Maya Wiley

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.

And if you want partnerships that focus on hard problems and real solutions, then pick a Black woman. Because that's what we do every single day and in every single way.

When Superstorm Sandy churned up fourteen-foot walls of water that slammed New York's coastal communities in October 2012, they also washed away any false notions we had that we care sufficiently for poor people.

I am a Black woman raised by parents who were active in the civil-rights movement.

My mother was this White woman from Texas, from a racist town raised to believe in the inferiority of others by her community, not necessarily by her parents, but certainly by the community around her. And she fled it.

In fact, black students with college degrees are twice as likely to be unemployed as white students with college degrees. So, to say there there is not an issue for black Americans and Latinos in terms of the opportunity that college is supposed to create would be wrong.

We used to watch my father, who was a civil-rights activist, get arrested on TV sometimes, and we never knew if he was going to be home for dinner.

One of the things it's so important for any city government is to have the trust of the public.

And what do we love about New York City? We love that everyone's here. We are one of the most diverse cities in the world. And that diversity is racial. It's ethnic, it's linguistic, it's class.

So, I was in a segregated, all black, public elementary school until fourth grade, until my father died. And that's when my mother transferred me to a private, predominantly white school and I saw both sides of the world at a very young age.

Do you know how many women in a survey reported experiences of sexual harassment on the job? Eighty percent. It is so common. It's normalized. And it's an abuse of power.

My father was at the forefront of the economic justice movement - fighting for and with Black women who were on welfare for dignity and for enough support to feed their families, shelter their kids.

I, like many of the other women who made history and dared to step up to lead since the 2018 midterms, know we must all play a role in the battle for who we are and who we must be.

The innovations we need at our systems level require an understanding of business, psychology, and policy, but doing it with a deep, deep understanding of how our decisions create barriers for fairness and opportunity for some people.

Lifting the veil of secrecy that shrouds police misconduct allegations would seem like an obvious democratic value. After all, if police work for the people, should they not be answerable to the people, as well? This is a basic tenet of good government.

If you tap people's racial anxieties, you're not going to get them to be able to hear any of your facts.

It's absolutely true we have to pay attention to whether low-income people of any race are able to access quality, higher education.

Look, the Black community is diverse. We have generational divides. We have class divides. We have parts of the Black community that are fairly centrist, parts that are extremely activist.