The iron law of urban politics: Not every elected official who rides transit will be a good elected official. But every good elected city official will ride transit.
Wow, that was a real talk.
How about tax silicon valley instead of cutting off food services for poor people? What asshole. Your budget problem is the fucking billionaire techbros destroying this country.
he was responsible to cutting back some of the services.
He also wants to bring back car traffic to Market St, which had previously been restricted to bikes/transit/delivery vehicles.
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Wow, as a swiss resident this comes across rude. Dont get me wrong, its nice to see politicians in discourse with the people but the guy just kinda said: “Hello, I have a question and now I have another quite hard to answer political question.”
I’d have said: “May I ask you something politics related?” And then accepted a No if the politician wants to have a quite ride.
Behaving like this is going to encourage private travel in a car.
This isn’t Switzerland, this is America, and we’re at WAR with our politicians. If we see them in public, we will DEMAND answers, and they WILL provide them. If they don’t like it, then either stop acting like a hypocritical shithead, or stop taking performative trips on public transport to demonstrate how woke you are. If you are an American politician, you should be confronted publicly, and if you don’t like it, stop supporting policies that you can’t defend, or stay hidden. But if you go out in public, you better be prepared to defend yourself.
In the US listening to and relaying the political concerns of constituents is ostensibly a core part of the job of being a public representative, and even bought and paid for reps usually feel pressure to uphold that reputation.
Yeah but this is rude. They shouldn’t have to be accosted everywhere.
No, it’s not rude. It’s a normalized and expected part of US political life. If it seems like there is some friction between this mayor and the person asking the question, that is because the question is regarding a topic for which the mayor has been largely in conflict with and unresponsive to his constituents on. The person asking the question is being direct because the mayor has been derelict, and the mayor is pained because his own irresponsibility has caught up to him.
Good representatives don’t get nearly so many pointed questions like this, because they listen to and account for their constituent’s concerns. I don’t know what keeps reps in other countries honest, but whatever it may be we don’t have it here in the USA. We have this, and if you think we shouldn’t because it seems “rude” to you then consider what it might be like for your country to have to deal with a USA even less restrained by it’s more politically-active citizens than it is now.
happy cake day!
Thanks :D
I get where you’re coming from, and also, being a politician in the United States means being a public figure, and if you ride public transit you expect people to recognize you and talk to you. It’s part of outreach. It’s a populist thing.
Joe Biden rode Amtrak to work for 40 years - and from what I understand, now that he’s not president, he’s riding Amtrak to his office again (albeit guarded by his handlers in case he sundowns). People stop to talk to him, take selfies with him, whatever. It’s not (necessarily) rude.
The thing about the United States is, unfortunately, no politician is so poor they have to take public transit. So any pol on the bus expects people to recognize them and start a conversation. If they didn’t want that, they wouldn’t take the bus.
Yea, I underestimated the car dependency once again. Being “so poor they have to take public transit” is a crazy sentence to me. Our highest executive politicians, the Bundesräte (the left/green moreso than the right ones) regularly ride on public transport, in the more expensive 1. Class, and they expect not to be disturbed.
I mean its a swiss thing as well. Roger Federer and Justin Biber can just stroll through a city and only rarely get bothered by people for selfies.
Taking a video like this is really creepy.
I’m not familiar with this politician but I appreciate his answer to the question.
Luckily our city’s traffic minister is a keen cyclist. That really shows in the development of bike infrastructure in the last 5 years.
