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Last night's mayoral forum, sponsored by and for Louisville's international community of immigrants and refugees, was shaping up to be something pretty exciting, and pretty different.
The format wasn't totally clear to me at first—nor was it, it seemed, to the candidates—but I caught on: the candidates drew random questions and had 90 seconds to answer. Most other forums had each candidate answer every question.
And the room at the Americana Center where it was held didn't at all resemble the cozy confines of previous forums (I'm comparing it here to the Kentucky Center for the Arts, the Downtown Marriot, and the Convention Center). The audience of about 75 was often bustling last night, not hushed.
And it was the first such event to be multilingual, so every answer was accompanied by the sound of someone in the back of the room translating it into either Swahili, Spanish, or French.
But this forum was most significant because of the subject matter and the audience—and what both of those things said about the candidates answering the questions.
Most questions had to do with immigrant- or refugee-specific issues—Shannon White was asked, for example, what she would do to make it easier to open a cemetery for Muslims—and it became clear pretty quickly which candidates had and hadn't seriously thought about what concerns this community might have.
Nearly all of candidates used their opening statements as an opportunity to share something about themselves they thought might appeal to someone from another country.
Shannon White said “hello” in a few different languages before beginning. Chris Thieneman said he'd just taken a trip to Indonesia and Singapore. Jim King spoke for a few sentences in American-accented Spanish. Greg Fischer said he was married to an international (his wife is Greek). Lisa Moxley wore a red, yellow, and green skirt instead of suit pants.
But the only two candidates who seemed to really comprehend the circumstances of the forum's audience were Jackie Green and Tyler Allen. In talking about his family's relocation to Sao Paulo, Brazil, when he was 12 years old, Green made pains to note that his was a migration of choice—since some in the audience had no choice in coming to Louisville.
Allen began by saying that the United States “was built by people who came from somewhere else,” and then talked about how much he learned about the world and himself from the Sudanese refugees he took into his home in 2001.
What set Allen and Green apart at last night's forum, though, was that they seemed to be talking to the audience of immigrants and refugees, and not about them. The other candidates talked about what they would do for the “international community;” Green and Allen (and to some extent Hal Heiner) talked about what they would do for “you.”
When mentioning a culture of “inclusion,” as many of the candidates did, it's important to sound inclusive yourself. Green and Allen (and again, Heiner), talked about the benefits of inclusion like they understood them.
This forum didn't teach us much about the candidates when it comes to matters of policy, but it did show us how some of them responded when the people they were engaging came from very different circumstances.
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John LaFollette