JUNE 2021 NEWSLETTER

Friends,
 
Last week was the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s horrific public murder. On that anniversary, Bloomington launched a Future of Policing task force. By several measures, our police department is among the most progressive in the country, but we all must be committed to ongoing efforts to keep improving. This diverse group of local residents will recommend how to build even better community safety and how to enhance relations among our public safety officers, residents and visitors.
 
Yesterday was the 100-year anniversary of the worst race riot in American history, when white residents of Tulsa attacked and murdered hundreds of their Black neighbors. That city is still dealing with that legacy. Aren’t we all in our own ways and with our own histories?
 
Making Bloomington more diverse and more inclusive must be a constant priority. Like many hard issues -- homelessness or affordable housing, poverty, climate and economic justice, for example -- institutional racism is complex, pernicious, and hard to solve. Simple solutions are usually wrong. Long-term, multi-layered approaches are needed.
 
I believe Bloomington at our best embraces these challenges. Among other things, this has gotten us:

• the STRIDE Center to divert people in crisis away from our jail and into our social services;

• Crawford Homes and the new Kinser Flats developments providing permanent housing for people experiencing chronic homelessness;

• the Divided Communities Project to engage with racial injustice in our community;

• CDFI Friendly Bloomington to bring in long-term new money to address economic and social disparities;

• the new Climate Action Plan setting specific goals for our community; and

• the Recover Forward program to advance justice of all kinds as we emerge from the pandemic.

Still in front of us is the extraordinary American Rescue Plan, and how the city and county will allocate about $50 million of one-time funding to advance our community. Annexation will determine political boundaries and participation – and important dynamics in coming decades. And in case you missed it, also in front of us is the question whether Bloomington ought to invest in a state-of-the-art performance arts center for our inspiring local arts scene.
 
Life is complicated, with myriad choices and trade-offs. Thanks for getting involved in all the civic complexities of the day. Together we make better choices, and we make a better future.
 
Please, let’s all get vaccinated. Thanks to IU for their decision.
 
Democratically yours,
 
John
 
P.S.  I hope you got a chance to thank a veteran on Memorial Day yesterday. We owe our freedoms and liberty to all those who sacrificed and continue to sacrifice to protect our country.
 
P.P.S. If you get a chance, consider joining Thursday afternoon this week for the groundbreaking of the new 7-Line – a great part of our Bicentennial gift to the future.

MAY 2021 NEWSLETTER

Friends,

Spring is here, and isn’t it sweet to see flowers and greenery and feel the warmth? And the company of friends and family again!? Being fully vaccinated, Dawn and I have safely gathered with small groups of other fully vaccinated folks for a meal, or just a conversation – in person, without masks, outside. What a joy and restoring of some pre-pandemic normalcies. 

If you or yours haven’t yet, PLEASE get vaccinated so you can safely join in, and help us all defeat this pandemic. We have a ways to go still – vaccination slots are going unfilled as too many people are declining the protection. Coming weeks will be critical in advancing our herd immunity. 

An update this month on three other things in front of our community:

• American Rescue Plan Act – The $50 million arriving locally from the federal rescue package is a tremendous opportunity to advance our community. We just had a meeting with City Council to begin conversations about how best to invest these one-time funds. I expect we’ll be able to make major headway on addressing chronic homelessness and other housing insecurities. To invest in jobs and the arts and social services. To accelerate work on climate change and inclusion, with public infrastructure and energy-related programs. We’re coordinating with the county and the state to identify ways to invest together too. Please join in the upcoming conversations with your ideas for the city or county.

• Zoning – New maps and zoning rules for Bloomington are in front of City Council. Much is already approved – like defining student housing areas close to IU campus for new investments in major undergraduate housing, or incentives for more affordable housing and energy efficiency in new buildings. The biggest issue of contention is whether and how to allow changes in single-family housing zones, the bulk of our land parcels. City planning experts and the resident-led Plan Commission have supported loosening regulations to allow some duplexes to be built (or converted) in single-family areas, and to identify some specific corridors where other “missing middle” housing like triplexes or tiny-home villages could be built. Some residents believe that such a loosening threatens to deteriorate (or even destroy) their neighborhoods. Others support it as allowing more people to benefit from great neighborhoods. Contentious debates continue, in some ways feeling generational. The City Council appears closely divided. I expect the Council to land somewhere in the middle, and to allow evolution of our neighborhoods, but not revolution. Incremental change feels right to me, to advance inclusion and access while protecting what we all love about our city. Get more info here, and stay tuned for Council action in coming days.

• Annexation – With City Council, we are resuming the annexation process that was illegally interrupted in 2017 by the State Legislature and the Governor. It’s very frustrating that all this would have been done by now, except that the radical state Republicans unconstitutionally ordered us (and only us) to stop a normal and legal annexation process. Now, after 4 years of litigation and the Indiana Supreme Court chastising the legislature and affirming our right to proceed, we’ll pick up where we left off. The bottom line is that cities have to grow their boundaries over time to stay healthy and vibrant. Bloomington did so many times for our first 185 years (or else we’d have a city the size of six blocks!), but the previous administration stopped progressing on this front: we’ll have gone 20 years without any expansions, while population and neighborhoods have grown all around us. This leads to illogical and inefficient public services – like sanitation trucks bypassing unannexed houses, lifting snow plows while driving unannexed streets, or leaving apartment buildings uninspected for safety – and perhaps more importantly, stops us from being one community, discussing and voting on our future choices and representatives as an integrated, inclusive city. Get info and share ideas here and look for public discussions in the coming months, with Council decisions on future boundaries expected by September.

Each of these important topics will involve civic debate and, no doubt, different views. I hope for and encourage respectful dialogue, without name calling or demonizing. Vigorous advocacy, absolutely, but also respectful listening and compromising: that’s a democracy. If we lose a vote, we get back up and work for the outcome we seek next time. That’s democracy. 

Democratically yours,

John

P.S.  If you get a chance, we encourage you to fill out a city survey to share your views on our beloved Bloomington. Go online here, and let us know what you think.

APRIL 2021 NEWSLETTER

Friends,

A short-term worry and a long-term wish are front of mind right now.

Short term: I’m very worried about the pandemic, again. We seem in a race between the vaccines and the variants. As fast as the vaccines arrive, we’re getting them into arms. But we have a long way to go. And I’m worried that within a few weeks we’ll have more vaccine than people willing to get the shots. In the meantime, variants of the virus are spreading, and the longer they stick around, without herd immunity, the greater risk of another surge. Check out HERE what’s happening in our neighbor Michigan right now: a six-fold increase in daily cases in the past month or so.

I hope and expect we’ll keep local controls in place for a while longer, even though the Governor is very unwisely loosening up while our state's numbers deteriorate. We’ll also keep offering our $100 wellness benefit to all City employees who get vaccinated. It’s good for them, our workforce, and our community.

Long-term: I’m hopeful for transformational progress, as we invest the $50 million arriving soon locally from the American Rescue Plan Act. This really is a huge deal – this amount of one-time money for our city and county governments is unprecedented. We need seriously to engage with each other and determine the best ways to invest this over the next year or two, to help our people, and to accelerate our better future. Inclusion and sustainability are central themes to me, as we seek to improve quality of life for current and future residents.

If you add in the prospect of a $2 trillion national infrastructure package, well, you’re talking potential generational impact like the New Deal or the Great Society, if we act wisely. That’s my long-term wish: that here at the present moment, we join in a pivot for our country and a Build Back Better momentum that will carry on for many years.

If anyone says elections don’t matter; the parties are the same; what difference does it make? Just remember how close the presidential election was – just a few tens of thousands of Americans voting differently in key states and Trump is reelected. And similarly, if just a handful of Georgia voters chose differently, no rescue package and likely no major infrastructure bill through the Senate.

So, I’m worried about the pandemic in the short-term, but I’m full of hope for the long-term. Please do your part for both: get vaccinated as soon as you can, and keep hope alive as we pivot into our next chapter. Thanks for all you do for each other and for Bloomington.

Democratically yours,

John

P.S. In case you missed it, Bloomington was recently named Indiana’s “Rising Tech City,” which you can read about HERE. I do believe our future is bright if we do things right.

MARCH 2021 NEWSLETTER

riends,

I'm sorry that this month’s message is a bit delayed: it’s been a rough couple of weeks. I lost my father, Richard Emerson Hamilton, on February 22nd, after a wonderful life of 93+ years. Dawn and I were at his side as he passed over peacefully. Two days later, our friends and colleagues Jim and Doris Sims lost their daughter Camisha, in hospice after cancer treatments ended. And a week later we lost a fellow City employee, Kevin Curran, in an automobile accident. That all stressed our wider family at home and at work, and I know we’ve all appreciated the expressions of support and care. Thank you all.

In the interim, we had the sixth State of the City of my administration, “Remember, Recover, Renew,” to outline where we’ve been during the wrenching 2020, and where we are headed. You can watch the event here.

With all this going on, let me just take a breath and emphasize two very positive things happening in Bloomington right now:

First, it’s good to have Democrats leading in Washington DC. The American Rescue Plan Act is incredibly important and helpful. It is predicted to reduce child poverty by half in our country. Think about that, and what that that means to millions of children and families. It also will bring very real dollars directly to our community, to let us invest in our future – each others’ future. And much more. Elections matter, and this past one mattered a great deal (including the Georgia run-offs). You can get details of what the Act means here.

Second, I was very pleased to announce last week that Don Griffin, Jr. will be joining our administration as Bloomington’s next Deputy Mayor. I’ve known Don for years, and I’m just totally jazzed about working together in the coming years on behalf of our community. Don brings fantastic energy and commitment to our whole community, experience throughout our city, neighborhood by neighborhood, as well as loads of civic leadership and engagement on issues of civil rights, economic equity, arts, education, and more. It’s a great new chapter he’ll help write, starting next month. You can read the press release announcing Don’s plans here.

The past weeks remind us how much we depend on each other and how connected we all are, now and in the future. I look forward to continuing the steady, challenging work of helping Bloomington and all our people make progress each day, each week, each year.

Thanks for all you do for each other and for Bloomington,

Democratically yours,

John

P.S. Please enjoy and honor Women’s History Month in March. Check out events here.

FEBRUARY 2021 NEWSLETTER

Friends,

It feels like we’re living in a country song, with a chorus that might go “I can’t tell if things are fallin’ into place . . . or just fallin’ to pieces.”

On January 20th we welcomed President Biden and Vice President Harris to office: competent, honest, committed public servants. On January 5th we won two (!) Georgia Senate seats, adding control of the Senate to the House and White House. But in between was the sickening storming of the US Capitol and attempted coup on January 6th, not to mention the ongoing crazy disinformation being spread and the unfathomable beliefs of millions of Americans.

Are things falling into place? America elects a demagogue President in 2016, after foreign interference in the election and despite his losing the popular vote. But then the Democrats regain control of the House in 2018, and of the Senate and the Presidency in 2020. We focus on equity and climate and recovery and progress for the next generation, and the 2020s are viewed as a turning point to the new century of progress.

Or are things falling into pieces? America elects a demagogue President in 2016, who is impeached twice and loses re-election, but the movement lives on. A politics of resentment, of tax cuts for the rich, anti-immigration, anti-trade, anti-establishment, anti-government, anti-science, anti-working family, pro-American identity (i.e. white supremacy), and pro-strongman leadership sustains itself and keeps Americans at each other’s throats for years while other non-democratic actors and movements in the world gain strength through the 2020s and beyond.

I believe in that first version, and I work for it as I know you do. But things aren’t assured.

We have work to do here at home to do our part. We have conflict and challenges. We have poverty and racism. We have issues of geographic and generational equity. We have escalating climate change. We have housing pressures. We have jobs to regain. We have a future to claim.

I’ll be talking about all of this at the State of the City, coming up on Thursday, February 25th. I hope you can join in. And if you have suggestions to share, please drop me a line via the campaign email at john@johnhamiltonformayor.com.

In the meantime, I’m a very proud husband, as Dawn Johnsen, who has been deep in the Biden/Harris transition, is now again working full time (remotely) for the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. When you’ve seen President Biden signing all those dozens of executive orders in the first two weeks – and what great news all that brings! –let’s just say Dawn knew all those issues very well based on her work of the last three months. It’s great to have Dawn in the middle of the huge recovery effort underway in DC, making things fall into place, I’m sure hoping.

Let’s make the 2020s a decade of hope and progress, coming out of the pandemic with renewed energy and vision and mutual commitment!

Democratically yours,

John

P.S. Please enjoy and honor Black History Month, which starts today. Check out events HERE.
And mark your calendars for our upcoming State of the City address the evening of Thursday, February 25th!

JANUARY 2021 NEWSLETTER

Friends,

Happy 2021!! Surely we will end this new year differently from how we begin it – digging out from the miserable 2020.

Surely in 2021 we’ll emerge from the pandemic and recover from the nightmarish federal government, infected with greed and hubris. Surely the new vaccines and the recent elections will do the job.

We all should be confident in the vaccines. We don’t know exactly when, but we can be optimistic that we will reach the post-COVID-19 world. (And in the meantime, keep masking, distancing, and washing your hands; don’t share air with people outside your household; and get the vaccine when it’s your turn!)

We should be more worried about the democracy part. The fact that so many Americans felt another term with the 45th president was a good choice . . . the fact that so many still call the election rigged or a fraud . . . the fact that so many leading Republicans are seriously seeking to overturn democratic elections and ignore the will of the people . . .  All this and more are cause for great and ongoing concern.

Is there a vaccine against anti-democracy?

I’ll propose two doses.

First, let’s embrace the question – how do we assure the will of the people is indeed expressed in our elections? Let’s lean in to assure this great democracy is really in fact working: eliminate lines and long waits to vote. Ease voter registration. Make voting a national holiday. Have vote centers. Draw legitimate districts and end gerrymandering. Mandate more transparency in money in politics. In other words, let’s embrace anyone who challenges how our elections are working, but let’s ask the right questions and improve things. This Washington Post editorial lays out one reasonable approach.

Second, let’s make sure our democracy is working locally. I recently signed the City Council’s ordinance creating a nonpartisan, resident-led redistricting process for their new districts. I hope the County will do something similar for new precinct drawing. We just concluded county elections that unanimously affirmed our Democratic Party’s continued leadership. And let’s recover forward out of the pandemic, in the ways that our residents want us to.

As I hear from people, I know different views abound about lots of specific local issues – What’s next for the convention center? Or annexation? How do we revise our zoning codes and support more housing for all? How do we best assist those experiencing homelessness? Substance use disorder? Poverty? How do we assure both public safety and a deep sense of belonging for all? How do we help our economy recover? Our public schools? What level of taxes is fair and matches our ambitions? These are all good questions with good discussions to be had – please take part!

One of the biggest challenges in local politics is assuring that all the voices are heard. Yes, all the people who get involved and active directly: but also the people who are too busy or too disillusioned or too afraid to speak up. And people who aren’t even here but whose voices we still need to try to hear – future generations and future residents.

Back in January of 2020, which feels like five years ago, I shared what I thought were the two big challenges I hear running deeply through our wider community: How do we wrestle seriously with climate change to create a truly sustainable community, and how do we address the persistent economic, racial, and social inequalities that keep us from being a truly inclusive and fair community?

During all the upheavals and stress of 2020, I believe those two big challenges have persisted, unabated. They remain our big agenda, our front burner. And they outline for us how this community we love and cherish can be one of the beacons of progressive commitment and action across the country.

I’m hopeful that we can do this. I’m inspired by the million ways this community came together over the past 10 months to do things we didn’t know we could do. I’m energized knowing how much good we can do together.

In spite of the craziness of 2020, the horror of the ongoing pandemic, and the ghastliness of people trashing our democracy and elections . . . in spite of all that, I’m excited because the system works, and we can chart our future. Hear the words of our neighbor sage, Wendell Berry, who said, “Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.” Yes, indeed. Live in the facts, own them. And still, together in this wonderful and wonderfully blessed community, still embrace joy and hope. And action.

Democratically yours,

John

P.S.  Do all you can to help in this week’s Georgia elections – check out FairFight.

And mark your calendars for our upcoming State of the City address the evening of Thursday, February 25th – not sure how we’ll do it yet, but we’ll figure something out!

DECEMBER 2020 NEWSLETTER

Friends,
We changed history on Tuesday, November 3rd. That’s what elections do, and what more than 80 million Biden/Harris voters did. Congratulations and celebrations are in order! 

And some deep breaths. Because it was so close. And because we lost a lot of other important races, around the country and in Indiana. We do take pride in another Democratic sweep in Monroe County, our Blue home.

I’ll quote again President Lincoln near the end of the brutal Civil War, saying “there was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency.”

Amen to that, and may it ever be so.

Now we move forward: the hard work begins again, to meet the emergencies. 

We first have a pandemic to be handled over the coming months. It will be difficult, and dangerous. But we will get through it in 2021, I’m confident.

I’m excited to think of what Bloomington can do over the coming years. Our progressive community can build a future – recover forward – with more equity, more racial justice, more climate stewardship.

I’m also excited and proud that my wife Dawn is in the middle of the Biden/Harris transition effort. She’s joining leaders from around the country, working tirelessly to help assure that the new administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can begin the recovery immediately at noon on January 20th. There is so much repair to be done!! This is Dawn’s third Presidential transition effort – it always feels good to see the energy and idealism kick in: elections matter.

It was an unusual Thanksgiving this year, with fewer family members gathered – quieter, more subdued. But let’s be thankful that we are in position to turn the page, and take up again the shared yoke that we shoulder toward justice and opportunity. 

Democratically yours,

John

P.S.  Please reach out and thank our recent Democratic candidates for putting themselves in the fray for us. It’s not easy, and win or lose, they earn our respect and thanks. And please consider helping out in Georgia, where candidates Warnock and Ossoff will decide the US Senate’s balance of power by January 5th. Lend Stacey Abrams a hand – details at FairFight. 

NOVEMBER 2020 NEWSLETTER

Friends,

Tomorrow begins a new era. It surely must be that America will right ourself, that our nightmare of falsehoods, greed, megalomania, and inhumanity in the White House will be brought to a close. 

It is my deep and fervent hope that a Biden/Harris election, and a Democratic Senate and House, and growing numbers in Indiana, will let us again focus on the business of making people’s lives better and our communities stronger. That we can address economic disparities and a climate crisis. That we can confront our racial history and legacies and build a society where all are equal, welcome, empowered, and respected.

Of course, that depends on all of us VOTING!!!

I look forward to us in Bloomington breathing deeply again, inhaling the fresh air of collaboration and progress, rather than the rankness of divisiveness and exhausting daily dramas and disasters out of Washington. 

Let’s make 2020 a year that history will judge an inflection point: When we pivoted into the decade of the ’20s and changed America, and Bloomington. As a time we survived COVID and took care of each other, and began ten years of transformation: on race, on climate, on equity. 

That can all start . . . TOMORROW, Tuesday, November 3rd. What a day!! Let’s be sure we all are doing all we can to change history. “Early to bed and early to rise, work like hell and Organize!” 

Thanks so much for all you do.

Democratically yours,

John

P.S.  If you have time for last-minute calls or texts to get out the vote, go HERE. If you need information on where to vote, go HERE. Let’s make it happen!