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Brian Lehrer : Brian Lehrer on WNYC and with us now is Maya Wiley who just left her position as a paid contributor appearing on MSNBC and NBC News. She left to officially explore a run for mayor of New York for next year. Those of you who watch MSNBC know Maya Wiley as a frequent commenter on legal affairs, ranging from the president's impeachment trial to police reform around the country.

What many of you may not know is about her previous career as a civil rights lawyer including her work in the de Blasio administration. She was chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board which investigates police misconduct. She led an effort to help women and minority-owned businesses and she was Mayor de Blasio's chief legal counsel early in the administration. These days, besides her media work, Maya is a professor of urban policy at The New School. After many times on this show as a commentator, we welcome Maya Wiley for the first time as a potential mayoral candidate. Thanks for coming on, Maya. Welcome back to WNYC.

Maya Wiley: Thanks, Brian. It's a real pleasure to be here, especially because as I explore this seriously, there's no better audience to be speaking with than yours because your listeners know centrally both what their needs, fears, concerns are, and what they think helps us make this city the place that we all can stay in, we can all live in, where our kids can stay and we can be here with dignity, so thank you for having me.

Brian: How much is it policing issues, which is part of your background with the CCRB, that have driven you to consider this race?

Maya: New York is such an amazing place. It's a city that I've wanted to live in since I was a little girl, my brother and I both. We both live here now and we've lived here for decades. My kids were born here. My kids have gone to school here, including our public neighborhood school. Like every New Yorker, I know this place is magic. I know this place is amazing. I know that we have come back time and time again from a great recession, from high crime rates, from 9/11, from crisis after crisis. It really is about a time at which like we've seen in the need for transforming policing but even--

That was a crisis that of course predated George Floyd unfortunately, but it's also the fact that we have such a need to transform exactly what it means to be able to live and stay in New York. Part of what coronavirus has done, and the pandemic that has always been unfortunately, our societal reluctance to face our history of racism head-on, is that we have just seen a fast-tracking. A fast-tracking of a New York that was not just unaffordable before, but is now one where we looked at 14,000 people facing eviction last night, and up to 400,000 at the end of this year potentially.

We're looking at a city with a financial crisis that requires us to figure out how we come together, which we have done so well in the past in the city, to confront how we're going to do this, to remake the city in a way that ensures that we're not replicating the problems of policing. That we're not replicating the fact that we had an economic crisis in far too many communities of color in the city before COVID hit, and that one we can all feel that it remains the place that we've always loved and the place where we can always be. That's really at the core of it for me.

Brian: Listeners, we can take your questions for Maya Wiley on the news of the day or her potential mayoral campaign, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or you can tweet a question, @BrianLehrer. Since you put that in such sweeping terms, let me ask you this, the anti-racist reckoning that the country is in right now goes way beyond police reform and obviously we're getting at that, to calling out and addressing systemic bias in every American institution and policy area. Should there be some kind of national or local truth and reconciliation commission to figure out reparations, or whatever you want to call it, to finally address in a serious way the inequality that 400 years of structural racism has wrought, and how could a mayor go as big as possible on that?

Maya: Yes, we need truth and reconciliation leadership. We have to be willing to look directly at the truth, and the truth is that even before coronavirus, we were looking at communities that were facing eviction rates. We were looking at unemployment rates that were twice, three times the rate of communities that were white, for example, even while we had far too many people of all races just struggling to make ends meet in this city. That is a reckoning we have to have. I would argue that it's exactly what people are calling for.

When protesters, who I have marched with in the streets on police reform, weren't just calling about tinkering with the police department, they were talking about transforming even how we think about investing in our communities. That is something that leadership must do in the city, and what people are calling for, what people are demanding is not a business as usual, is not a status quo politics. Because that status quo politics is exactly why we are looking at a Bureau of Elections that just turned back 25% of mail-in ballots in Brooklyn.

I live in Brooklyn. That is a failure of democracy that has gone far too long without any kind of reckoning about what the truth of that is, and about not just the reconciliation of how that disenfranchises our residents, but also about how that fundamentally determines who gets to have a voice and what the solutions are, and that is something we're all very passionate about, I know, in the city, and must be confronted.

Brian: Well, let me ask you, as a former member of the De Blasio administration, how well you think they have gone on some of these biggest issues. For example, Mayor de Blasio, on the show two weeks ago, said his legacy on police reform is anything but status quo, and will be seen as strong because, despite some of the misconduct by police we've seen during the protests, the real story of his administration is big reform measures that have resulted in things like many fewer contacts for people with the criminal justice system.

Here's 30 seconds of the mayor from here, two weeks ago. Oh, do we have the Mayor de Blasio clip? Let's see if we have that.

Mayor de Blasio: In 2019, we had 180,000 fewer arrests than the last year of Bloomberg, but we've made the city safer at the same time. We have the lowest mass incarceration since the 1940s in this city. These are fundamental changes. Use of force, 2018, 17 times a New York City police officer fired their gun in a confrontational setting, like addressing someone else firing a gun. 17 times in the entire year, 2018. That's massive reduction in use of force.

Brian: How much is that the big picture of the last six and a half years as you see it?

Maya: Well, look, I think what New Yorkers have been saying, and it's New Yorkers we have to listen to, is that they're not satisfied with the status quo politics that is not listening to exactly what they are pointing to as their experiences in community. That while it is important to recognize progress where it is made, that this is a transformational moment, it's a historic moment, and that the incrementalism of a traditional politics is no longer the type of leadership that I'm hearing residents saying they want.

They want something different, they want something non-traditional. One of the ways I'm exploring in this big question about whether I jump into this race, is about partnering with people. It's about a different way of having relationship to community. Let me give you one example, Brian. I was up in South Bronx with NYCHA residents yesterday, having a conversation with leadership, with student leaders, and with some of the folks that provide programming in the community center there.

Let me tell you what they said. They said, "We're tired of not being listened to. We're tired of there being a room where it happens that we have no window into and no voice into. We're tired of people coming and asking us for a list of demands. How do we not know what the demands are? Of course we know what the demands are.

That's not the question. The question is in a community center, that was open in the evening for kids to not just play basketball to get all programming, to have community, and who welcomed in the community, the community policing police officers who had a relationship with them, who saw them as folks who recognize there had to be a different type of policing community are now being told that their the overtime has budget has to be cut, when those were the very investments that were supposed to be front and center on transforming policing. Where the budget cuts are being passed to the wrong place because it's not seen as the priority, when the community has every ability to say, "This is what helps us keep gun violence down. This is what helps our kids to be able to have a place that is theirs, that they feel safe in, but that they can also have fun in."

Who is listening to that? That's a different kind of partnership. Putting together not just a list of demands or a reckoning with what happened last year or the year before, but really saying scrap it all. It's all on the table now. What we have to do is actually think very differently about how government works, not just what it says it does. That's about partnership. That's about building something that sees the people, not as both front and center in what we hold dear, but also front and center with how we do the work. That's exactly how I'm exploring this.

Brian: My guest if you're just joining us is Maya Wiley, who has been chair of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board under Mayor de Blasio. She has been Mayor de Blasio's chief counsel. She was recently a paid contributor to MSNBC and NBC News, which she just left to officially explore a run for mayor of New York for next year. We'll get to some of your phone calls from Maya Wiley in a minute. I want to get your review, if you will, on the de Blasio administration on one other big area, and that is the pandemic. How has the mayor done in your opinion with the pandemic? Have you been second-guessing him in your head on any major decisions along the way?

Maya: One of the things it's so important for any city government is to have the trust of the public. In this instance, we're hearing far too many fearful, uncertain what's going to happen with public schools, how they're going to reopen. We've got parents worried about whether it's going to be safe for them to send their kids back to school. At the same time, they need to be able to work and we have the same problem with our teachers who themselves are parents, about their ability to work safely.

I don't think there's any question that residents are sounding the alarm quite loudly. At a time, when we're talking about how there have now been a major leadership shift in the Department of Health and Mental Services, at a time when they have fundamentally been the leaders in contact tracing, that we are also needing to point to what does it mean to have stable, credible leadership in our police department.

I think there are real concerns because as we've seen Commissioner Shea, in my view has earned a pink slip. He has lost. As difficult a job as it is to lead a police department, we can't have leadership that tells us not to believe our lying eyes when we see violence, and we can't have the public worried about whether we're having the right kinds of leadership to ensure that we're steering in partnership, clear of one of the most challenging and historic crises we face. That's something that anyone has to face in the coming years.

Brian: It sounds like you had confidence in the Health Commissioner, Dr. Barbot who got sidelined by the mayor on the contact tracing, and then she resigned in protest of that this week. I believe that Dr. Barbot is the administration's highest-ranking Latina. Our City Hall reporter, Brigid Bergin, asked the mayor yesterday in his news conference, that given the number of women, and especially women of color who have left his administration, if he himself has taken the implicit bias training that he has mandated for NYPD and Department of Education employees. He wouldn't say yes or no, but I wonder if you think the mayor's record within his own administration suggests he needs to do more to understand his own biases?

Maya: I think every leader has to be willing to examine their own biases. We all carry some and it's the challenge of humanity to rise above the training of a system and a structure that has told us how to look at people. We all confront that and we should. What I will say, I have every confidence in the Department of Health, it is a leader in this country. I think the point about leadership is, we have to have leaders who pick the right leaders, and who listen to them.

I think that one of the things that we're hearing from residents is we want to know that people are going to pick folks who know what they're doing, who are going to listen to us and partner, build unity in the city, and do it competently and in a way that ensures that we can trust it and that we can trust government. We can do that.

Brian: What are you saying? Are you saying that the mayor should not have picked Dr. Barbot in the first place, or are you saying that perhaps he was biased against, maybe he undervalued her in part, because he undervalued a Latina in that position or what specifically are you saying?

Maya: I don't know and I can't speak for how de Blasio was looking at her. I wasn't in the administration at that time. What I am saying is that there's no question that people have real doubts that we shouldn't have about how leadership decisions are being made. That undermines public confidence in government, and confidence matters. I keep going back to the police department, because while we're talking about Commissioner Barbot, which is important in the context, having a leadership change in the midst of a pandemic is going to create real anxiety amongst our residents and that's a problem.

It's also though a problem that we have a police commissioner, who's essentially not only denigrated people who've been elected by residents to represent them, but who have also acknowledged it seems, to work stoppages, to slowdowns that are not legal, by the way. There is a law in this state called the Taylor Act and not acknowledging that, in the context of claiming that the very reforms that we have demanded in Black and Latino communities, in order to make the criminal justice system fairer and more just.

Remember, we're talking about a system that took a Layleen Polanco, who was having a mental health crisis, put her in solitary confinement as a trans woman of color, because and she couldn't afford $500 bail, which was the only reason she was there in the first place, and now she is dead. To say that solving that problem is why we're seeing shootings in our community is such a false equivalency. The fact that we're not really talking about what leadership is, and what leadership we need moving forward to help manage us out of this crisis is I think where our conversation needs to be, and that includes Commissioner Shea.

Brian: Mac and Newark, you're on WNYC with Maya Wiley. Hi, Mac.

Mac: Hey, good morning.

Maya: Good morning.

Mac: Can you hear me?

Brian: We can hear you just fine.

Mac: Good morning, Miss Wiley. First of all, I just want to say it's probably an honor to speak to you. I watch you on TV all the time. Your insight is just so on point. My question when I came on and the gentleman asked me what I wanted to ask you, it had to do with police reform as well. I just want to give you what I think about this from looking from the outside, from a person just looking at this for the first time, because now where we are right now, in this time, everything has to do with a window of time. This is the window of time too, I don't know how people see this, but I see this is a window of time when it comes to history and events.

Here's an event where it seemed like the scab of America in terms of how this country have treated minorities has been ripped off and everything that was underneath that scab has been brought to light. See now, we're in a situation we're trying to figure out exactly how to do this thing right. When it comes to this police reform, what I want to say to you is, the way I look at this is that the inequality or the unbalancing of policing period, is the fact that-- I don't know this number. You probably can tell me this number. The number of white police officers as opposed to minority police officers, I think it has played and will continue to play, a major role into how us as a society, will continue to be policed because think about this here.

I don't know how many minority officers may even be policing in the most affluent of neighborhoods. The people, and think about it, people, if they see a person walking around who's not supposedly on their level, immediately they judge that person. They're like, "How is this person here?"

Brian: Mac, I'm going to jump in Mac. I'm going to jump in for time because I want to get a few callers in for Maya Wiley before we run out of time, but Mac has put a lot on the table and maybe most specifically, the racial balance on the police force. I know Mayor de Blasio talks about how it's-- I think he uses the term majority-minority, though I think it's only about 15% black, per se. How important do you think that is?

Maya: I think government has to look like the people it serves, because it has to understand the experiences of the people it serves. I think Mac is making a really important point. I would also say that unless we're changing what we mean by policing, what falls under the responsibility of the police department, and what shouldn't, that we're not also talking about how we're transforming it. Because the vast majority, I mean, look, nationally only 5% of calls that come through 911 to police departments are for serious crime.

Even in New York, and I started digging into this data, and I won't give numbers, but let me just say of the 15 million calls over a decade to the police department, we've got millions of calls that are fender benders. We've got millions of calls that are people in distress or who have a dispute, but they're not crimes in and of themselves. The problem is we haven't created where and how those calls go to people trained and responsible for dealing with those kinds of issues.

They're not the police, and frankly, the police, by and large, don't want to be the frontline mental health service workers. They know that's not why they took the job, and they are right to say, it's not our job, but yet we're still sending them to them and that's so often part of why we have a problem. Those also have to be on the table as well.

Brian: Mac, thank you very much for your call. Call us again, okay?

Mac: Most definitely.

Brian: Thank you very much.

Maya: Thank you Mac.

Brian: Nicole, in Harlem. You're on WNYC with Maya Wiley. Hello, Nicole.

Nicole: Oh, hi. Thank you. A long-time listener, first-time caller. I'm very interested in finding out if you will be very conscious of not taking too much money from the real estate lobby, and what do you intend to do for affordable housing in the city, which is a huge issue?

Maya: It's a huge issue. Thank you for that. First and foremost, if I were to run, I would not be taking money from real estate developers, or from registered lobbyists either. This goes back to how important it is to really demonstrate that government, not just that it shouldn't be in the pockets of the powerful, but in the pockets of the people, but that there can't even be an impression that it is owned by anyone other than the people. That is important to me, critically important.

On affordable housing, look, we have to face the fact that 50% of our people can't-- are struggling to afford housing even before COVID. What COVID has done, is put evictions front and center at a time when-- this is my point about we have to have a city we can all stay in. That's everything from focusing on maintaining and making NYCHA, a safe place to be, but also thinking creatively about much more, not-for-profit development, about where and how we find the opportunities as properties are becoming-- may even fall into city hands, or should be in city hands, to use those as ways to create permanently affordable housing.

I agree with so many who talk about the fact that we have to address the affordability of rents. We also have to address homeownership, and we shouldn't forget that we have homeowners. We have a lot of homeowners, particularly middle-class black communities, whether it's some Southeast Queens or Northeast Bronx, who are building wealth because they own homes, but they're struggling to figure out how to keep them and how to keep them in good repair. All those things matter to our ability to stay and grow in the city.

There are solutions for all of them but once again, we've got to come together as a city, take a good hard look at the real financial crisis that we're in, which is a revenue crisis, and figure out how we're going to make the priority decisions that ensure that we're building a city that remains diverse, that remains the seat of the world, the seat of creativity, the seat of innovation, and the place that we have all loved for so long, and we can love more, and more deeply.

Brian: As a followup to what you said about not taking real estate industry money listener tweets, "How does Ms. Wiley now view her agent of the city argument on behalf of de Blasio cronies? I love her, but for this," writes this listener. If I am characterizing agent of the city correct, that was the mayor's attempt to keep secret from the press and the public, communications that he had with certain people that pertain to the scandal that he was being investigated for, regarding some of his dealings with people who were from the real estate industry. I guess the question is, is your record less than perfect with respect to the de Blasio administration when you were chief counsel?

Maya: Well, as one of the lawyers, both responsible for ensuring compliance with law, as asked for advice, I gave it. Obviously, I can't share the discussions around the advice or the decision that mayor de Blasio made. What I can say is what I would do if I was in the office. I think this is central to the point. We have to have a mayor who talks to everyone and the talks who the mayor is talking to should be transparent. What happened in the conversation should be transparent. Those communications should be public. If I were mayor, they would be.

Brian: This is WNYC-FMHD and AM New York, WNJT-FM, 88.1 Trenton, WNJP, 88.5 Sussex, WNJY, 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey public radio, where we have just a few minutes left with Maya Wiley, former chair of the CCRB, former chief counsel for Mayor de Blasio, former MSNBC contributor, and now exploring a run for mayor in New York.

Let me just throw one at you from the other side of the business, I don't know, call it business public interest, divide, whatever. There's been criticism from the big business community recently that the mayor isn't mobilizing business leaders to do what they could do to help stave off the worst of the pandemic economic crisis, because he has ignored them more than past mayors because of his ideology.

Business leaders were much more involved, they say, in pulling the city out of the 1970s, financial crisis, and after 9/11's financial crisis and the 2008 crash, because past mayors had relationships there. Do you agree with that criticism and how would you not alienate the business community while working on behalf of tenants, and everyone else, in a way that apparently Mayor de Blasio has?

Maya: Pulling New York City out of the ashes of this crisis into a city that remains one we can all be in, is an all-hands-on-deck project. I would say that anybody who serves in that role must talk to everyone who has a stake in this city. I think the question is, I am someone who worked with my neighbors to figure out how to support our micro-businesses that are the backbones of our neighborhoods, and the backbone for so many families on how they put food on the table.

That's 98% of our businesses are actually small businesses and micro-businesses. We're talking about people who are mom-and-pop shops who maybe have three or four employees, and who benefited not at all from one single program designed to try to help keep small businesses in business in this city. It's about business, it's about entrepreneurship, but it's also about how everyone gets to be entrepreneurs. Hence, how everyone gets to both put food on the table, and create jobs for the community.

I think the importance and the central importance is, of course, everyone should be talked to, of course, we have to invite people in, and it has to be a conversation organized fundamentally, about our commitment to making sure this is a fair and just city and that everyone can stay, not just some. That has to be a commitment we all make that is principled.

The way I approach work always is to unify the conversation, pull everyone in, but set principles and agree to the ground rules, because if we don't know where we're going, any road will take us there. We're not trying to go just anywhere, we're trying to go to better, we're trying to go to fair, we're trying to go to more just, and we're trying to take care of all our people.

Brian: We're going to leave it there with Maya Wiley. Such a different kind of conversation than we've ever had in the past. We've been even panelists together on television, commenting on things.

Maya: Well, Brian, there's going to be big news at 11:30, and it'll be more traditionally what we talk about.

Brian: Is this anything you can tell us? Tish James is announcing something?

Maya: Tish James is having an announcement. She says it's a national announcement which makes us all go, Trump organization, hush money payments, think about the investigations that we know the New York State attorney general has been undertaking, and it's going to be one I will be paying close attention to.

Brian: All right. We will be paying close attention as this hour proceeds. Maya Wiley, now exploring a run for mayor of New York for next year. Thank you for coming on with us.

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