Candidates for Mayor - take a look!

On February 28th Chicago residents (or a very small percent of them) will elect a new Mayor, or re-elect the current one.  Here's one website with a list of candidates. 

The only candidate I have had much interaction with is Paul Vallas, who was very supportive of the Tutor/Mentor Connection in the mid 1990s when he was CEO of Chicago Public Schools.  He spoke at two of our conferences and one, or two, of our Aug/Sept Citywide Tutor/Mentor Volunteer-Recruitment Campaigns.

So you'd think I would be endorsing him.  I'm not.  He's had 20 years to follow what I write on this blog and incorporate the ideas into his own leadership and I've not seen evidence of that 

Of course, I've not seen indicators that past Mayors or candidates have borrowed my ideas either, although if you browse through this set of articles you'll see that I've been sharing them for many years since starting this blog in 2005. Prior to that I shared them in print newsletters. 

I've participated in the current Mayor's MyChiMyFuture meetings and shared ideas. I like the map they have created. They could be doing more.  No one has asked to learn more from me. 

How would you know if they were borrowing these ideas? You'd see a version of this concept map on their own website.  

Here's one article they could read to understand what this map is showing.  If they adopted this strategy they'd be doing three things regularly.

1) recruiting other leaders to also adopt the strategy map and its commitments

2) support the four-part strategy (see middle node on the map).  This article describes the 4-part strategy.

3) they'd be reading current and past articles and encouraging others to do the same, just like a preacher in a religious group or a teacher in a classroom.  In doing so they'd find many graphics that visualize the commitment they would be making. 

They would emphasize a long-term birth-to-work strategy that has roots in every high poverty neighborhood.

They would be calling for a "learning distribution system" that reach kids in school and non-school hours, and on the Internet.

They would be using their public visibility to draw volunteers and DONORs directly to websites of youth serving programs to offer on-going support.  They would be filling the blue box in the middle of this graphic, drawing "people who can help" to information they can use to locate places in neighborhoods where help is needed. 

Every day they would be challenging the residents of the city and suburbs, asking "How can we do this better?"

It's not enough that they might put these ideas on their campaign website.  They should have a personal and/or organizational blog that shows they have been sharing this commitment and performing these actions for many years.

I'd vote for someone who demonstrated this leadership and these ideas.
(While my focus has been on the city of Chicago and I lived in Rogers Park for 17 years, and led a tutor/mentor program serving kids in Cabrini-Green for 35 years, I currently live in Arlington Heights, so cannot vote in the Chicago election.)

But this message is aimed at potential Mayors of any big city in America.  View this map in this article.

The map shown above is from a Brookings Metro report.  Highlighted are metro areas with concentrations of  poverty.  Each of these cities could use the map/information-based strategy I've piloted since 1993.

It's available for FREE.

Of course, I'd be happy to help anyone understand what I'm proposing and guide you through the ideas I've been sharing on this blog and on the www.tutormentorexchange.net website. 

One of my first recommendations would be to set up a student-learning program in high schools and colleges, where students spend time reading articles then sharing them using various media tools.  View this blog to see how interns did this between 2006 and 2015. 

Thanks for reading. If you're helping someone run for office, share this with them.  Maybe they will adopt the ideas, even if they don't win in 2023.  

I'm on Twitter (still) and other social media platforms (click here for list). Let's connect. 

If you want to help me keep sharing these ideas and hosting my library please visit my Fund T/MI page and send a contribution.