Friends,
Happy Black History Month! This tradition dates to 1976 at a nationwide level, and back to 1926 when “Negro History Week” was launched to coincide with the February birthday week of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln and was embraced by more and more cities through the years.
Our community celebrates Black History Month energetically, and deep appreciation goes to Beverly Calender-Anderson and Shatoyia Moss of Bloomington’s Community and Family Resources Department and the many, many volunteers who tirelessly help coordinate the month’s many activities.
Last Tuesday, our city took one important, specific step – formally launching the new name of Eagleson Avenue, replacing the former Jordan Avenue. The former street name recognized an Indiana University President who had promoted pernicious and racist beliefs including eugenics.
Names matter. They reflect and extend our history. By adding Eagleson Avenue to Bloomington’s names of major public streets, we are honoring a powerful and distinguished family story. Halson Valshon Eagleson, born into slavery in 1851, came to Bloomington in the 1880s. He became a prominent local businessman, and four generations of this family have made very significant contributions to the city, university, state, and nation. Read more about this incredible family here.
The name “Eagleson” will be spoken over and over by thousands of Bloomingtonians for generations to come. Names matter, and as that beautiful and inspiring name is voiced again and again, as the story of that family is learned, we help to reflect and extend our history and make it more full, fair, and inclusive.
Several generations of the Eagleson family gathered for a moving unveiling of the new street signs last week. Another ceremony will be held in the warmer weather to come – watch for it! In the meantime, we’ll all be advancing Bloomington history when we all say the new Eagleson Avenue name.
Democratically yours,
John
P.S. Hold the evening of Thursday, February 24th for the 2022 State of the City event. We’ll review our progress and chart our future together. Details on in-person and/or virtual options to come.
JANUARY 2022 NEWSLETTER
Friends,
Happy 2022! Let us all hope and work for a great new year.
A year ago, I wrongly predicted that 2021 would surely see us emerge from the pandemic. Miraculous vaccines had arrived and promised protection. But not enough of us took them.
We now see the highest case numbers ever. Health care workers are incredulous and exhausted. Hospitals are full of people who don’t have to be there. Some are dying.
We can’t sugarcoat this. People who are unvaccinated are dying. Before the vaccine, my wife was 11 days in the hospital. She survived COVID. Her mother did not. Please protect yourselves – and all of us.
On the other hand, our economy is recovering. Schools are open with eager students. And vaccines have kept many of us safe – saving over a million lives in the US. I do believe, hope, that 2022 will see great progress continue, though I expect not without setbacks and frustrations, including Omicron.
A year ago, we also worried about our democracy. The 2020 national elections promised a new era. But today, on this one-year anniversary of the shocking January 6th attempted American insurrection in Washington, DC, no miracle vaccines against anti-democracy have arrived.
Instead, purposeful actions in dozens of states worsen a perilous situation. Many, including esteemed leaders, fear for our democracy – that our very republic may be eroding beyond recognition.
“Think globally. Act locally.” When I consider systemic threats to democracy, and the existential challenge of climate change, and the pernicious legacies of racism and sexism and other discrimination all around us...it’s easy to feel dismay. But this old slogan of acting locally, with a wide global lens, speaks to me.
Globally, democracy is under threat from autocratic countries, oligarchies, corporatism, plain old greed and fear, and more. I’d say from the Republican Party too.
Locally we can lean into democracy by embracing our non-partisan redistricting, by keeping our politics a big tent of respectful different views, by nourishing civility and the rule of law, and by demanding our state and nation respect voting rights.
Globally, human-made climate change is barreling toward Earth’s nearly 8 billion residents, threatening future generations and damaging millions of lives today.
Locally we can commit to shifting earnestly toward a zero-carbon future, more sustainable patterns of living, investing in real change with local resources. (See Bloomington Climate Action Plan here)
Globally, we see too many societies refusing to see the human race as one people with shared worth and basic dignity, rejecting diversity and belonging. We see rampant tribalism, Us/Them thinking, fear-mongering and demonization.
Locally we can take practical steps to assure Bloomington is as inclusive and welcoming, as equitable and just, as we aim and claim to be – steps in affordable housing, in business opportunities, in public education, in health care – aligning our public investments with our values.
I’m an optimist. To be effective, a mayor has to come to work every day with hope and energy for positive change. I’m a realist too, and this decade of the 2020s is key for us in Bloomington, for our country, and our planet. We’ve made a great deal of progress locally on many of these issues but there is serious work ahead.
Even amid a pandemic, amid a terrifying lack of civility and common ground, and with mistrust abounding, I feel strongly that Bloomington can do much to chart our destiny. We can lead the way to a more sustainable and inclusive community and country. If we keep our wits about us, and make the right investments, we can pivot from a pandemic into a very bright future. And if other communities like ours do the same, we can save our democracy.
Don’t ever give up or give in. This is our country and our community. We are part of the great democratic experiment of America. Imperfect but idealistic. Flawed but fixable. Bloomington is a proud progressive city in a big, messy, patriotic march toward justice and peace. Please keep showing up. And caring. For yourself, for each other, and for Bloomington.
Democratically yours,
John
P.S. Mark your calendar for the evening of Thursday, February 24th for the 2022 State of the City event. We’ll review our progress and chart our future together. I don’t know if we’ll all be in person or not, but we’ll be together, somehow and always.
DECEMBER 2021 NEWSLETTER
Friends,
I hope the holiday season is treating you and yours well and brings time for rest, gratitude, and connection.
Over the past two weeks, about 30 of us--City elected officeholders and department heads--have spent many hours together beginning a year-long anti-racism training program. Led by national experts, we are exploring what it means to be anti-racist both professionally in our work as well as personally.
This is critically important work for us in Bloomington, to advance racial justice. We need to identify practical and effective steps to take that move us forward as a community. And we need each of us, from our own positions and with our own histories and backgrounds, to embrace how we each can and should think and act as an anti-racist.
Direct and sometimes challenging conversations have already been prompted among those of us in the training. We have months of structured work ahead of us as well, and I believe we all look forward to learning more and developing new ideas, understandings, and actions. I wanted to share just a couple specific early components of this training, also described as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training.
We’re reminded that every policy decision we make is either advancing anti-racism or perpetuating the opposite. That’s a sobering statement. It reminds me also of the notion that in every action with a colleague we are either increasing or decreasing mutual trust. In city government, we need to advance anti-racism consistently and effectively.
We heard Bryan Stevenson, a southern lawyer who has worked for decades to reduce racism in the American criminal justice system, describe being in Germany lecturing about capital punishment and its problems in America. A Berlin native stood and said “we can never have the death penalty here, given our history; it would be unconscionable.” (It’s outlawed in their constitution as well.) Stevenson amplified, think how the world would react if indeed there were capital punishment in Germany and it was shown to be skewed dramatically towards executing their Jewish population far disproportionately above their share of population. Unconscionable.
How is it not unconscionable, Stevenson then asks, that in America, after centuries of our brutal race slavery including the lynching of thousands of Black Americans between the Civil War and the Civil Rights era, how is it not unconscionable that our legal system today disproportionately executes Black persons (and reflects other terrible and deep racial inequities still at work)? How does an anti-racist respond to such disparities that persist and are baked into our judicial system?
We have much work to do in Bloomington to advance anti-racism and to achieve more justice. I appreciate working together with our colleagues on these issues. Thanks for all you do too, to advance anti-racism.
Democratically yours,
John Hamilton
P.S. I hope you’ll join local Democrats at the Viola Taliaferro Fall Dinner, on Thursday, December 16th, from 6-9pm at the Switchyard Park Pavilion. More information about the event and safety protocols available here. We Democrats have a big year ahead of us!
NOVEMBER 2021 NEWSLETTER
Friends,
Lately we’ve had busy times at City Hall. We won a unanimous City Council vote supporting our 2022 budget, which includes major investments to address climate change, inclusion and equity, as well as enhancing public safety.
Thanks again to our friends in DC – President Biden, VP Harris, and the Democrats of Congress: their American Rescue Plan Act has been transformative for us.
This week, we also announced a first-in-the-nation alliance: we’re becoming a “Sibling City” with Palo Alto, California. You’ve likely heard of Sister Cities – pairings of international cities that exchange ideas, cultural outreach, commercial opportunities and the like. (Bloomington has two such: Santa Clara, Cuba; and Posoltega, Nicaragua).
This Sibling City is a new take on that idea. With so much divisiveness and disinformation, so much mistrust and dysfunction in the national scene, how about cities from the coast and the heartland helping knit our country back together?
I want to thank Vicki Veenker for bringing this idea to the fore. She’s a brilliant, progressive lawyer and mediator, with political instincts in tune with the time. Vicki proposed this domestic Sibling City idea, and Palo Alto and Bloomington are the first pairing to step up.
It’s exciting to connect closely with the birthplace of Silicon Valley, the home of Stanford University, a thriving center of the new economy. I think it offers exciting opportunities for commerce, and cultural exchange, and civic learning. You can get details about the idea here.
It speaks well of Bloomington that our community has stepped up to explore this – with potential education exchanges, or shared technology ventures, or civic approaches to problems like affordable housing or climate change.
I’ve offered to trade mayor responsibilities for a day – Mayor Dubois can experience how we roll, and I can see how they do things in the San Francisco metropolitan area. We may exchange delegation visits as soon as early next year (assuming COVID allows it).
Perhaps you’ll consider getting involved. This southern Indiana small city in a rural region connected with an innovation hub in one of the world’s great metropolitan areas in the state with a larger economy than all but 4 countries – fascinating opportunities!
Thanks also to Karen Howe Fernandez, who has stepped up to be the local coordinator for our efforts in the Sibling City world. Get in touch with her if you’re keen on finding out more or volunteering to get involved. More information available here.
We’ll be asking City Council to adopt a Sibling City resolution and forming a local steering committee in the weeks ahead. Consider joining up!
Democratically yours,
John
P.S. November brings us both Veterans Day and Thanksgiving — two national holidays that remind us to show gratitude and give thanks, and to remember those who gave their all for this country. A good way to close out a year and remember the important things in life. I hope the holidays are safe and warm for you and your family.
OCTOBER 2021 NEWSLETTER
Friends,
We recently presented the City’s 2022 budget – an unprecedented plan for investment in sustainability and inclusion for our community. Housing support for the un- and under-housed. Job support for the recently incarcerated, the underemployed, the new economy. Infrastructure investments in healthier water, multi-modal paths and trails, and energy efficiency. All made possible by the Biden/Harris/Pelosi/Schumer American Rescue Plan and our local community. Thank you!
One area that has gotten a lot of attention – and the biggest number of new positions in the budget – is public safety. I want to share at a high level our administration’s progressive approach to public safety. It’s certainly been a challenging several years for the police department component of public safety – national tragedies and abuses have shone a bright light on the importance of dealing with legacies of racism and inequity in public safety.
Our Bloomington Police Department has a long tradition of innovating. We were among the first in the state to adopt body cameras, de-escalation and mental-health training, and community policing and dedicated downtown resource officers. We’ve explicitly embraced best-practices like the 21st Century Policing and 8 Can’t Wait reports. We were the first in the state to employ a full-time social worker. (And we’re hosting a groundbreaking national conference on the subject this month.) We’ve recently added Community Service Specialists – non-sworn, non-armed employees to respond to certain kinds of calls. I believe we have the best police department in the state.
Nonetheless, national and regional trends challenge us. It’s more difficult to hire officers, and current officers are being recruited by other cities with more money and benefits. Along with department leadership, we’ve developed a 3-pronged approach to move forward that is reflected in the 2022 budget:
Retain: We’re offering all current front-line officers $5,000 retention bonuses to be paid over the next 15 months. We’re providing housing allowances and take-home cars to many. We’re increasing compensation to assure we keep our excellent department leadership as well (based on a recent salary study). We’re accelerating labor negotiations to remain competitive and effective for the future. We’re also providing every city employee with a $500 pandemic bonus.
Recruit: We’re developing a proactive recruitment effort to bring new, highly qualified officers to Bloomington through direct outreach and with the new “Retain” efforts above, as well as new programs designed to appeal specifically to rising newly sworn officers, such as additional housing supports, training, and other benefits.
Innovate: We’re continuing to develop new models of public safety, including non-sworn officers and other personnel outside traditional police and firefighting positions. We’re adding four more Community Service Specialists -- non-armed personnel who can respond safely and effectively to certain 911 calls and meet other public safety needs. We’ve expanded to three full-time social workers. We’re adding two fire department positions focused on preventive, proactive health interventions to improve community outcomes and reduce repeated 911 calls.
These three prongs will, I believe, serve our community well. And we’re looking for continual community feedback with the resident-led “Future of Policing” task force that has supported this approach and will continue to recommend innovations and evolutions.
Public safety is a first-level responsibility of city government. I am very proud of our police and fire departments, and I am proud of how we are evolving. We are Indiana’s only city with a nationally accredited police department and a top-rated fire department. The only one. We will continue to be a state and national leader in progressive public safety. Thank you for your support of that, and continued involvement as we learn and improve.
Democratically yours,
John
P.S. Our fire department just earned the top rating from the Insurance Service Office (ISO), a 1/1x. It joins our nationally CALEA-accredited police department to make Bloomington unique in the state by carrying both credentials. Please take an occasion to thank and congratulate our fine public servants when you see them out and about.
SEPTEMBER 2021 NEWSLETTER
Friends,
I hope you can join a bunch of Democrats for a fresh-air, pandemic-sensitive gathering on Sunday afternoon – the 7th annual Hamilton Family Picnic!
We’re at Switchyard Park for the first time! With great music and food, it’s a chance to get safely (back) together and remember how important it is to elect Democrats up and down the ballot next year.
We’ll be following protocols to stay safe, including different food service and distancing measures. I hope you all are vaccinated too, because that’s the single most important thing you can do to keep our community and your family safe, as well as end this pandemic.
Do we need any reminders about the stakes ahead? Keep a Democratic U.S. House and Senate, so Biden and Harris can keep restoring our country together with them. Send a wake-up call to Indiana’s regressive, repressive legislature, that Democrats are storming back. Elect local Democrats who will help us address climate change, and inclusion, and economic fairness.
I’m still in shock about Texas and abortion rights. That in this country at this time, millions of women have had a fundamental constitutional right brazenly stolen by the men dominating the Republican Party (87% of their legislators are men). This outrage of course threatens us all – BTW Indiana legislators are taking notes – and clarifies how radical our US Supreme Court really is. If we had Justices Garland and Ginsburg 2.0, as we should, what a difference that would have made. We Democrats have our work cut out for us.
So please get together again, as you are comfortable, to talk, plan, support and energize for our next chapters. Hope to see you Sunday between 4 and 7!!
Democratically yours,
John
P.S. I’ll encourage you to also consider attending the observance to be held for the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Every year our local firefighters (led by our friend Bob Loviscek) and Ivy Tech host a moving memorial ceremony. You’ll be glad you went – this Saturday at 9am in front of the local 9/11 memorial at Ivy Tech’s campus.
AUGUST 2021 NEWSLETTER
Friends,
Let’s talk annexation – the process by which cities grow our borders to include growing population and development.
Long-ago, conspicuous walls often literally defined who was in and who was out of the protection and civil jurisdiction of old cities. These days most of us would be hard pressed to identify Bloomington’s legal boundaries.
But they matter. Our city line determines who votes and who directly benefits from and supports the city’s wide array of programs and activities. And while Bloomington has averaged several annexations per year since our 1818 six-block city’s founding, we haven’t annexed a square inch since 2004.
I appreciate that numbers of folks living just outside Bloomington’s borders may prefer to keep it that way – for cultural, political, financial, or other reasons.
I’m no historian, but I wonder if the story of American cities isn’t instructive about some of the dynamics – and values – at work. I wonder what the post-WWII history of our country would have been like if we hadn’t seen the ubiquitous suburbanization around major cities, and lots of smaller ones too. What if the city boundaries of our communities had grown steadily to include all their residents in one community of interest? If the planning and the complex efforts to help everyone thrive actually encompassed and involved everyone? Would the last 75 years of American history have been significantly different if our cities – each unique, different, special – had politically navigated the community path fully together. Integrated economically, socially, racially?
That didn’t happen of course. Instead, we frequently had urban centers turned into islands of disinvestment surrounded by wealthier suburbs. School districts and students suffered. Housing access and quality too. Opportunity. Structural (or explicit) racism was a powerful factor in many places. Or economic segregation. Even smaller cities like ours experienced some of the same dynamic. Politically, was that a long process of eroding potential common purpose and shared understandings in our communities and country?
There are a lot of good reasons for annexation, and I encourage you to visit the website for all the history and details you might want about Bloomington’s plans. Deep down, perhaps most important is the idea of nurturing our community to include all our voices, and to strengthen the notion that we’re all in this together.
Is it naïve to think our community’s future is brighter when we’re all connected and committed together, that our politics and our community are stronger when we’re all in the same boat, talking, listening, planning our shared future together?
Annexation discussions can quickly dive into details on sewers, fire protection, parks, and tax rates. But perhaps we miss the main point, of joining together as a whole community to progress together. America’s cities and our country might have had a very different experience since 1945 if Indianapolis’ experience with Unigov were the standard rather than the exception.
Onward we will go, and thank your city councilors for their steadfast stewardship of Bloomington’s future, including with annexation votes in September.
Democratically yours,
John
P.S. Dawn has been hyper-busy in DC doing the nation’s work at the Department of Justice, on matters of immigration, the pandemic, economic recovery, and even Trump’s tax returns. You can read Dawn’s signed opinion about the latter here. I’m so proud of Dawn’s work, and she relishes the support she feels from so many of you too.
P.P.S Remember the upcoming 7th Hamilton Family Picnic tradition – the Sunday after Labor Day, September 12th, from 4 to 7pm at Switchyard Park’s Pavilion!! We’re figuring out the right pandemic protocols amid the changing landscape, so mark it on your calendar!
JULY 2021 NEWSLETTER
Friends,
Happy 245th birthday to our country! Dawn and I hope you had a good holiday weekend with family or friends.
This month let’s start with Dawn: As the new Acting Assistant Attorney General at the US Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn is right in the middle of all that the federal government is doing to advance opportunity and protect justice and liberty. Her portfolio is as wide as the federal government’s reach, and she thrives in helping our country confront complex issues and make good decisions. I know so many in Bloomington are proud and excited about her role at the national level, as am I.
Dawn’s great abilities and experience, and her leave of absence from IU, allow her to join directly in all the critical Biden/Harris efforts to address climate change, protect democracy, advance economic and racial justice, and make this a better world. I’m helping support Dawn and that vital work, as we’re navigating the somewhat familiar territory of dual-career and dual-city lives – known to many families. As we do, we both feel very blessed to be able to do jobs we love that embody the values we seek to live by and to advance.
On the Fourth, we were together with family near Philadelphia, just a few miles from Valley Forge, the winter camp where – during the winter of 1777-78 – some say our country’s independence was really won, as General Washington and his team trained and unified thousands of soldiers from all 13 colonies and beyond into the coherent army that eventually defeated the strongest empire in the world.
It’s a sobering reminder of the intense sacrifices it took even to launch this democratic experiment. And the many, many sacrifices it has required to improve and preserve our country.
As optimists, we can see so much progress, with a more inclusive society and a cleaner environment. Less abject poverty and better education. Stunning technological and medical advances.
As realists, we see deep concerns: a democracy at risk from attacks on truth and science and voting itself. Powerful entrenched interests obstructing our critical continued response to climate change, structural racism, and economic inequality.
As a mayor, I embrace the complex, daily challenges of helping our community advance together toward a better future for all. And as a spouse, I celebrate Dawn’s new role in charting our national future.
Long ago, people from all across our emerging country shared a community and built a common purpose amid the harsh conditions in Valley Forge. They overcame differences, found shared values, and were midwives to our imperfect country’s birth. Let’s celebrate that legacy, and embrace that challenge going forward, always toward a more perfect union.
Democratically yours,
John
P.S. Mark your calendar now for the upcoming 7th annual Hamilton Family Picnic – the Sunday after Labor Day, September 12th, from 4 to 7pm. (New exciting location this year: Switchyard Park, at the Pavilion!!) Hope to see you there, as we celebrate Democrats and democracy with music, food, and in-person connections again!