(upbeat music) - Welcome to Forum 360.

Thank you for joining us for a global outlook with a local view.

I'm Leslie Ungar, your host today.

The word honeymoon is thought to have originated in medieval times to refer to the early part of a couple's relationship where everything seems carefree and happy.

The phrase has been hijacked to refer to the beginning of any new relationship.

Due to the unusual circumstances in this year's Akron mayoral election, we have witnessed what may, at seven months be the longest honeymoon period any elected official has ever had the opportunity to enjoy.

Shammas Malik has been referred to in many ways since he returned to Akron.

First it was prodigal son.

After his first election, it was councilman, and then presumptive mayor.

The title now has evolved into Mayor-Elect.

On January 1st, the term will officially become Mayor.

Whatever title you choose to use until inauguration day, we are thrilled to welcome Shammas to Forum 360.

So welcome.

- Thanks so much for having me.

- For what hopefully will be the first of of many trips too.

- I'm available whenever you want.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

If there was someone out there that doesn't know your backstory, I'm not sure there is anyone left that doesn't know your backstory, but if there is someone, I'd like to just quickly go through it just so that people know how at roughly 33, - 32.

- 32, you are now poised to become Mayor.

So you're the product of Akron Public Schools.

You went to Firestone High School.

So let me first ask you, what would you say to people that question the quality of public education?

- My high school education in Akron Public Schools allowed me to get a scholarship to the Ohio State University and then go to Harvard Law School.

And I don't say that by way of bragging, but I say that because, you know, so often people do question.

And you know, you can get a good education at a lot of different places, but the IB program at Firestone, I joke with people, I joked with some Firestone students yesterday that I worked pound for pound harder in the IB program in high school than I did in college or law school, not because stuff wasn't harder, but because you know, that's when you learn a work ethic.

And that'll carry you through as things get harder.

You know, I think there's all kinds of reasons why, you know, public education in this country is being undermined.

But I'm so proud of the education I got.

And I know classmates and peers who are working at Google or working in aerospace engineering or working on things all over.

And I'm inspired by them.

So that's part of why service means so much to me.

My mom was an educator.

She taught for decades.

And a lot of my aunts and uncles were as well.

So it's something that's really important to me.

- So then as you said, you go to the Ohio State University.

Now, obviously it prepared you at least to get into law school, but are there any ways that you can think of that any professors or any classes, you got something from that can help you in your first year as mayor?

- That's an interesting question.

I don't know that I've really thought about it, but I think one of the things that really, you know, I took away from Ohio State is that it's such a big place, right?

But when you go there and when you're in a particular major, a particular college, it actually is a fairly small place.

Right?

- Mm hm.

- And so you can't walk across the oval at OSU without seeing people who, you know, you see every day.

And ironically, you know, I still see some of those people.

I saw people in grad school and then, you know, and now and later in life, you know, the person who runs Power a Clean Future Ohio, which is a statewide coalition, is Joe Flarida, who was one of my classmates and was, like, friends of friends at Ohio State.

And so it's kind of a small world.

And I think one of the things that I learned there that kind of is applicable is, you know, OSU is like a small city, and kind of, you should try to do your best to learn about lots of different aspects of it.

And you know, kind of, I started out in college and I was in College of International Studies and Poli sci major.

Right?

Well, I'm not doing anything related to international studies now, right, but I always tried to explore and say, well, you know, make sure that you try to take classes that are not just in that specific focus.

- Well, I would say Akron has some companies with an international footprint.

- Oh yeah.

Absolutely.

- So I would say there is a connection there.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

But I thought I was gonna be working in national security and foreign policy.

- Got it.

And I did my internships in Washington and I worked at the Pentagon.

And you know, doing local government is, kind of was a big turn from what I thought I was gonna do.

But I tried to always remain open to, you know, something different.

- Got it.

So I'm a fan of Ivy League schools.

I respect and admire their place.

But let me ask you, can you summarize how a law degree from Harvard is gonna help you govern?

- Sure.

So the first thing I wanna say, I kind of broke the rule 'cause usually I don't talk about going to Harvard.

But I think, you know, to me it was an amazing opportunity.

I didn't know anyone who went to Harvard before I went there.

I got in off the wait list.

I showed up on campus.

- I was just gonna ask you, would you just quickly share that?

Because I think that's kind of a story of like, of hope and like overcoming challenges, that you were waitlisted.

- Yeah, I was waitlisted.

And you know, I had lots of great options.

And you know, my mom had been sick and my mom ultimately passed away before I got in.

But it was a difficult time in my life and it was this, you know, goal that I achieved.

And I wanna be super clear.

There are lots of people at every law school around the country that are just as smart, if not more so than, you know, me and the people I went to law school with.

Right?

So it's nothing like that.

But I think the thing that really I appreciated again, at Harvard was not that different from Ohio State was there were people from all around the world, right?

And so in the dorm that I lived in my first two years, there were, you know, students from South Africa and students from Japan and students from England and students from all around the world.

And you know, in a lot of cases they actually were already lawyers and had had careers, and were coming back for like a legal master's program with almost like a mid-career thing.

And so just taking the time to learn about different perspectives that are not your own enriched me tremendously.

And now I have friends who I can call and ask about all kinds of different issues, whether it's the environment or criminal justice or what have you, who are doing incredibly exciting things.

And then I joke that a lot of my friends, I'm a fan of them before.

I'm a fan of them first and then they're my friend beyond that.

And so just, you know, thinking that, you know, we're all in our society doing different things.

We all have our different focuses.

But we can kind of figure out how, you know, we all have our place and we all have our role, and it's, you know, how are we coming together and doing things in a coordinated way.

- Now you said that you were in the dorm the first two years.

- Yeah.

- So I have to ask you, is it the same in law school dorm?

I understand from my good friend Pete Buttigieg, you know, we're like that, I understand that when you go to Harvard as an undergraduate, that they tell you who has slept in that bed before you.

- Yeah.

- Do they do the same thing in law school?

- They did not do that in law school.

Although, I will tell you, so the buildings that I stayed in were designed by the same person who designed the Massachusetts State prison system.

And they reflect that brutalist architecture.

And there's a building in Shaker Heights where the Saffron Patch Indian restaurant is, that was designed by the same person.

And the reason I knew is 'cause I drove up to this huge concrete, it's like five, six stories and I was like, this looks so familiar here.

So you see this kind of everywhere.

- You know, there's a saying, we plan and God laughs.

So if you could look around corners, where do you think your biggest surprises are gonna come from in your first term?

- You know, I think that I'm very mindful that, you know, I think there's a lot of benefits that a younger perspective brings to this role, but I've been very honest with people all along.

I'm not pretending like I have 20 years of management experience.

I'm not pretending like, you know, I have every last skill in the book.

And so, really, I think the biggest thing will be working to build a team of people in our cabinet and then all across the city.

You know, there are 2,000 people who work for the city of Akron.

- [Leslie] It's my next question.

Yep.

- And a team of people who has a whole set of skills, a comprehensive set of skills.

And there are skills that I don't have, right?

And so trying to kind of make sure that I'm being thoughtful about that, but also giving myself grace, giving the rest of our team grace.

And it all takes some time to kind of build that out and build the culture and build the set of policy proposals.

'Cause I have, and I ran, because I have a vision for where Akron can go.

Right?

But I'm not pretending, and I said very clearly all along that I can't do this by myself.

It will take all of us, 190,000 people who live in the community and then the whole greater Akron area too, our corporate community, our nonprofit community, our arts community, education, and government.

So that's kind of the approach that I'm taking.

- What do you think?

You know, as I mentioned in the intro, in some ways it's been a very long honeymoon period - Yes.

- that most candidates don't get, and that can be good and that can be bad.

You know, nobody's mad at you yet.

You haven't disappointed anybody yet.

- Not everyone.

Yeah.

- Right?

I mean, you haven't disappointed anyone yet.

You haven't said no to them.

You haven't cut anyone's budget.

- Yeah.

- How do you prepare for that?

Whether it's, I understand getting the right people, but even mentally, how do you go from managing basically no one to managing 2,000 people?

- Yeah, so the good thing is that we've been, you know, managing our campaign team, which is fairly small, but we had, you know, a team of four or five people, and then a lot of kind of contractors who worked with us, and then a whole team of volunteers, so, you know, well over 200 volunteers through the whole process.

We raised, I think now, over half a million dollars over the last year or so.

And so, you know, it's something that, you know, has required a fair amount of bureaucracy, but obviously the city is a different scale.

We really are just trying to be thoughtful, like I said, to take things one step at a time.

I don't wanna be rushed in anything.

And so let's use this full amount of time between May and January of seven months, basically, but also, you know, getting ready to start doing that.

So I'm trying to say no more often and I'm trying to really, you know, be thoughtful that there are gonna be hard decisions.

And I'm comfortable making them and I'm gonna start getting used to making more of them.

And I joke with people.

You know, my mom was the most amazing person in my life, and she had a million admirable qualities.

One of them was that she was pretty stubborn, right?

So when she set her mind that something was the right choice, she was kind of okay with that.

She'd put her foot in the concrete and, you know, not really worry about the backlash and consequences.

I'm trying to get to that place, of look, like we're gonna make easy decisions, we're gonna make a lot of hard decisions.

And not everyone's going be a fan of that, but people can judge me by my actions.

You know, they can't know my intentions or my motives but they can judge me by my actions.

- You know, anyone that's been around a campaign event of yours or anything feels an energy.

- [Shammas] Yeah.

- It's palpable.

Now what will happen with that, we don't know, but there is an energy.

So you definitely bring a youth and enthusiasm and energy.

What role is expertise and experience gonna have, say in your cabinet or in the city positions?

- Yeah, so it has a huge role.

And, you know, I was very clear again on the campaign trail that I view vision as a really critical piece.

That's why I ran.

Without a vision for where the city's going, even the most experienced manager, even the most experienced expert is gonna be stuck managing decline.

But there's a critical, vision by itself cannot get you anywhere either.

And so you have to have vision and then you have to be able to implement it.

- Yes.

And so, you know, we are, like I said, gonna be building a team, whether it's our law department or our finance department or our service department, or, you know, our engineering team that has that.

And then I want to empower people, right?

So again, I'm being very clear and consciously saying that I don't have all the answers.

And you know, does the buck stop with me?

Sure.

But I wanna make sure people are empowered and have really a spirit that, not just at the cabinet level, but on the way down, that people are able to generate new ideas, to be creative, to think creatively.

And I think that energy helps 'cause the energy starts to say, this is a new day.

That's not to critique people who come before, but just to say that, you know, our systems always need to be growing and be more vibrant.

And then I also think, you know, that goes back to what I said of our city's not gonna succeed unless every one of the 190,000 residents and then the community beyond feel like they're a part of it.

And so we've started.

We've kind of lit the match of this energy.

And now how do we grow it and nurture it?

And kind of, you know, you don't want that candle to go out.

And so put some wins on the board and show people this is what change looks like in a concrete way, in a deliberate way.

You know, sure, I have a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm, but I am like, you know, one of the more serious people that anyone's ever met.

And so I like to do things well and be deliberate and be responsible.

And so, you know, we are gonna be, we're not gonna move fast and break things, right?

We are going to change systems, but in a way that helps us plow roads better and helps us deliver safety better and helps us be more efficient with public dollars.

And so, you know, that's a tall order, but I'm up for the challenge.

- Today we are talking with the presumptive mayor, mayor-elect, prodigal son, whatever you would like to refer to as Shammas.

- Please don't call me prodigal son.

(Leslie laughing) - Shammas Malik who will take over as mayor, we all believe, on January 1st, 2024.

At your watch party that became a victory party, there was a moment that it looked like, I just happened to catch this moment that when you realized that you were gonna win the primary, which then meant that you were gonna be the presumptive mayor, and you took a minute and you went off to yourself, can you share anything about that moment with us?

- You know, I think you're never gonna have a moment like that that isn't extraordinarily humbling, you know?

Sorry, I'm even just, you know, getting teary-eyed here.

But, you know, I'm born and raised in this community.

This community really has helped me grow.

And I feel a strong sense of service.

And I think back to, you know, I was at the John S. Knight Center.

It's just a few blocks from my mom's office where I grew up watching her do her public service, right?

And so a lot of emotions go through your head.

And you're just extraordinarily humbled and thankful.

And also just, you know, until you know, everything is called, you don't ever know, right?

- [Leslie] You never know.

- And so actually the early vote was good.

And then it slipped a little bit, and there was a second where I was like, okay, maybe there is a path that this doesn't happen.

And then it went back the other way in a big way.

And you're like, oh my goodness.

And so, and you actually, it's funny 'cause you know that before it's actually officially called.

And so we saw, we could see that the outstanding vote was in areas we were gonna do really well.

It was in Ward eight.

And so they're like, oh, well this is, we got it.

So, you know, it's interesting.

The energy of that night also is always kind of frantic and frenetic.

And so like, your phone isn't really working and everyone's trying to call you and like, there's all this stuff.

So you're like, you don't ever end up eating.

Like, I hadn't eaten like the whole day.

I think I had a Chipotle burrito that I ate in like 15 seconds.

But no, those days are always really interesting.

And also it had been raining the whole day.

And so I stood out at the polling locations all day for 13 hours, so the next day promptly got a cold.

- Governor Whitmer, she talked about how TikTok is important, - Sure.

- which at first kind of surprised me when she started talking about TikTok and how, but she said that's how she reaches so many constituents is through TikTok.

- [Shammas] Yeah.

- Do you have any plans for social media to be used differently than it's currently being used?

- Yes, absolutely.

And I will say this is an area in which during the last eight years of Mayor Horrigan's administration, they've changed dramatically in how they've used social media.

But you know, I've long had a Facebook and a Instagram and a Twitter, and I've actually never had a TikTok and I still don't.

We got through the whole campaign, I didn't have a TikTok.

And that was one of the goals was to actually build that presence, and we just never got there.

And you know, ultimately we actually this week are hiring someone for the transition who's gonna help with that.

And actually this weekend I wrote in the scope of services help create a TikTok because it is a medium that especially young people use quite a lot.

And so we're gonna be looking at that.

But even in small ways, it can really be beneficial.

When I started on council, we have, for city council, you have 13 members, 10 wards, and members going back 100 years will have monthly ward meetings at a community center, at a rec center, at the Polish American Club, right?

But there needs to be lots of different ways to reach people.

And so I started a Ward eight email newsletter.

And it's really my favorite part of the month.

It's coming up in this next week where I have to go into MailChimp and I have to put together this newsletter.

And it's not political.

It's more, here's what's going on at city hall.

Here's when leaf pickup is, right.

We just announced the leaf pickup date.

Please make sure you don't put your leaves in early.

Some people put them in a month early.

And just getting basic information out to people.

And in this fractured media ecosystem that we have, it's harder and harder to get information.

So, you know, then my thought was let's have a weekly mayoral email newsletter.

And we're getting set for that.

And then the administration, Mayor Horrigan's team unveiled a weekly email newsletter.

That's great.

They're getting it started for us.

And then we'll help, we'll take over and we'll push that up the hill.

So, you know, I'm excited for the ways in which you can use it, and also the ways in which you can listen back and really get the sense from people.

You know, you can do little polls and say, what's the number one issue?

And when 20 people come back from different parts of town and all say safety, that's some pretty good data.

- Well, speaking of safety, if you had to rank the top five challenges, either that you will face or that Akron faces, however you wanna look at it, how would you rank those top five challenges?

- Yeah, so safety, safety, safety, safety, safety.

- Safety.

- We built our campaign on four pillars.

Right.

We added this four point plan.

We called it Together for Akron.

There was safer together, there was learning together, which was education, there was living together, which was health, housing and the environment, and then there was working together, which is jobs and economic development.

And those four things, they crosscut pretty significantly.

But safety really is the first.

Without safety, without making sure people both feel safe and are safe, it's hard to have a community of any kind.

- Then how do you unite a defund segment of your citizens with a, you know, either refund, I mean, you know, reassign money or keep it as is to a defund?

You know, how do you do that with safety being a top priority?

- Yeah.

So, you know, in four years on city council, what I've learned and what I've tried to lead on is that there are no easy answers and there are no yes, no answers in this.

Right?

It is all nuance.

And I've pushed for police accountability pretty strongly.

I think I've been one of the most outspoken people on this issue, helping lead the charge for our police citizen review board in the ballot amendment that passed with substantial support from residents.

But also I've, since the very first day we launched our campaign website, we have very clearly said I did not support defunding the police.

Because after having really looked at it and thought about it and read a lot of things, I don't believe that an institution that you want to change gets better when you punitively take money away from it.

I want the Akron Police Department to have exactly the amount of money they need to do the job we need them to do.

And I wanna also make sure that we're investing as much as possible on the front end in youth opportunity to make sure, 'cause we can't police ourselves out of this crisis.

We absolutely need police.

But we also need to make sure that young people have opportunities so that they don't end up down a pathway where at 15, 16, 17, they're carrying a gun.

- If your crystal ball worked, I know you talked about universal pre-K. - [Shammas] Pre-K. Yeah.

- If you had to assign a year, would that be year one, year two, year three, year four of your first term?

- Yeah.

- When can you see that happening?

- So ironically that is what we're using this time to do, is try to kind of tier and triage where some of those major initiatives, and universal Pre-K was one of the big ones we talked about, where they fit in that timeline.

So I don't have that for you today.

Ironically, at the dinner we were at last night, there was a little bit of conversation around that.

Akron is the last major city in Ohio that doesn't have a universal pre-K initiative.

That doesn't mean that we are at the back of the line in terms of pre-K availability, but we don't have kind of that pathway for how we're gonna close the donut hole and get the rest of the way, right, and to make sure everybody has access to affordable, high quality pre-K. And so this was something that was really on the radar before COVID, and a lot of the community partners were working on, whether it's United Way or Akron Public Schools or Community Action.

And so what I've said is, let's pick that ball back up and I can help be a convener of sorts, and really figure out, it's not gonna happen by one institution saying I'm gonna do this.

It really will take all the different private providers, Akron Public Schools, others coming together and saying, how do we find the funding, and whether that's the state level, the federal level, and then figure out how we make that happen.

So whether it's year one, year two, year three, I can't say yet, but it is a huge priority.

- I only have a couple minutes and I have several questions I really wanna get to.

- Sure.

- But I'm gonna pick one that may make you a little uncomfortable.

- Okay.

- But I don't know who else is gonna give me an answer.

- [Shammas] Okay.

- There was a quote.

This may not be 100% accurate, but even if it's close, okay, that if not one man in the primary would've voted for you, you still would've won.

- [Shammas] Yeah.

- Why did you connect more with women?

- It's a good question.

There's a lot of people you can ask.

- I think a lot of candidates around the country would like to know.

- Yeah, yeah.

- How did you connect so well with women?

- Well, I think the reality is we talked about systemic problems and systemic solutions, but what I always tried to do was offer a positive and affirmative vision.

So I wasn't trying to tear down anyone else, and I wasn't trying to say, vote for me because that person is bad.

I was trying to say, here are my ideas, right.

And you can - That is true.

- take them or leave them.

And I think this is fair, that women in our society both very much recognize the systemic obstacles because women are not a minority, right.

Women are actually, you know, half of our population and yet have faced systemic obstacles for all of our history.

And then also I think, honestly, you know, when you look at how women lead, women are often called upon to kind of be conciliators and to kind of be mediators, - Yes.

- and to speak in a positive way because if they speak, - Which is why they win for judge so often.

- Yeah, and if they speak in a negative way, you know, they're judged and critiqued, right?

And so I think to me, it's really important that we offer a message that everyone feels like they could be part of that is inclusive and not just you know, on one level.

Yeah.

- That's a interesting take.

Okay.

Thank you.

You referenced your mom, so I'm gonna reference her as we close.

I think of my parents often.

As you think about your mom, in a sentence, could you say what she might be thinking now as you count down to January one?

- Yeah.

I don't know, but when I think about my mom, I think of a quote that Bobby Kennedy had about his dad.

And Joe Kennedy was a terrible person.

And my mom hated that I used this quote because I did it when she was alive.

- But I really liked that Bobby Kennedy.

- Yeah.

But Bobby Kennedy said about his dad, and this is how I felt about my mom, your job was to do the best you could.

After that, she or he would say the hell with it.

And so to my mom, the outcome was not important.

She wouldn't care if I won the election.

She wouldn't care if I did well on the LSAT.

She wouldn't care if I got a good grade on a test.

She would care about the input, about the effort that I put in, about the intention that I put into things.

And so that's what I try to center.

It's hard to do that in life, right?

You wanna win the race, you wanna.

- And we'll ask you to come back and tell us how you're doing with that.

- But I think it's important, the input, right, the intention.

- The input.

Over 100 years ago, Akron was one of the fastest growing cities in the nation.

Today we've had a conversation with Shammas Malik, who will become the 63rd mayor of Akron January 1st, 2024.

Thank you for joining us on Forum 360.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Forum 360 is brought to you by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Akron Community Foundation, Hudson Community Television, the Rubber City Radio Group, Shaw Jewish Community Center of Akron, Blue Green, Electric Impulse Communications, and Forum 360 supporters.