President’s Message by Cheryl Viegas Walker
President Viegas Walker addresses California city officials; Viegas Walker confers with Management Assistant Liz Zarate outside El Centro City Hall, right. left
Hope Is Not a Strategy, but It Is a Requirement for Leadership This is my first “President’s Message” and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts about the issues facing us as elected city leaders in this time of unparalleled challenges.
Perspective in a Tough Year 2020 has brought us to a state of crisis that we might have sometimes feared but hoped never to encounter. As the year unfolded, local elected officials throughout California faced a series of unprecedented situations that touched every aspect of life in our communities — our health, our families, our homes and schools, and the air we breathe. In early March, I traveled with California city officials and League staff to the National League of Cities (NLC) Congressional City Conference in Washington, D.C., where discussions focused on the emerging coronavirus pandemic, a new priority for NLC. Afterward, flying back to Los Angeles from New York City, it was bone-chillingly eerie to walk through empty terminals at JFK
and LAX. It was the kind of surreal feeling we would all grow accustomed to as the COVID-19 pandemic transformed life in our country and around the world. In the months that followed, California city officials worked hand in hand with the League to comply with emergency orders and keep our communities safe. We advocated for our cities at the state and federal levels. We continued providing essential services to our residents, even in the face of challenges that constantly changed just as we were coming to understand them. Then George Floyd was brutally killed while in police custody, and the issues around equity and justice came to the forefront in our cities. Nationwide, citizens protested and demanded accountability and change from their government, both locally and nationally. Local leaders worked to address the pain expressed by our communities. The League stepped up with resources to support cities committed to justice for all.
As we worked to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic and launch dialogues with our community and within our cities about advancing equity, a series of dry lightning strikes ignited blazes statewide. California’s worst-ever wildfire season brought still untold losses to communities, livelihoods, and our beloved forests and open lands. The lives lost, and the ongoing impacts to our most vulnerable people because of the fires, are yet another tragedy in a year already overfilled with them. The call for leadership, and the need for mutual support among our communities to address these challenges, has never been louder.
Leadership and Support Coping with adversity on so many fronts takes its toll. We hear this firsthand from our nurses and firefighters. We hear it from schoolteachers. We feel it from our children, who have been deprived of so many of their normal joys. We know it from continued
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Western City, November 2020
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