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ICYMI, John: Brad just launched his new Substack newsletter, the Lander Lens [[link removed]] . Read Brad’s first Substack post about MLK Day and fighting for solidarity dividends below:

Martin Luther King Day this year was obviously darkened by the inauguration of a racist, anti-democratic President set on taking our country backward to times of bigotry.

But the beauty of Dr. King’s words and actions is that so often, they are applicable to modern times — and even now, they can help propel us through dark moments. In an address in 1967, he said:

Yes, the hour is dark. Ever since the birth of our nation, White America has had a schizophrenic personality on the question of race, she has been torn between selves. A self in which she proudly professes the great principle of democracy, and a self in which she madly practices the antithesis of democracy.

This tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence, causing America to take a step backwards simultaneously with every step forward on the question of racial justice.

The step backwards has a new name today, it is called the white backlash, but the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there.

Dr. King foresaw “backlash” moments like this. He understood the prejudices, hostilities, and ambulances that have fueled the rise of Donald Trump.

In her excellent book, The Sum of Us , Heather McGhee writes about how white Southerners, caught in the trap of white backlash when they were ordered to integrate, closed, filled in, and buried their own cities’ public swimming pools, rather than share them with the Black neighbors.

She calls this zero-sum reaction “drained pool politics” – draining the reservoirs of public goods and services that make our lives in common possible – and shows how it makes everyone more miserable.

In recent years, I fear we’ve been practicing a kind of “drained pool politics” on both sides of our divides. Trump has, of course, continued to weaponize grievance, and sought to use it to cut public resources for health care, housing, and education.

But even in our blue cities, we’ve too often drained the pools as well. Sometimes by cutting resources to libraries, parks, and schools – as Eric Adams has done needlessly, and had the gall to blame asylum-seekers for it.

Many times, though, we’ve damaged our public systems by failing to run them well. Leaving public housing residents in towers without elevators. Letting our subways deteriorate. Closing psychiatric hospitals without providing services in communities. Failing to build enough new housing, a zero-sum approach that has caused rents to skyrocket.

When we fail to deliver on the affordable housing, child care, safety, good schools, good jobs, good parks and yes public swimming pools that everyone deserves, we make people miserable and angry. Miserable enough, angry enough, in too many cases, to vote for the charlatan being sworn in today.

Where do we go from here?

We must not step back from Dr. King’s fight for racial justice. But we must also do more to make sure that government delivers, broadly and effectively, on its promises.

Even in dark times, Dr. King never lost hope. He insisted that there is a way forward that can both confront racial injustice and build an America that would thrive for everyone. He saw that racial and economic justice go hand in hand, that workers need to be paid a living wage, that they have a right to organize and join a union.

He also understood that —while the right has tried to demonize and misconstrue these efforts for cynical, political gain — work for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) not only works to expand opportunities to those who are underrepresented, but can go along with systems that serve everyone better.

Heather McGhee calls this idea a “solidarity dividend.”

I’m pleased to report that in the Comptroller’s office, we’ve been earning solidarity dividends. As we carefully consider pension fund investments to guarantee the retirement security of our teachers, cops, and fire-fighters, as part of our effort to mitigate risk and boost returns, we’ve diversified our team of asset managers, which have too long been overwhelmingly owned by white men.

During my tenure as Comptroller, the City’s pension funds investments with Black, Latino, Asian, and women-owned asset managers have increased by 37%.

And here’s the beautiful thing: our MWBE managers have outperformed their benchmarks by 5%. Investment firms owned by people of color and women are among the pension funds’ best performing managers. They have contributed to our funds’ strong performance, which last year saved taxpayers $1.8 billion.

That’s money New York City has to invest in affordable housing, schools, social services, parks and pools. Indeed, at the same time, we’ve made the biggest investments in affordable housing in the history of the Comptroller’s office.

In increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion, we have improved performance, with the benefits shared by all those teachers, cops, firefighters, secretaries, and school crossing guards who rely on us.

In other words, we’ve earned solidarity dividends. So we won’t be retreating from those policies of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), even if Donald Trump issues executive orders against it.

That’s the model we need to bring into this grim new era, more resolutely than ever.

In the coming days, we must stand up for our values – to fight back when Trump tries to deport our immigrant neighbors, or roll back abortion access.

But we also need to do better as a city at living up to our values. We need to show New Yorkers that governing with attention both to justice and to effective outcomes works better for them.

We need a solidarity dividend in housing.

We need a solidarity dividend in our subways.

We need a solidarity dividend in our schools.

At this dark moment, we are called to fight both fiercely and effectively to protect our neighbors, our communities, and our city – to earn those solidarity dividends – propelled forward by what Dr. King called “the fierce urgency of now.”

- Brad

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