I might have talked about chicken bones at my first state of the city address and riled the whole city. But I’m not a Donald Trump stirring up the minions to invade the Capitol, only the mayor of a medium-sized American city on the West Coast. But what makes me different is that I’m the first woman to hold the position in a place formerly run by white politicians handing out jobs to family members as though they were cheese samples at a farmer’s market.
It’s only been a few city administrations where everyone wasn’t related to everyone else.
They were out to get me, they being the press, the Chamber of Commerce, and several powerful members of City Council. My detractors had campaigned for my opponent. He was a real estate developer keen on building a coal terminal, transporting the coal scraped from the hills of West Virginia and running it on a rail through our city.
I’d been a vocal a member who’d opposed the terminal citing climate change, and coal’s disproportionate impact on health. Asthma is real and means you can’t breathe. Shipments were projected to run through the poorest of our city’s community. No surprises there. I’d opposed the terminal. Now it was being challenged in the courts on a technicality, legal contracts that weren’t being followed to the letter. That’s why we need lawyers. To help legislative morality when there’s no other way.
Because change is a word that gets lip service, but most people don’t like the sound of it. That’s the difference between a noun and a verb. Giving something a name is no guarantee that it’s going to happen. Only if you’re forced to change like having men with guns open your door and watching your mother being kicked in the head.
That’s why I could count on anything I said to be misrepresented, and found a certain humor in my detractors’ vitriol, telling my aide who was reading a story to me from the newspaper, “What do you know? Things are looking up. He didn’t call me incompetent. not once.”
Standing behind the podium and reviewing at my notes, I recognized the police chief and a few younger people with green and purple hair, a scattering of tattoos. They were supporters from my time teaching in the schools. People filled up seats, some carrying mock report cards with a column of Fs, sitting in the front row and waving them at me.
I felt the tension, reviewed my notes on the podium as I looked out on a crowded room. I wore a dark suit and string of pearls trying to look as mayoral as possible. Far from being a soft brie or an aged cheddar that you could easily spread on toast, I was a short Vietnamese woman with a big mouth, and not afraid to use it.
Waiting for the meeting to begin, I overheard a conversation. “Del Rosario? I don’t believe what that bitch said!” Del Rosario was my married name. I’d divorced my husband years ago.
–to be continued