and
the work that you're doing. Tell us a little bit
about yourself, maybe about where you grew up, went to school,
what inspired you to get into politics, becoming the first
African American and the youngest mayor in the history of Hudson,
(02:31):
New York.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
So I grew up in the city of Hudson, where
I was, you know, able to become mayor. You know,
I spent my entire educational career there before going to college.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
And you know, I was dealing.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
With a lot of things, you know, family wise, from
incarceration to poverty, to addiction to all of those things.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So as you can imagine, I wasn't the best student.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
And it was one time when I was in eleventh
grade in English class, my teacher, Miss Brust, I was
always getting kicked out of the class. I was always
you know, talking and getting in trouble. And she pulled
me outside one day and she said, look, you could
you are like the mayor of the classroom. Like everything
you say and do people gravitate too, and they always
(03:22):
have to listen to what you say.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
And she was like, why don't you use that to
be a leader?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
And me, you know, being a fifteen year old, I
took it as a joke and I created a sign
that said come on for mayor, and I hung it
up in her classroom and then it became a nickname.
So then I started getting involved in the community, and
I started seeing a lot of changes due to gentrification,
(03:51):
you know, due to a lot of changes when you
have a small city that becomes popular. And I started
saying to myself, you know, maybe you know this thing
being a mayor isn't just a nickname. This could be
something that you know, I could pursue. And so I did,
and you know, it was. It was an amazing journey.
(04:13):
I love sitting down. It's a full roller coaster.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
So you know, it's funny because Q and myself we
have a teacher, a year's long teacher who was very
instrumental certainly in my life. And you know, my teacher
was a college teacher, so I got her a little
bit older. I was maybe eighteen nineteen, but she was
(04:42):
one of those people that really saw more in me
than I saw in myself. So would you say that
that's kind of a similar story for you.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I'd never seen myself as a leader until that moment,
and you know, it was just mind blowing to tell
that story in front of her in an auditorium at
my old school. And you know, it really showed that
when you're in phases of leadership, words matter, and you know,
(05:13):
what you say can really change a person's life. Because
I grew up here and you look at his family.
Of course he's getting in trouble. Of course he's going
to be like that. It's in his bloodline. But this
kind of changed the whole trajectory for me.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah. I often say that it's usually a person that
serves to inspire, you know people and pour into people,
especially at a younger age, and inspire them to, you know,
really take some meaningful action and really kind of sees
(05:50):
the reins of their life. And in your particular circumstances,
you were, if I understand correctly, you were kind of
dealing with a lot certainly, you know by the time
you became mayor, so you know, talk to us. You know, again,
you're the first African American mayor in the history of Hudson,
and you were elected the youngest mayor in the history
(06:13):
of the of the city. So what was different about
your maybe your public life versus sort of the burdens
that you might have been carrying in your private life.
And you can go back further than that if you like,
but you know, I'm sure that this part of the
story really matters.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, a lot of the issues that I cared about
when I started campaigning were issues that I ever experienced
personally or people.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Around me were experiencing.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
So you know, I wasn't detached from the community like
you see a lot of politicians.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
You know, I was living in it.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
I'm one of four boys, and I'm I'm the only
one of those four boys to not be currently incarcerated
or ever be incarcerated.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
My mom battled.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Addiction for a deep part of my childhood, so you know,
I had all these things weighing on me. You know,
as I'm going into leadership, and when you live in
a community, especially where you go talk to the black community,
you're dealing with a community that's been lied to often.
So when you go to them and you say, you know,
(07:19):
you want to change all these things you want to do,
you know, all these initiatives and policies and programs, they
feel like they've hurted all before. So for me, the
line I kept getting was it doesn't matter who's in leadership.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
You know, my life is still going to be the same.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
So I wanted to start with programs that, you know,
reach people at the bottom instead of the trickle down economics.
I wanted to deal with the people who are directly
facing the issues and focus on them, put them in
the forefront, and create programs and things so that you know,
their lives to be better. And at the same time,
(08:03):
you know, I had to deal with my own trauma.
I had to deal with now becoming a public figure
and having you know, a class where people are going
to bring up my brothers, They're going to bring up
you know, things that have happened in life, and you know,
it was it was tough, but I don't regret my story.
(08:24):
You know, it made me who I am and you
know I was able to lead well because of it.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Well I'm I'm I'm a little curious and this might
be a bit of a departure for us, but a
lot of what you were talking about, you know, reaching
people kind of at the bottom and having an approach,
a mentality of understanding that the people themselves are not failures.
(08:57):
There's a system in place that has taken from these people,
lied to these people, and has failed to address the
systemic reality of the oppression that continues to subjugate and
marginalize these people. And you know, once upon a time,
(09:21):
Q and I we had to explain kind of the
root cause of much of the crime that is associated
with the black community, right, And it's not necessarily pathological
in mass you know, a lot of it is just
crimes of poverty, right. And when our show first started,
(09:47):
it was, you know, during twenty twenty protest, George Floyd
all that sort of stuff, there was this concept, Hey,
if we defund the police, then we can reallocate those
fiscal resources into programs that actually are proven to reduce
crime rates. And these things seeming they might seem unrelated
(10:08):
to crime, but indeed they have a drastic impact on
crime rates and impoverished communities. And they include programs like
head start, transportation, job opportunities, et cetera. And so having
the conversation, I know that the marketing of it. Q
always says, the marketing of it was so alarming that
(10:30):
you know, people thought, defund the police, Oh my god,
we're not going to have police. But the concept, the
thinking behind it was, hey, pouring more money into police
has not made us safer, will never make us safer.
Addressing the issues that are affecting these people makes us safer.
And you've, based on what I'm reading, you've kind of
worked in a lot of these spaces, mental health spaces,
(10:52):
and as you mentioned, getting folks sort of at the
beginning or at the bottom of the rung, at the
beginning of their journey, you know, before they get too bad.
So talk a little bit about that. Maybe if some
of those concepts have worked, or maybe if they didn't work.
In your view of you know, I guess leadership.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Two specific initiatives come to mind. You know, during the
murder of George Floyd, I was, you know, taking the
reings as mayor, you know, I was became mayor of
January first of twenty twenty, and then we went into
a global pandemic, and then we went into civil unrest.
And here you have me, this, you know, young, first
(11:37):
time black mayor, and all eyes on me. And I
knew dealing with the police station system, I was gonna
catch a lot of flak. But I knew the current system,
you know, wasn't working. So what I wanted to do
is have actual programs and trainings that effect the people
(12:00):
in the community, not just you know, quiz where they
asked you a few questions and it's like, all right,
we're all.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Not racist, we're good.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
But actual trainings that officers can use and apply. And
one of the first things that we did was we
had our arresting parents in front of in front of
children training and change that whole process on how that happens.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
I also took fifteen percent out of the police budget,
which of course was not you know, didn't go over well,
it was popular at all, and we added that into
our youth programs. We also put that money to trainings.
I also hired the first you know, woman and African
(12:50):
American police chief. We wanted to make sure that while
we're changing the culture of policing where when we want
to add black and brown faces, don't want to send
them into a culture that you know, they just assimilate
with and become part of the culture that is terrorizing
the people. So, you know, that was some of the
(13:13):
moves that we made. I also spoke with this organization
called the Spark of Hudson and they introduced me to
Andrew Yang, who was running for president at one point,
and they came up with a program of universal basic
income at first, I was like when it was brought
(13:34):
to me, I was like, no, this sounds great, but
I don't want to be that mayor. It's like, oh, everybody,
you know, it's gonna get money and they're gonna do
this and this. Like I wanted to do things that
were realistic. So I went on an educational tour and
I took the community with me and learning about universal
basic income. And then we were able to launch a
(13:55):
pilot program where one hundred and fifty people in our
community even five hundred dollars a month every month for
five years. And with this, we're giving them, you know,
financial literacy education and you know, different opportunities. And this
isn't life changing money, but it's enough money where if
(14:17):
you're a person that needs to get over five hundred
dollars extra is going to help you. So initiatives like
that is what I believe strongly in investing in the people.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Who need it.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Well said, I'm gonna circle back just a bit because, well,
first off, kudos to you on the universal basic income.
We'll call it a pilot program because that whether people
like it or not, that's going to need to be
(14:51):
a conversation that we're going to have to have as
a country at some point in the near future. I'm
sure at the time when you were considering universal basic income,
we did not expect artificial intelligence to hit as quickly
as it did, nor as hard as it has. And
so you know, again, at some point this country in
the world indeed is going to have to grapple with
(15:14):
concepts that seem asinine. Universal basic income does not seem
asonine to us around here, but you know, in terms
of having that conversation, certainly with conservative minded folks, it's
to them, it's it's very much asonine. So I salute
you for that getting a program like that off the ground,
because if nothing else, the data that will come from
(15:36):
that will inform hopefully decisions that will affect you know,
you know, people into the future, and so you know,
for you, that will absolutely be your legacy. I do
want to circle back, though, because we talk a lot
on this show about police, and we talk a lot
(15:58):
about police training, and there are a handful of studies
I suspect because there can only be a handful of
studies that get funded and you know, people can like
get across the finish line, but there indeed are only
a handful of studies, but they all suggest the same thing.
(16:20):
These studies suggest that police training simply doesn't work. And
I think you kind of made this point a little
earlier in your in your previous statement saying, you know,
the simple quiz check the boxes, yes or no? Should
I do this? Should I do that? Okay, I passed,
I have a passing score. I'm not racist, and now
I don't have to, you know, take that quiz again
(16:43):
for another you know, two years or five years or
whatever recertification. Right, So, perhaps that was the sort of
training that was being monitored in these in these studies,
and again these are academic, like, university level studies that
were being performed. We shared the day on the show
plenty of times for folks who want to go back
and check. You know, it's in the archives. But the
(17:06):
one thing that we kept coming back to was that
police training didn't work. Sensitivity training didn't work, racial bias
training doesn't work. None of that stuff works in the
heat of the moment. What people have done in this
country is given a weapon to police and then sent
(17:29):
police to every single call, be it a bad guy
with a gun or a cat stuck in a tree, right,
And so you show up with a device, a contraption.
It's the only purpose, the only the only reason it
exists is to end of life. That's it. Lethal weapon indeed,
(17:51):
But that's that's it. You're not gonna like shape wood
with it. You're not going to make dinner with it.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Life.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
So in every single interaction with police across the country,
police indeed are the ones who always across the board
introduce the lethal element into the equation. Sometimes individual citizens
introduce that element, but all the time police introduce it.
(18:20):
And Brian Stevenson is a person that we look up
to around here. He's the CEO of the Equal Justice Initiative.
He has a way of framing this way of thinking.
Now he works with like you know, prison and incarceration
rates and the wrongfully incarcerated, typically black and brown populations.
(18:43):
But the thinking I think is consistent. And I hope
that you follow him here. I'd love your thoughts. He says, listen,
if we have He's basically says, there are certain things
we need to get perfect right. We cannot have any
room for error. And if there is error, then we
(19:04):
need to address it, and we need to identify the error.
And ensure that the error doesn't happen again. And so
as example is, if we have ten airplanes that take off,
and for every ten that take off, one of them crashes,
then nobody would fly and that would be unacceptable to
(19:25):
a government, to a society, to everybody. And everybody's comfortable
with that logic, right. But if you look at the
amount of police shootings that take place, if for every
nine shootings, nine times the police, or every ten times
I should say police in someone's life with their gun
(19:47):
if one of them was not entirely justified, the same
approach to policing doesn't work. And you know, our supposition
is that a lot of the silence that's surrounding police
and the error rate that they have when interacting with
(20:08):
black bodies, black and brown bodies, I should say, not
just killing people, but shooting people, abusing people, beating people up,
all that sort of stuff, right, innocent people. The reason
that there is a stunning silence surrounding that is because
of racism. Now, I want to bring this home for
you because I know that said a lot. But when
(20:29):
the data shows that police training doesn't work and the
error rate disproportionately affects black and brown bodies and there's
not much I should say, there's nothing in the way
of accountability when it comes to police. That was the
basis of the Black Lives Matter movement. Talk to me
(20:50):
and our listeners about what the training programs that you
implemented did differently or what you believed would come from
your specific iteration of police training on the ground in Hudson.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah, for me, it was important not to just announce
all this training. For me, it was important to start
to change the culture of how you look at policing
in the city of Hudson, Okay, So we looked at
it through a wide lens. We focused on our young people.
So you know, we we put in a program called
(21:28):
Handle with Care. So anytime there's an arrest where a
young kid is present, but what happen is, you know,
that kid would go to school and then he would
act out, and he would have all these things that
are going on, and he would get suspended. Teachers would
kick him out the class and do all these things,
but it wasn't getting down to the root issue of
(21:49):
what happened. Handle with Care basically, a note would go
out to the school and to the teachers and anyone
who deals with this kid, and it wouldn't have pacific information,
but it would say that this child has been involved
in a traumatic incident, handle them with care, and then
(22:09):
we would bring in the supports to help that child
deal with that. Also, we had to look at how
our police perceived the community. You know, when I first
got there and I sat down, and you know that
this was the first meeting, I was nervous about being
mayor because now I'm sitting across all of these people
(22:30):
who now work for me, who I've only known growing
up as raiding my house or erecting my family and friends,
And I wanted to say, see, like, what are we
doing in the community. Where is our impact? How are
we knowing the community and the people we're serving and protecting.
(22:51):
And one thing I noticed is like they were going
to the black parties, they were going to all of
the events around the community, but they were just standing
there like security. So for me, it's like, no, no,
we're not going to stand there with our arms crossed.
Don't show up with your weapon. You know, where your
summer uniform if it's summer, you know, the shorts and
(23:12):
the bike outfit and inn you know, get in the
dunk tank, play basketball with the kids, talk to families
because you know, the best policing is when people say,
like they know the cop on the street and he
walks to beat you know, he's doing all those things.
So we made all of our officers, you know, do that,
(23:32):
and I basically told them like, if interacting with the
community is a problem for you, you don't need to
be a policeman in my community. And then we looked
at our local jails and this is where I worked
with an organization called Greater Hudson Promised Neighborhood, who does
amazing work around incarceration. And one of the things we
(23:55):
saw was that when a parent gets arrested, they're not
just out of the picture. It's not like you caught
this quote unquote bad guy. Like this effects an entire family.
So we would watch the visits and you know, kids
would have to see their parent between a glass. You know,
(24:17):
they weren't able to hug them, they weren't able to
you know, read with them.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
So we created this and enhance visit.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Program, which Promised Neighborhood took to another level that was amazing.
You know, they do great work, but the kids were
able to see their parents and come in there and
hug them, sit on their lap, play.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Games with them in an open room, and not.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Have to feel like, you know, there's all these people
with guns around them, and you know they have to
be nervous. But we wanted that parent to still feel
part of the community, part of the family.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
You know.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
We had tutoring sessions where they were you know, helping
kids with homework and all of that, and so, like
we wanted to look at the whole picture. And part
of that also meant if we have some officers who
you know, are seen as bad officers, then we have
(25:16):
to pinpoint who they are and get them out of
our community. We know, body cameras are great, which I
also initiated. Every cop has to have you know, body
armor and you know body camera. I mean, but that
also doesn't tell the whole picture because a lot of
times when we see these atrocities that happen, you know
(25:37):
they're from bodycam footage.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
So we wanted to.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Make sure our officers have a relationship with the community
that they're protecting.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I appreciate that response. I know that, and you probably
know this better than most folks, But I know that
governments tend to move very slowly when it comes to
progress in the scale of a lifetime of a person.
Right the country's government systems, they move very slowly. And
(26:11):
so it looks like programs that you just suggested and
initiatives that you just suggested. So my hat's off to you,
because even though that sounds like very obvious, I'm sure
that was a ton of work to get that off
the ground, to get people to participate, change their thinking,
and you know, that's moving in the right direction. And
(26:37):
reasonable people, reasonable black people, reasonable activists, people like that
understand that progress takes time. It just takes time of
you and your grandfathers and your children, and it takes
everybody's start, but it does take time. And so again,
hats off to you. We're going to break in a
couple of minutes, but I want to ask you another
(26:57):
question before we go. You've talked openly about, you know,
trauma and leadership, so it talk to us a little
bit more how to unresolve childhood experiences show up in
adults who maybe appear successful on the outside. And I'm
guessing that this is something that you can speak to personally.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, definitely, you know, when you're in the business of
community work, you know, whenever the phone rings, nine times
out of ten, it's bad news. It's somebody needing help,
someone needing support, maybe they're being evicted. And for me,
dealing with these issues, and like you said, government moves
(27:37):
very slow. So you know, I faced fiction before, and
I've had to look at my family when you know,
they post that notice on the door. So for me,
I wanted to fix things right away, but their process
for getting people help was so long that we ended
up having to create other initiatives to move things along.
(27:58):
And then with me being the first African American and
being thirty four at the time, and people saying he's
too young, he's in experience, he's all of these things,
you become kind of the martyr, like whatever you do,
it's gonna be passed.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
On to the next generation.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
So if I don't do a good job, it's gonna
be ten times harder, you know, for the next person
who's of color that wants to run for mayor or
any city wide race. And in my community and in
our county, it was unheard of for somebody young and
(28:40):
black to be at the helm. So dealing with that
and also dealing with life that doesn't stop.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Life doesn't stop.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Because you know, you take a place in leadership. So
I remember one time my younger brother got arrested and
the media posted my picture on the newspaper as if
I was arrested, And you still have to come in
front of the people and lead. You still have to,
you know, deal with the trauma that you know your
(29:10):
brother is going to be going through a long system
that's going to be unfair to him. But also at
the same time you with the show face and be
someone that's going to talk to the people and stand strong.
And then you also have to go home and be
a parent.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
So you know, all of.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Those things combined, it was It's tough. It's tough, especially
on black leaders.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah, yeah, we we know that well around here. We
work closely with a lot of black leaders around the country,
and it's one of the things that we do understand.
But you know, kudos to you for making it through
all that and still got your head up high. So
(29:54):
we're going to come back with more with Mayor Kamal
Johnson after these message Juice though, stay tune
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