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Pete Buttigieg on Welfare & Poverty
Democratic Presidential Challenger; IN Mayor
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Every religion says we should care for our neighbors
Q: In Indiana, only 51% of people believe that human activity is the reason for climate change. What would say to the people who say, "I'm not so sure about this?"BUTTIGIEG: Let's talk in language that is understood across the heartland about faith.
If you believe that God is watching as poison is being belched into the air of creation, and people are being harmed by it, countries are at risk of vanishing in low-lying areas, what do you suppose God think of that? I bet he thinks it's messed up.
You don't have to be religious to see the moral dimensions of this, because, frankly, every religious and non-religious moral tradition tells us that we have some responsibility of stewardship, some responsibility for taking care of what's around us,
not to mention taking care of our neighbor. And eventually it gets to the point where this is more about specific people suffering specific harm because of what we're doing right now. At least one way of talking about this is that it's a kind of sin.
Source: CNN Climate Crisis Town Hall marathon (10 Democrats)
, Sep 4, 2019
Scripture is about protecting the stranger and the poor
Buttigieg played to the Democratic crowd at South-by-Southwest, answering questions with a series of attacks on Vice President Mike Pence, a man he worked with when the VP was the governor of Indiana. "How would he allow himself to become the
cheerleader for the porn star presidency? Is it that he stopped believing in scripture when he started believing Donald Trump?" Buttigieg asked.
The comment was direct and combative for the mayor, but his calm delivery seemed to blunt the attack. "His interpretation of scripture is pretty different than mine to begin with," Buttigieg said. "My understanding of scripture is that it's about
protecting the stranger and the prisoner and the poor person and that idea. That's what I get in the gospel when I'm at church and his has a lot more to do with sexuality."
Source: CNN KFile on 2019 SXSW conference in Austin
, Mar 11, 2019
1000 Homes in 1000 Days: repair or demolish abandoned homes
During his first term, Buttigieg introduced the 1000 Homes in 1000 Days initiative, which demolished or repaired abandoned homes throughout South Bend. During his second term he constructed safer, more appealing "Smart Streets"
as part of downtown placemaking, and in 2017 announced the largest investment to parks and trails in the city's history.
Source: Mayoral website press release, SouthBendIN.gov
, Mar 1, 2019
Deal with 1,000 abandoned buildings in 1,000 days
I committed publicity to confront 1,000 vacant and abandoned houses in 1,000 days. It would become one of the defining projects of my administration, but it also had the potential to be my most visible disappointment. Previous administrations had torn
down hundreds, but never seemed to get ahead of the contagion of blight. By the time I was campaigning for mayor, it was the number-one issue we heard about when knocking on doors and making phone calls. Despite years of work and millions of dollars,
there always seemed to be more houses than the city could deal with--so many that when I first took office, no one could confirm how many we even had. Soon after taking office I convened a task force, which spent a year analyzing the problem. The
result was an extensive report. But I was also fearful that we had just done one more exercise in describing the problem, without actually solving it. So, a goal of childlike simplicity: "Let's promise to deal with a thousand houses in a thousand days."
Source: Shortest Way Home, by Pete Buttigieg, p.167-9
, Feb 12, 2019
Public scoreboard showing progress on 1,000 abandoned homes
To actually fix the problem of abandoned houses, [I said publicly], "Let's promise to deal with 1,000 houses in 1,000 days." I added that we should create a real-time online scoreboard to update how many houses we had fixed, demolished, or failed to deal
with I began to understand the difference between my job and everyone else's. The experts could identify the legal tools for addressing neglected property. The council could allocate funds for dealing with the problem. But only a mayor could furnish
the political capital to get the project done, by publicly committing to a goal and owning the risk of missing it.
Checking our website on Day 500, you would have seen that we had nowhere near having 500 houses addressed. By the 1000th day, our
community had addressed not just 1,000, but over 1,100 homes. Hitting such an ambitious goal made it easier for residents to believe we could do very difficult things as a city at a time when civic confidence had been in short supply for decades.
Source: Shortest Way Home, by Pete Buttigieg, p.169-70
, Feb 12, 2019
Page last updated: Dec 29, 2019