Maya Wiley's Family Roots

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. You may know my next guest, Maya Wiley. If so, it's probably because she ran in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York in 2021 or has been a legal analyst on MSNBC. Some of you may know she chaired the City's Civilian Complaint Review Board, the agency that hears complaints about NYPD actions from New Yorkers who feel they've been wrongly treated by them. That was under Mayor de Blasio. She was also de Blasio's chief counsel for part of his administration. These days, she chairs the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Now Maya Wiley has a book, a memoir called Remember, You Are a Wiley. It's her personal story, obviously, including about her father, a well-known civil rights leader in his day, but who also died tragically when Maya was young, and about her work in politics and activism on issues important to her as a grown-up. Maya, thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the book, and welcome back to WNYC.

Maya Wiley: Thank you so much for having me, Brian. It's a real pleasure to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: Why'd you write a memoir now?

Maya Wiley: Well, that's such a good question. Let me start by, in a way, this was a very long journey. I had planned to write a book about social movements after I left City Hall, actually, and before I ran for mayor, because we had seen a time when we had the fight for the $15 minimum wage, where we had Times Up, where we had Black Lives Matter, where we had so much organizing and activism across a range of critically important areas of our lives.

I was very moved by it, excited by it, but also a bit frustrated that there wasn't a deeper understanding, that these weren't just hashtags, that it wasn't social media that made the movements as much as a long history of organizing. I knew that because of my parents. I knew that because I had the incredible privilege of being born at the feet of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, and my father being a leader in the nascent economic justice movement, coming out of the civil rights movement.

I started pursuing that, and then talked to a book publisher editor, who literally said, ask me a lot of questions about it. I already had a book agent for it. This very smart woman said to me, "You know, I think this is actually a book about your family." This started before I ran for mayor, actually, so it's been a long time coming, but the more I thought about her point, and I was originally kind of put off by it. In my family, part of being a Wiley is you didn't brag on yourself and you didn't focus on yourself. It was always about other people.

It was very uncomfortable to turn it into a personal book, into a personal memoir and family memoir. With the rise of Trumpism, frankly, with the rise of all that we've seen in hate bias, some of which you were just speaking about. It felt really, really, really important to have more of a conversation about our history of activism, but also what it means and what it means to us personally and how the personal is the political, how it shapes us, but also the lessons we learn from the past that I think are really necessary for us to carry forward. I was persuaded that it was really important to do that through personal story and through vulnerability. It's something that we typically don't praise, except that it's really how we get through. It's also how we find friends, make connections, and build coalition, and so it became a personal book.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start at the beginning, and then we will also get to some current politics, how you think Mayor Adams is doing, you as someone like Kamala Harris, living in a blended family, a few other things, but first things first. Where'd you grow up?

Maya Wiley: Well, interestingly, so I was born in Syracuse, New York, which is where my parents met and built their activism together. Came down to New York City and lived on the Lower East Side. When my father took over as the number two for James Farmer at the Congress of Racial Equality, that's where he left his very promising career in chemistry to be a full time civil rights activist.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, that's such an unusual career path in itself, right? He was an organic chemistry professor to civil rights leader with CORE. A nerd.

Maya Wiley: Yes. He got a PhD as a Black man in organic chemistry in 1957 from Cornell. He had a very promising chemistry career, even in a white university that had very few Black students or Black faculty. Of course, he was the only Black faculty members member in the chemistry department. They considered him to be an up and coming Nobel laureate. That's a pretty astounding thing to turn your back on, but there was really no question for him that he was going to turn his back on it and jump feet first, and that my mother, who had also been an activist, was going to jump right along with him, and that there was not a whole lot of discussion about it.

Yes, he leaves it, and he takes up that mantle, and becomes a national civil rights activist, where he had been a local civil rights activist. That's actually what brought us to Washington, DC, when I was two years old, which is where I did grow up, because he got pushed out of the Congress of Racial Equality. James Farmer had committed to supporting him to be his successor, and within a year, James Farmer was stepping aside. That was also at the advent of the Black Power movement, which my father really felt a lot of affinity for. He didn't see a disconnect between really elevating and thinking centrally about Black Power and being someone who believed in multiracial coalition building, and believed that that was the vision for the future of the country and critical to the values that the movement had and the inclusive society we were trying to win.

He lost. I always find this so important. He lost despite the fact that he actually had the support of the Black southern organizers and the Black organizers in low income communities, because they felt like he really was their champion. What he did, his frustration was always that the whole point of the civil rights movement was for full inclusion in society, and that could and should include an end to poverty.

He turned his attention to how to support Black communities to get out of poverty and organize around that, but he did that by going to Washington, DC, thinking, we'll create a national organization that will pull together the issues and concerns of poor people of color and multiracial coalition build around it, because poor people are also white. It was a great way to solve Black poverty, but show white people that they had skin in this game called civil rights and racial justice, because it was also economic justice. That's how I grew up in DC.

Brian Lehrer: That's how you grew up in DC, and so you just told some of the story of your father, who is your famous parent, but your mother has quite a story, too, right?

Maya Wiley: Yes, that was one of the things that was really important to me about telling the family story, because my mother was such a leader in her own right and such an astounding human being, and the person who both helped me survive trauma, but also who really showed that there was real possibility for people who come and grow up as a white woman who grew up in Abilene, Texas, in the Southern Baptist church, which, as you know, Brian, took decades. I mean, they didn't apologize for racial segregation into the '80s or '90s. It is still a place that is not very welcoming of difference.

Not every Southern Baptist, to be clear, but certainly as an ideological base, and she grew up in it, and she fought it in her own way, and she fought it as a debater. She was such a badass that even in college in the '50s, she demanded to be on the men's debate team, and she joined the men's debate team. That in Abilene, Texas, in the '50s, is its own story. It got her to Union Theological Seminary because the way she found her path out was education. It was permissible from her community that she got this fellowship to go to a seminary, and they didn't realize she was very happily going because there were all these lefties there, including liberation theologists, and folks that Martin Luther King had studied, and studied with and under--

Brian Lehrer: New York's famous progressive Union Theological Seminary.

Maya Wiley: Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: That's funny that her parents only heard seminary and made assumptions about it. That's pretty hilarious, actually.

Maya Wiley: It is. She fully took advantage of all of that. When she comes from Abilene, having never lived anywhere else, and to the extent they traveled, it was only getting in a car and driving west of Abilene. She lived in a very segregated environment. She lived in a very racist environment. She gets off an airplane, and enters Spanish Harlem and Black Harlem, and just settles herself right in.

She used to go to Father Divine's table, and for those who don't know, Father Divine was a famous figure and leader in Harlem who had this table. It was a liberation table. It was a radical table. She would go have dinner there. She also spent all her time at union, literally walking onto what was then considered the poorest block in the City of New York in Spanish Harlem, a block that police only entered if there was an incident they were forced to address. She went directly in working with these young girls, and actually started doing sex education when she wasn't supposed to. That's like her before she ever met my father.

Brian Lehrer: Was Abilene where she grew up at all multiracial? Did she have experience as a white woman in interacting with Black people?

Maya Wiley: No. Here's the thing. It was a community that was not all white. It had a very small Black community, but it existed. The largest community that was not white was Mexican, of course.

Brian Lehrer: Right.

Maya Wiley: I remember her teaching me what I never learned in my history books about Texas being Mexico. These people who were treated as citizens of their community were really the first citizens of their community, and yet we're on the other side of the railroad tracks. The segregation for Blacks and Mexicans was very much on equal footing, and they were very much treated poorly in the same ways and segregated in the same ways. There really is a story in the book of her trying to cross that boundary and the way that the social mechanism was very quickly work to enforce that boundary, not even crossing over the tracks into the Mexican community. She did not have interaction in the way that you mean, because it was not an interracial society, despite the fact that it was one that had diversity.

Brian Lehrer: Moving to New York in that way was really different for her. My guest is Maya Wiley, who's got a new memoir called Remember, You Are a Wiley, and we can take a few phone calls for her. We will get into some current issues. Obviously, as somebody who prominently ran for mayor in the Democratic primary in 2021, she may have some things to say about the city or somebody who was Mayor de Blasio's chief counsel and Civilian Complaint Review Board chair.

Listeners, maybe you watch her on TV when she goes on MSNBC and does legal analysis fairly frequently. Anything you always wanted to ask Maya Wiley or anything just based on hearing her today, we have time for a few phone calls as we talk about her. Both 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, and we'll continue with all that in a minute.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Maya Wiley, whose new book is a memoir called Remember, You Are a Wiley. Let me ask you one more thing about your growing up, and then we are going to get to some current issues. You write about losing your father. You were only nine. What would you like to say about it here and how it has impacted you personally or politically?

Maya Wiley: Having the experience of that kind of trauma, and as a child, you always assume your parents are going to outlive-- You're going to grow up with parents. They're not going to die.

Brian Lehrer: When you're a kid.

Maya Wiley: When you're a kid, right, when you're nine. Your parents are not only infallible, they're all powerful, and everything revolves around them. It was devastating, to say the least, and I think what was so important to me was what it taught me. What it taught me, thanks to my mother, making it the life lesson it needed to be around, how to be resilient in the face of such deep trauma, and how important it was to face it that you can't deal with trauma without facing it.

The support you need to face it is very real, and it really has been something that has been an organizing principle of my life, is how to be resilient in the face of trauma, because it never goes away. It's also such an incredible life lesson in compassion for others who have had trauma, and they're all different kinds of trauma.

One of the incredible lessons of my parents, when they were including my father when he was alive, was their deep compassion, and the way in which it formed their activism, and was an incredibly important principle. The way the trauma itself became an additional way to find and feel compassion and create community. It did shape my life a lot in terms of how I looked at other people and how when they were acting out and sometimes mistreating me, how I would look for, is there trauma there? Is there something there I don't even know is there that might be causing this behavior? Because I certainly acted out in trauma.

I think when I ran for mayor, it was really that feeling of constant trauma because of COVID was a really deep connection point to me to not only trauma, but also to that way our entire city was experiencing trauma, and what it meant to really be able to think about leadership and resilience as a leadership tool in government. It's definitely shaped everything I've done in different ways, both personally and professionally, and I'd never going to be grateful for losing my father. That's an impossibility. I feel cheated. I miss him every day, and I miss what I lost in getting to know him as an adult. I wonder every day what he would be saying about the world we're in right now, but I'm also really grateful for the life lesson, the learning of survival, and it is something we can pass on.

Brian Lehrer: Of the calls and texts that we're getting, there is one overwhelming question, so I will let this one text that I'll read represent. You can probably guess what it is. It says, "Please tell me Maya Wiley is running for mayor again. We need her thoughtful intelligence now more than ever here in New York City. Other fans of yours are writing in, so obviously we are coming to another mayoral race next year. Would you like to rule it in or out?

Maya Wiley: Well, I have taken the position of president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which is the nation's oldest and largest, and it's an incredible platform for multiracial coalition and for the Democracy work we need to do now and into the future. I am so overwhelmed by that response and trust and believe that I am not leaving this city, and I am not leaving the work of this city, and I am not running for mayor.

Brian Lehrer: And I am not running for mayor, so how do you think Mayor Adams is doing?

Maya Wiley: Well, I think that New Yorkers have spoken on that score, Brian. I think his approval ratings the lowest of any mayor since 1996, sadly speak for themselves, and I mean that. I am a New Yorker. My children were born in New York. They want to stay in New York. It's our city. It's our home. My brother and his family are here. My mother died here. My parents did work here. I can't say how devastating I think it is where our city is today. I take no joy in looking at those approval ratings.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us in what way, because when you drill down on the approval ratings and based on the callers that I get as well, there are some who will say, Mayor Adams is using the police too aggressively. There are others who will say, and it's reflected in the polls, a percentage of those who don't approve his job, he's not effectively fighting crime enough. Those are almost opposite responses, not exactly opposite responses, but they seem to come from different mindsets and different camps, so where are you?

Maya Wiley: I'm of the mindset that everyone wants to be and needs to be safe, and that safety and what's coming from both of those, I actually see the common foundation, which is we have problems that if we solve, we reduce crime. Prevention is the best way to produce more public safety, and police accountability when the police aren't doing a good, strong and important job is also public safety. I don't think they're mutually exclusive in any way. I do think it's about perceptions about what is the most effective way to be safe, but look, we see it time and again. We're seeing it in New Jersey right now, where the New Jersey Attorney General is doing a fabulous job of showing how you can provide mental health services and do it in a way that also ensures that there's public safety if violence occurs, but that is an approach--

Brian Lehrer: Meaning without deploying the police as much.

Maya Wiley: Correct, correct. What we keep doing is policing social problems, and that's not fixing the problem. That's increasing the public safety problems.

Brian Lehrer: Let me take a related call. We only have a few minutes in a segment. Let me get Leah in Manhattan in for you on that topic. Leah, you're on WNYC with Maya Wiley.

Leah: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. Hi, Brian, and hi, Maya Wiley.

Maya Wiley: Hello.

Leah: I am so happy to hear your history with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and I've always been interested in this entity. I moved to New York City from East Texas, and I got to learn a lot about how the city functions, and this is something that has always interested me. Can you share what your experience was like on the CCRB, what you wish New Yorkers knew about the CCRB, and how can we better support it so that everyone is aware of its functions, and that it can continue functioning sustainably and effectively for the city?

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for that question. Maya, I'm going to ask you to do that in about 30 seconds.

Maya Wiley: Okay. Bottom line is support its independence and require the police department to comply with sharing evidence and with reviewing evidence, and publicly the determinations of the cases. CCRB is incredibly important, as is its prosecutorial wing, which a lot of people don't know exists. They have to be able to do civilian prosecutions of police officers inside the administrative process.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have an opinion on the police shooting of a fare beater who then flashed a knife? Mayor Adams says, though they won't release the body-cam video, that he was threatening the officers. Do you have an opinion Mayor Adams is defending the officers?

Maya Wiley: There should be no defense in the absence of evidence for that defense. What there should be is a clear investigation, and frankly, we have bystanders who were shot. There are a lot of questions to be answered here. My child rides that train. I think all of us have stake in understanding that when police are engaged in activities that can put us in harm's way, we deserve to know and understand exactly what happened and what will prevent it in the future.

Brian Lehrer: You were Mayor de Blasio's chief counsel for a time. Mayor Adams's chief counsel, Lisa Zornberg, just resigned suddenly on Saturday night amid all these investigations, but we don't really know why. We don't even know what the investigations are really about. With your experience as a lawyer and a mayoral chief counsel, do you have a take on why Lisa Zornberg quit or what they're really looking for in the Adams administration?

Maya Wiley: The most important line of her resignation was that she could no longer do the job. That's an astounding statement. Having been in the position, I could have continued to do the job. I happened to have taken another one and even stayed longer to ensure there wasn't an optics that I was leaving because of investigations. I look at this and say, wow, I can't say what it means. I cannot read her mind. To your point, I don't want to speculate on what I don't know, but I will say to you that that was an astounding and notable statement.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, for you as somebody who's in a blended family, if I have your story correct, you have both biological children and stepchildren with your--

Maya Wiley: I don't have stepchildren.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, you don't have stepchildren?

Maya Wiley: No, no. I was a stepchild. I have biological children, and I have children who I consider mine, though I didn't give birth to them.

Brian Lehrer: Okay. I apologize. Any take on the way Kamala Harris is being attacked?

Maya Wiley: Oh, yeah. First of all, double standard, number one. Secondly, I'm sorry. That woman's stepchildren love her. That woman's husband's ex-wife supports and lauds her. That's really all we need to know. I shared a personal experience, actually, just yesterday on Deadline: White House about how I first met Senator Kamala Harris. It was because she was very, very quietly and without drawing attention or notice to herself there for her stepchild's first day at the new school.

I was delivering the convocation. I just have to tell you, she was there totally, totally without any regard to herself or her profile or getting coverage. She was just there for her. She had to tell me she was there because she was keeping such a low profile, because that was not the point of her presence. For anyone one to attack people solely because the fact that they did not have biological children is its own offense. To suggest as someone who also has so clearly demonstrated that humility in her own parenting of her stepchildren is just doing personal attacks over examination and critique of policy, and that's wrong. It's a double standard, and it's despicable.

Brian Lehrer: Maya Wiley's new book is a memoir called Remember, You Are a Wiley. Thanks for joining us, Maya. Congratulations on the book.

Maya Wiley: Thank you, Brian. Pleasure to be with you.

 

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