“I graduated from college in 1968,” said the Honorable Henry Cisneros, RPA’s 2020 Zuccotti Award recipient. “This is beginning to feel like 1968…a pandemic, an economic turndown, protests across America. The question is, do we allow those things to separate us?”
During the 2020 RPA Assembly on June 3, RPA presented the highest award for leadership in the tri-state region to Mr. Cisneros, a transformative leader in affordable housing and a former Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Cisneros and Judy Woodruff, Managing Editor and Anchor of PBS NewsHour, struck a resonant chord with a captivating interview about the state of the nation, racism, infrastructure, leadership, and our path forward.
“Are people willing to listen to different leaders now? These things keep happening,” Woodruff asked, referring to May 25 when police officers killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN, and to the long history of police violence against Black Americans in the United States. “Are we ready now, finally in 2020, to listen in a way that we haven’t listened before?”
“It’s an interesting thing about leadership, how it can move the needle,” Cisneros responded. “At key times in American history we listened to different kinds of voices, like Dr. King for example or President Obama. Are we prepared to listen? I do believe we are, particularly our young people. They’re ready to be spoken to in the language that brings people together and creates a better vision for the direction of the country.”
Cisneros described how the thread of inequality weaves through the three cascading crises facing the nation: the COVID-19 pandemic, the severe economic downturn, and the protests and civil unrest in response to George Floyd’s murder. “In Chicago, despite the fact that African Americans make up 33% of the population, they accounted for 70% of COVID-19 deaths. In Michigan, African Americans make up 14% of the population but accounted for 40% of the deaths. What is the unfairness that makes that a reality?”
Cisneros pointed to historical disinvestment in Black communities which has led to a lack of access to medical care, high rates of underlying illnesses, and high percentages of people in essential industries. The solutions he floated later in the conversation were grounded in this recognition of inequality.
We have to think of our cities as the platform from which we’ll build a more equitable society.”
Infrastructure spending is a “proven instrument” for economic growth, Cisneros suggested, and the right investments can advance equity while driving our economic recovery. He urged us all to apply an equity lens to infrastructure investments by prioritizing social infrastructure like broadband networks, hospitals, and community colleges.
Cisneros worked in all 50 states and more than 200 cities as HUD Secretary during the Clinton years. Pulling from this experience, he stressed the fundamental importance of housing by describing it as the sine qua non for education, gainful employment, and health. Woodruff, who has been reporting on national politics for decades, remarked that despite its importance, “housing always seems to get pushed to the back of the list in Washington.”
“Yes,” replied Cisneros with a chuckle. “HUD secretaries always have to make an effort to get just a sentence on housing into the State of the Union speech.”
The Zuccotti Award was presented by Howard Milstein, a close friend and colleague of John Zuccotti. Among myriad other roles, Zuccotti was a first Deputy Mayor of New York City, a long-serving member of the RPA Board of Directors and Executive Committee, and “a builder of relationships, friendships, businesses, foundations, and yes a builder of cities,” as Milstein described him. “He was simply Mr. New York.”
Mr. Cisneros carries on the weighty civic legacy of Mr. Zuccotti. We are grateful that he and Judy Woodruff could use this opportunity to speak with passion and clarity about the future of our region and our nation during this critical inflection point. Watch the full conversation here.
