President-elect Joe Biden stressed common purpose and partnership in his address to the US Conference of Mayors, offering a marked contrast to Trump’s history of divisiveness.
President-elect Joe Biden pledged Monday to work with the US Conference of Mayors, whose leaders are serving constituents under the dual burden of health and economic woes brought on by the pandemic.
“All of you have been on the front lines from the very beginning, and as we head into this Thanksgiving and a very dark winter with cases of hospitalizations and deaths spiking, I want you to know that we’re here for you,” Biden said, broadcasting at the virtual conference from Wilmington, Delaware.
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“There are so many other issues that your cities are on the front lines of—racial justice, climate change, minimum wage, paid family leave, closing broadband gaps, ending homelessness,” he continued. “The only way to beat these challenges, I believe, and so does Kamala, is that we have to come together as a nation.”
Biden’s uniting words stand in stark contrast to messaging from the current occupant of the White House. President Donald Trump has made a habit of slamming many of the cities represented on the call, such as New York City, Seattle, and Atlanta.
He called New York “dirty and unsafe,” and likened Detroit, Chicago, and Seattle to “living in hell.” Coincidentally, these large cities are Democratic strongholds.
He also sanctioned an initiative to cut federal spending on health care for newborns and housing assistance in cities he deemed “anarchist jurisdictions” for their refusal to crush lawful protests against racial injustice over the summer.
Now, America staggers under a renewed wave of COVID-19 infections, with 12.5 million having contracted the virus and 258,000 dead. As the Dec. 26 expiration date approaches, 12 million workers face losing Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation. These threats have no political affiliation—and mayors are practically begging the federal government for fiscal relief.
“Republican mayors, Democratic mayors, independent mayors—we’re in this fight together, and that’s how he approached every one of the topics that we spoke about, whether it was COVID or job creation or infrastructure, schools, climate,” Louisville’s Greg Fischer, president of the Council of Mayors, told The Courier Journal.
READ MORE: ‘Like Living in Hell’: Trump Won’t Stop Trashing American Cities
Emiene Wright Emiene Wright is associate editor at Cardinal & PIne. Before that she was on the 24-hour news desk of the Miami Herald and the Detroit Free Press, and her writing has been featured in Crisis, the Charlotte Observer, and Our State magazine.
