Stockton's pathbreaking former mayor has learned a few lessons about storytelling [centerforhealthjournalism.org]

By Ryan White, Center for Health Journalism, April 13, 2021

You might say that the political education of Michael Tubbs bears a striking similarity to that of many ambitious young journalists. An early faith in the power and rigor of data is gradually absorbed into an even greater belief in the power of storytelling. All the best numbers fizzle without a story that makes you feel their human weight.

When Tubbs became Stockton, California’s first Black mayor in 2016 at age 26, the narrative surrounding his native city was one of bankruptcy, poverty and crime, a Central Valley city so gutted by the Great Recession that it became known as America’s foreclosure capital. It led the cruel list of “America’s Most Miserable Cities.” But Tubbs had the boldness of youth and new ideas: He seized his mayoral powers to roll out what has become his signature political initiative — a universal basic income for some of Stockton’s poorest residents, as well as new programs targeting gun violence and homelessness. The city was ranked among the top in the nation in fiscal health by 2017, and it led the state in its dramatic drop in officer-involved shootings in 2019.

Despite those successes and the wave of national attention that followed the city’s income experiment, none of it came easy for Tubbs. He’s a former mayor now of a city known for what one local columnist has described as a “witch’s brew of potentially poisonous politics.” In a keynote talk via Zoom to journalists taking part in the Center for Health Journalism’s 2021 California Fellowship this week, Tubbs sketched his own political journey from chart-carrying data wonk to a converted disciple of the powers of narrative. He recounted, for instance, just how badly he underestimated the opposition to a proposal that would have shut down two city-subsidized golf courses to save money. The financial argument seemed like a no-brainer to him. Not to others: “It became like literally World War III,” he said, with residents fiercely protective of a place tied to memories of childhood and better times.

[Please click here to read more.]