JUAN GONZA'LEZ: And before that, two terms of a law-and-order mayor, Mayor Giuliani -- 20 years of basically neoliberal rule in New York. Yeah, you know, I try not to get into personalities or the narratives that are created, even by my own colleagues in the press. So you have the narratives of the inept de Blasio, of the de Blasio who's always late, who seems arrogant and aloof. I always try to follow the money.
And what has happened, what happened in the first three years of the de Blasio administration in New York City, was an enormous infusion of money into the working class and the middle class of New York. And I actually tabulated it at at least $21 billion. And because of all of the initiatives that he put into motion and the City Council -- because the thing to understand about New York City is that de Blasio had the full support of a very left-leaning City Council and other key officials, so it was the most left-leaning government in the history of New York City, in my opinion. What did they do? Universal child care. Universal child care, people don't forget, that's 70,000 children now a year are -- I mean, universal pre-K, I'm sorry. Seventy thousand children a year now are getting pre-K education. The average parent pays about $12,500 to care for their 4-year-old child. So, de Blasio not only extended a full year of education for children, he also saved 70,000 parents a year now the cost of having to pay for child care for their 4-year-olds. That alone represented about $1.4 billion in savings to New Yorkers.
AMY GOODMAN: And he instituted that in the first year. That is larger than most school systems in the United States.
JUAN GONZA'LEZ: Right. No one expected he'd be able to do it within the first year. He did it within seven months, eight months of being in office.
Then there's also the labor contracts that were negotiated. Before de Blasio came into office, 300,000 New York City union workers, employees, had not had contracts for years. They had not been able to get raises for years -- some, like the teachers, for five years. And within a few months, he started negotiating contracts with all of the various unions of the city, which in the first three years delivered $15 billion in raises and back pay and benefits to the workers of New York City.
Then there were the rent freezes for the -- rent regulations in New York City averaged increases for private landlords, in all of the years before de Blasio, 3.2 percent per year; 3.2 percent, the landlords were expecting every year, on average, increase on their rents. In the first three years of the de Blasio administration, there was a 1 percent, a zero percent and a zero percent increase -- a third of a percent over three years versus 3 percent per year. That alone is about $2 billion that the landlords of New York City did not get, that they were expecting to get and they had historically gotten under previous administrations. You can -- and I can go on and on. The --
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we actually just have a minute, although we're going to do a post-show to continue this discussion. The subtitle of Reclaiming Gotham: Bill de Blasio and the Movement to End America's Tale of Two Cities, how successful was he, and other mayors, in beginning to do this, end that tale of two cities?
JUAN GONZA'LEZ: Well, they've begun, but they've had failures. De Blasio has not solved the affordable housing problem. There's still too much luxury housing being built and too much development being -- commercial development being permitted. They have not completely solved the issue of police-community relations. But they've definitely made great strides, most of them, in some of these areas.
And they are reason to hope. I think that too often, when we look at the Trump administration and Washington and we look at what's going on in the state capitals, we become discouraged, and we have a sense of hopelessness. But I -- it's my theory or my viewpoint that the cities are a basis for hope. They are not perfect. You have to push these folks. But there is a potential for increasing space for progressive change and progressive policies in our cities today.
AMY GOODMAN: And as you talk about President Trump, you know, when de Blasio started, Trump was not in office. This unique challenge that these cities have right now and the potential you see for them at this point? I mean, we're speaking on the day of his rescinding DACA, and thousands of people took to the streets around the country. And their mayors, that are fiercely opposed to Trump, then have to deploy their police, or they do deploy their police -- I won't say they have to -- to deal with protesters.
JUAN GONZA'LEZ: Well, I believe the big cities of America and the federal government are on a collision course, over sanctuary cities, over sustainable development, over police accountability. They're on a collision course in the same way Southern local governments back in the 1950s and '60s were on a collision course with the federal government over civil rights, only back then it was the federal government that was maintaining the more progressive position. Now it's the local governments that are maintaining the most progressive positions. And I believe that it's going to get even more -- the battle is going to get even stronger between the cities and the federal government.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Juan, we're going to do Part 2 after the show, and you can check it out at democracynow.org. Juan Gonza'lez's new book, Reclaiming Gotham: Bill de Blasio and the Movement to End America's Tale of Two Cities.
Juan, you are beginning at 21-city tour, and it may be more, starting right here at The New School on Thursday night. I hope to see people at 7:00 in New York City. You're moving on to Culver City, to Sylmar, Calilfornia; Washington, D.C.; Tempe, Arizona; Austin, Texas; Newark; Kansas City; College Park; San Francisco. You can check out the tour at democracynow.org.
And a very special shout-out to our engineer Flip, Mike DiFilippo, just marked 15 years at Democracy Now!
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