Last month, Alexandria Mayor Alyia Gaskins was interviewed by the New York Times about the challenges of running a city under the Trump administration.
After a little more than six months in office, Gaskins was one of 16 mayors interviewed by The Times at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Tampa, Florida. She said that the biggest challenges the city faces is uncertainty of federal funding, that recent political violence in Minnesota forced her to change her habits, and more.
“We are a city of over 16,000 federal workers,” Gaskins said in the interview. “And so the biggest challenge we face is kind of understanding how changes at the federal level impact employment, housing, child care, transportation, and many of our residents who depend on the services of the federal government, but also have built their livelihoods on jobs within the federal industry.”
Gaskins also said that in light of the recent political violence in Minnesota that she’s “much more aware of my surroundings and also those of my family.”
The mayor said that federal immigration policy under Trump has been challenging, and created fear in communities. She said that police activity often results in a flurry of social media posts about a raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“(I)t automatically sends people into a state of fear,” Gaskins said. “A state of feeling like they can’t go outside. People who have worked and held jobs in our city for decades.”
Gaskins said she’s learned that while the U.S. is still a strong democracy, and that the country was having an identity crisis.
“There are still questions and issues I never thought we would still be debating as the country that we are,” she said. “And that now is a pivotal time for the U.S. to figure out who we are and who we want to be.”
