Setting People Up to Succeed: An interview with guaranteed basic income advocate Michael Tubbs.

• Author: Stockwell, Norman

Michael Tubbs is currently a special adviser for economic mobility and opportunity for California Governor Gavin Newsom. He was elected in 2012 to the city council in Stockton, California, and in November 2016, at age twenty-six, he won election as that city's youngest and first-ever African American mayor. In 2020, the year he lost his bid for re-election, Tubbs was the subject of the HBO documentary Stockton on My Mind, which chronicled his political career. He has also been a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics and a member of the MIT Media Lab, and he is founder and chair of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. His autobiography, The Deeper the Roots: A Memoir of Hope and Home, was published by Flatiron Books on November 16, 2021. We spoke by telephone at the end of December.

Q: You grew up in poverty in Stockton, in a single-parent family with your father in prison. In the beginning of the book, you write: "Our circumstances were my normal." Tell us a bit about that.

Michael Tubbs: Growing up in Stockton, in an economically insecure position, normal things were hearing my mom figure out how she was going to pay the bills every month. Normal things were figuring out where the next meal was going to come from, and oftentimes eating things like beans and rice or government cheese. Normal was me and my mom going to check-cashing places to be able to pay bills. Normal was going to sleep hearing gunshots because we didn't live in the safest neighborhood.

Q: Then you got out of that by going to Stanford University.

Tubbs: Yeah. Going to Stanford was such an amazing eye-opening opportunity because for the first time in my life, I was in a place where all my basic needs were met. There was always going to be food; I didn't have to even worry about that. It showed me that talent and intellect were universal, but resources and opportunities were not, because my grades were higher at Stanford than they were in high school because I had less to worry about. I had less stress. All I had to do was focus on school.

Q: You recall in the book how you were speaking with friends at graduation, and you said, "Our kids wouldn't have to struggle the way I had; they would grow up in a world knowing that people like their parents and uncles and aunts went to Stanford."

Tubbs: It just really showed me how poverty can be broken in one generation and what a blessing my children's life would be [for them], because it'd be free of the stress and the trauma that...