Refining Self Through Service
i was blessed to grow up in a very
interesting time i grew up in the 60s
a time that is a lot like it is now we
had the civil rights movement we had the
vietnam
war we had a cultural revolution marches
and protests were about as common
as every day pretty much like it is
today
families friends racists
the entire nation was divided against
itself and there were very few people
who were bridging the gulf
i was also an anomaly i was a black kid
living in a black neighborhood some
might call it to ghetto
it was really a tight-knit working-class
poor family enclave
i was the only black male in my high
school for the entire four years
and for the for two years of that time
there was only one other
african-american person and that was a
woman who transferred in
in our junior year now neither the
people in my high school
nor all the people in my neighborhood
were totally comfortable with my
personal situation
at the end of the day however i was left
kind of questioning
why am i in this odd circumstance
i often wonder do i have to choose to be
on one side of this line
or the other as a result
i was fluent i learned to kind of roll
with the circumstances and the
situations as they arose but at the core
i actually kind of knew who i was
i was certainly a hippie i wore the
clothes
i sing the songs i was a good band mate
lead singer and a popular band and open
for jefferson airplane
i was a good and curious student didn’t
study much but somehow got by pretty
well
but i was also a black person living in
a wide world
i knew i wanted to be engaged somehow to
try to resolve some of the issues that
were floating around during that time
frame politics was an option but i not
one that i thought about seriously
my question was how could i actually
accomplish something that was meaningful
that would help solve some of the
problems that we had in front of us
but before i could get to that i had to
solve one little problem and that was
i was about to get drafted every week
i call the draft board and find out what
number they’re on
when they started getting close to my
number i knew i had to do something and
i knew it was time to
move on so i became a joiner i joined
the marine corps
i joined the marine corps because my
father had been a marine and
like a lot of parents you know who talk
to you about the music that you listen
to remember the statements uh that’s not
real music the music i grew up with was
real music
well when my father talked about the
marine corps he talked about the old
core the core that was hard rough and
turned people into rocks
but i wanted to prove that i could do
what he did so i enlisted for four years
because
i i was told and i learned that by
enlisting for four years
i cut my chances of going to vietnam
after being drafted for two years by 50
percent
and face it they have the best looking
uniforms anyhow so i wanted to look
sharp
but i found that the marine corps was
one of the most foundational things that
took place in my life
i learned there what was truly important
you know there’s something about being
faced with life-and-death decisions
life-and-death issues that kind of makes
all those other differences seem
somewhat trivial
after all who really cares whether
you’re jewish or
catholic or protestant black or white
whatever who cares when there’s bullets
flying
and you really have to do something to
protect yourself and live
at that point in time all you really
care about
is this the person in the foxhole next
to you gonna watch my back
are they able to shoot straight are they
willing to do
whatever is necessary to overcome
if i’m hurt are they going to help me
because if i’m
there in their place and they’re hurt
i’m sure going to try to help them
when you have those types of decisions
the issues of race religion geography
republican democrat all of those things
they become as nothing
they don’t mean anything because they’re
not on the hierarchy of priorities at
that time
i also learned one of the most
foundational things in my life a very
short slogan
improvise adapt and overcome
because in the marine corps we knew that
you could have the world’s best plan
but once the bullets and the bombs
started falling those plans went out the
door and you had to improvise
you had to adapt to the change
circumstances and you had to overcome
the adversity
i added that to the other great saying
that i learned in my life i learned from
my father
you can’t go wrong by doing right
very simple thing but between those two
things
those were the things that guided me
through some of the toughest parts of my
life
to get by when things weren’t working
out the way that i wanted to i learned
to improvise adapt and
overcome when i had a choice to make
should i do what i want to do should i
do what i should do should i do what
needs to be done
you can’t go wrong by doing right
and one of the things that i learned is
that when you are in the service of
others
and when you are dedicating your life to
someone else
for some short period of time that is
what is meant
by living so one of the things in my
the biggest professional honor i ever
had was to be mayor of
kansas city i learned during that time
that the ability of government to solve
chronic problems with sustainable
solutions is really limited
government is really meant to deliver
services to protect
to make sure the streets work the water
flows
the trees are trimmed taxes are
collected
pick up the trash shovel the snow those
are the things that government is best
at but government is called upon by the
citizenry to do more
government is often looked at as a place
to solve social problems
social problems are much more emotional
much more individual based in religion
often
government is not well suited to do that
however
there are people who can work directly
with individuals
directly with causes be on the ground
engage with others in some way in some
direct way
and have a direct impact on the lives of
the people that you’re engaged with
now people often ask me what was the
most significant accomplishment during
my time
as mayor during my time the thing i
thought was most significant
was our focus on education and we focus
on education because it is foundational
to the things of that will help bring
hope and
opportunity and change to an
individual’s life
so where to start how about at the
beginning
right now it seems that we always attack
problems when they arise and at the end
what we really should be doing is
attacking them at the beginning so they
never rise in the first place
we should be dedicating more money more
resources more time more
talent more effort to the ages of zero
to five in our children why because 85
percent of their brains are formed by
the time that they’re three
at the age of three children born in
poverty have a 30 million word
gap between their counterparts born in
more middle class
or affluent circumstances 30 million
words
kids born in poverty with that 30
million word gap often enter
kindergarten at the age of five
two years behind how can you be two
years behind
anybody at the age of five
what do we do about that how do we help
what are the services we can bring to
people that will help change their lives
how about quality child care that will
help parents
certainly now quality child care would
be helpful wouldn’t it
we engage in a systems thinking approach
because quality child care not only
helps the parents
it helps the economy because then a
group that is
largely overlooked in this type of a
circumstance women
women are the ones who are often stuck
with the issue of if somebody has to
stay home to take care of the children
who’s it going to be it’s usually the
woman not the man
if somebody has to sacrifice a career
for family it’s usually the woman not
the man
but with quality child care a woman can
pursue her dreams
pursue her career get out in the
workforce and do the things that are
important to her
just like any man and we can do that
with quality child care
quality pre-k to help eliminate that 30
million word gap
to prepare kids to enter kindergarten on
an equal basis
to give them the basic tools that they
need so that they are reading
proficiently by the age of three
by the third grade because up to third
grade you’re learning to read
from third grade on your reading to
learn and it’s very important that you
hit that third grade proficiency marker
because one thing that we do know kids
that are not proficient readers as they
enter the fourth grade
75 percent never catch up the most
prevalent reading level in prison is
fourth grade
all sorts of people start to fall slowly
off of a long
slow sloping cliff at third grade
because of reading
one of the things that led me to the
educational issue was the fact that
i have children myself my parents stress
education
as if it was the golden grill and for me
it was actually
but the other thing about it is is that
as the mayor i was charged with
representing the interest not just the
immediate interest but the long-term
interests
of 480 000 people we needed people who
would be able to
get into the workforce in an
increasingly technological world
and as i looked around and saw what was
going on it became increasingly clear to
me that that simply wasn’t
happening and i also looked around and
found that there were whole segments of
our population
poor brown black women that were being
left out of the economic
engines of this country so we had to
start looking at working long term
finding a sustainable solution to a
chronic problem
now we did that with an interplay with a
public-private partnership if you will
of government
and private parties foundations people
who were willing to volunteer time
to spend time with children we recognize
that by doing so we would have an impact
on the long-term chronic issues of crime
poverty earnings lifetime longevity
opportunity tribalism
education is the way that a lot of us
for the first time in our lives
come into contact with people who aren’t
like us
so the more education you can get the
more exposure you have the more exposure
you have the more open-minded you should
become
the more open-minded you become
the better you are able to accept
differences
and in this world today the ability to
accept differences
is absolutely crucial
it was only when i truly learned the
value of serving others that i was able
to refine
self now i like me
i don’t think i’m an evil person i’m not
a perfect person by any stretch but i
like me
and i recognize that the me that i like
today
is only here because of the experiences
i had yesterday the day before
years before that i wouldn’t trade any
of those things
i don’t look back with regrets i look
back sometimes with fondness and i look
back and say gee i wish i had handled
that better
but at the end of the day but for those
things that i did and didn’t do
i wouldn’t be here today i also found
out something
when i was serving others i got more
from
than i gave to the real insight to me
is where myself became more refined is
in knowing
that there are basic goals basic needs
and wants that we
all have regardless of who we are
and regardless of how of those things
that we would use
to separate us and make us different
we’re more likely to meet
the goals and the needs of people and
the once
if we understand the free concept of
self-help
and her service to others working with
government we can find ways to
achieve the refinement itself through
service
takes place when we work with others
when we learn to see ourselves through
their eyes
and when we see and when they see us
through theirs
that’s when we learn who we are and
that’s
how we learn our place in the community
of citizens thank you very much