YouSaid · the spoken record

Andrew Gillum

lines on the record: 73
first: 2020-03-05
most recent: 2020-03-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I don't think that public office, elected office, is done for me by any, I don't believe that at all. I do not know what the next step looks like. And so in the meantime, in order for that next step to be a reality for me in Florida,”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My wife thinks I am clinically depressed. I haven't been clinically diagnosed. And she says that because I do have a challenging time reckoning with what all happened there I don't all the way understand it, to be very honest with you. But I do understand systemic structures and I do understand that there are steps in the process that have to be made more leveled in order for a Democrat in the state of Florida to run control. And Matt, you do it again.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That when you're in third grade, maybe not. It's not like the world they do. But how did you process? Yeah, for sure, and a failure not just for me but for all other people who were turned on the politics for the first time, who came up to me and gave me testimonies about why it is that they needed Medicaid expanded. I had always said throughout the course of the race that ultimately my concern was not me the candidate who loses, but the people who lose when we lose these elections. And to be very honest with you, I have not all the way processed through it. I've just kept working. Were you depressed?”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ford Florida action, our C four and our political committee to run ads, but also to do the difficult work of democracy which is getting out there registering voters and then turning them out.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We had to balance out quite a bit in that race to make it right. And so the first thing we had to determine, again, inspired by some of your feedback, was how do we close some of this or at least create more distance for Democrats in the registration game? So we pulled together, you know, three dozen organizations, grassroots groups around the state, and incentivize them and helped to raise money and support them to do voter registration. We've already top now two hundred thousand registrations we're turning our attention now to enlisting five hundred thousand Floridians to request vote by mail ballots at home. Except we're not going after the people who would normally request VBMs. We're going after the folks who are said to be unlikely voters because our goal is that if we can get these folks and chase them for a month to get that ballot turned in, that that's going to be icing on the kidney. That will be a vote that people don't expect to participate. And so we're right now raising money into Ford Florida.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You had been looking at some numbers, and of course you didn't want to say anything to me through the course of the race, but that the biggest shudder you had in looking at the numbers was the precipitous decline in democratic registrations in Florida since 2008 when you all came in and did what you did. And to help your listeners understand, when Barack Obama was on the ballot in Florida in 2008, Democrats had a registration of advantage of near 800,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. Fast forward, when I was on the ballot, that increase had slipped a few of than 250,000 more registered Democrats, which is a huge difference. Huge difference, especially when you're talking about a state that has won and lost by 1%. The other thing that happened when Barack Obama was on the ballot in 0865 and older white voters were a quarter of the electorate, 25%. And my race, they were 31% of the total electorate whiter, older? Not our folks.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I lost by 0.4%. Oh, less than a point. So for the last 24 years, Democrats have been losing the race by about a point. We got the closest of any Democrat had in 25-year history of the state of Florida, which was one of the reasons why I was pushed back on this. The progressive thing that we bought a bunch of people into play, a race that was supposed to get 6.1 million people turning out, had eight and a half million people come out and vote, bringing us close to presidential level turnout. So what we decided, one of the things that because I was not the expected nominee, there was not a lot of infrastructure present for me after I became the Democratic nominee. We literally had to bill from zero. And because Florida's primaries are so late, it doesn't give you a lot of time to make that all happen. One of the things that we diagnosed, and I got to give you credit, David, for this, you and I had a conversation shortly after the race, and you said.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it means my hope that we have a much better pushback to it and really call Donald Trump out for what he is. He is exactly what he's exclaiming us to be. This is a man who is very attractive, a strong man. He's got more in common with, you know, the authoritarian leaders around the globe than any Democrat has. We detest those folks, and he embraces them, invites them in, asks for their help, you know, in elections. In Miami, they call him Okodio. And he is that. And so we've been running ads, basically trying to neutralize the strength of that name calling, that argument by basically calling out Donald Trump for what he is.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There among those For sure. I mean, the reason it was so potent in those places is that when they hear the word socialist, they think orte and Maduro and Castro. And you almost don't even get past and into the conversation because people have already decided what they have defined that to be. And the Republicans have already forecast, by the way. It doesn't matter who the nominee is. Now, it may have more resonance with some than others, but they've been holding and running ads in Florida on socialism without a clear target, just that the Democrats are all socialists.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the way through, I mean, most of these people probably couldn't have defined what socialism was, but the Republicans did a very, very effective job at calling me a socialist. I had no real understanding of the impact that that would have had. I mean I'm a capitalist. I led a mayor where, I mean, a city at the time, my city was the fastest growing economy in the state of Florida per capita. As a mayor, I leveraged incentive projects and programs to bring businesses to market. Nothing could be further from the truth. I wasn't talking about wholesale takeovers of anything. But it was an effective strategy that they ran to the hilt, mostly in Miami Day County and the residual effect was it cut our. And was this because of it?”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“President Trump, which I resent. I don't believe that to be true, and I don't believe that to have been true in my case, but that's what voters concluded and what I felt actually had the biggest impediment on our race was the charge of socialism, and it was one that I think caused me to underperform my Amy Dade in particular. We underperform Barack Obama by sixteen points amongst the Hispanic communities.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, for sure, and I will tell you we did our own focus grouping on this as well. What was funny and also depressing is that when people we played this out for voters in these focus groups to a person they said well they're all corrupt they all do you know those things which I found extraordinary because I had no idea that is more prevalent in this”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unfortunately, he never got bared out, but that was a trip completely paid for by my wife, myself, every couple pay their own. And ultimately the Ethics Commission tried to bring twenty one offenses against me and ultimately delved them all down to one because they could not prove for it.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, one would have been enough. But again, not thinking anything untoward here thought these were, you know, friends who had gotten to know me over the course of a year and only to later find that they were trying to seek out public corruption and municipal governments around the country. And my biggest regret there is that I think I didn't at that time demonstrate the discernment to assume that everyone doesn't have good intentions for you. Also to”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nope, I pay for a trip to New York. They, however, invited me to see a play. Hamilton, yes. Hamilton, which is still one of my favorite. Yeah, it's a great play. This was my second time seeing it. I should have said no. One was enough.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Continue the learning day after their kids came home. I'll tell you, I didn't think this would be a problem. The biggest problem we ran into was when I had the first weekend for parents to come and pick up the computers, something like seven or eight families of a couple of hundred kids showed up. And I didn't know the way understand it. But what we came to learn is that the parents thought it was a trap because for many of them their cable had been cut off because they couldn't pay the cable bill. And they thought that this was a ploy to get them to the school so that they could people could collect on it. It's just we make a lot of assumptions a while why people don't participate, why poor parents don't show up, that they don't care about their kids, and nobody ever bothers to pull back the layers, the multitude of layers as to why that might be. It was one of my first introductions as to why, you know, some of these things never go get solved.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, thanks to the Obama administration, actually, a plug to y'all. We became a tech hire city under the Obama administration's efforts to get cities to think about the future of work. And we leaned into that challenge. We emphasized the startup community and building a real startup culture. But it also required that our kids in middle and high school, where the gap was greatest when it came to access to internet and to computers. And so I, you know, went into the one publicly ranked F school in our city. And I said, we got Dell computers, and I got Comcast Cable to provide a four-year warranty computer for the time that they would mature themselves through middle school. And free internet access for every one of those families so that they could continue.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was incredible. My one regret is as a program was coming to its greatest maturation, I ended up moving toward running for governor. I'm proud to say that the program still exists. We have a voluntary system where early childhood centers are being voluntarily rated on the quality of what happens there. Because in my state, we actually don't rate these folks off quality. Is it healthy? Does the kid, you know, when you go to pick them up, show up alive? You're good. Well, that's not good enough. If these are throwaway years and the only marker that parents are getting is how much something costs. If most of them are priced out of what they would think are the good centers, and so we had to do something about that.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“to bring the business community, the education community, the city, the large employers and say, what are we doing to ensure that we're creating family friendly environments? And let us incentivize you to do that, which means if your employee needs to go to the school to have lunch with their child at day as a way of pouring into them and letting them know that somebody cares, then give them that time off. And if you do, you go up in the ranking for family friendliness. If you have paid leave, paid sick leave in your workplace. Now we're going to celebrate you as a community and incentivize you. And how much success did you?”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we have to deal with the effects of it, right? If our kids aren't being educated, they're being pushed out of the system where they show up. They show up on the roads. We then have truancing problems. Then they get deeper and deeper into the criminal justice system. And that becomes a bigger burden to society. So I began with early childhood education. I stumbled across the Abesidarian study, which is a 40-year-long longitudinal study around early childhood education and early investments being the best predicator of a person's future life trajectory. So if you get access to early learning, 90% of brain development taking place between the ages of zero and five, these kids are literally sponges, and they're showing we're treating them or have been treating them like throwaway years. Then they get to kindergarten and they have no competency for the words that are being spoken. By the time they get to third grade, they're further behind. And so I had to try, I wanted to use the power to convene as a”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is where we ran up against tension with school board members. We didn't have autonomy over education. That was a whole different way. You hear mayors all.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Center, which was a local museum, it was the most exposure that I had ever gotten to arts and culture ever in my life. I was never the same from it, and it was different because I got plucked out to do that. Most of the other young kids were at the Parks and Rec, they were lifeguards that they were picking up trash in the city park.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I'm extremely proud, and I will tell you, I ran into my sex attention here at different points because, you know, most people just wanted us to fix potholes and make sure, you know, the bike lanes were paved, right and that kind of thing. And I always saw the position of city council as the power of that position was our ability to convene people around ideas. And one of the first challenges that I saw was that our young people during the summer, we did not have a very vibrant summer program for young kids, certainly not ones for free. So I started a summer internship program in the city where we would do paid internships, but not just in parks and rec. We put them in finance and in auditing and in the legal offices. We put them in the city summer drama program. I wanted these young people because I got that experience. I'll never forget it when I was in high school in Gainesville working for the summer Thomas.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you don't say anything. And I don't know what I felt, but it stirred in me, and it was almost like somebody just turning on a light switch. I never got that complaint again. I mean, her point to me was we knew you were young when we put you there, but I thought you had something to say, and I knew you had something to do. And I was waiting for validation from my four colleagues across the panel, and I had all the validation I needed. I was the youngest person elected. I got elected with 57% of the vote with the least amount of money of any candidate in the race. And whether my experience matched my colleagues or not, it was somebody's lived experience in our community, and I took it upon myself to make sure I gave voice to that as much and as often as I could.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was. And she said, you know, I watch those meetings every Wednesday. I go home and I make sure I watch you every Wednesday. And she said, I'm so disappointed in you. And I'm like, what? What did I do? That wasn't the normal reaction people gave to me at the time. And she said, I get up there waiting for you to say something.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the community was extremely supportive, and then I got to the council, and I love all these folks to this day, but I remember we would be in debate or if you would, conversation, and motions would need to be made. And I would offer up what I thought was like a way forward. And there would be no second. I mean, it was like chirp, you know, nothing. Couple minutes later, a colleague would say what I thought was practically the same thing. And it's a second, oh, this is the greatest idea, you know, we'd ever heard. I was 23, I was the youngest person. Closest to me was 50 or so. I mean, they were making me earn my stripes. And I remembered it caused me to recess a little bit in my own presence on council. And I was visiting a church, and I'll never forget this elderly black woman. You were your prequiet.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was the other of the three black students he was the second. His mother was a member of the state legislature, first black mayor of Gainesville, Florida, female black female mayor of Gainesville, Florida. And I didn't have a total orientation of it because this was going through high school, but I knew my friend's mama was running and she needed people to knock on doors and put up signs. And so we did that. But I do credit her with introducing me to Politics at that level and also citizen engagement. And that experience meant the world to me. Cynthia Chestnut is her name, retired these days, but a forced mentor with. A mentor and a tourist.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I thought it was a student discriminatory thing. We went, we rallied, we went and protested. And when we finished, the city council woman, one of them in particular said, you know, students are like house guests. We love to see you come, but we can't wait to see you go. And laughter broke out down the dias. And of course, we were mortified. And I walking out of there, I was like, okay, you know what? We'll just take them on.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly And oddly enough, fast forward, my wife ended up giving testimony to a video that was shown at the convention in two thousand four in Boston when Barack Obama spoke. Because the DNC showed a video of folks who had issues with voting. In Florida, they were highlighting voter disenfranchisement. My wife was one of those people at the time we were dating. She didn't really like me even as a student. But I remember her image and her testimony because she went to vote was a registered, duly registered voter and was turned away at the polls. And she gave that testimony to the DNC. But for me, David, it really felt like an outflow of just what we were encountering. I mean, the challenges felt so great. It just required us as students to rise to that occasion. And ultimately, I made the decision to run for city council because we went down and protested a law, a local ordinance, which said no more than three students could live in a neighborhood if they were unrelated.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I swore off a student governor, I mean that was the one thing that I told myself because I'd done it through high school a student was president, class presidents, all that kind of stuff. And I was like, oh, this is just going to be my academics. And lo and behold, Jeb Bush gets elected governor of the state of Florida. And one of his first initiatives is to end affirmative action and all higher education and all state contracting. So it was less my desire to want to get back involved in politics again.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe the victim's family, and you would learn how what you did impacted us the community, and we saw amazing successes out of that, right? But that wasn't always welcomed in the process. Everybody didn't get into policing for that reason. So it was a healthy balance, and it's one that I think we've got to strike even to today. Is it possible to criticize bad behavior without being, you know, critical of every law enforcement officer? And I hate the fact that any criticism led seems to be internalizing as an attack on the profession when that's not it. You got bad apples, you got bad players in every field informed, and it behooves all of us to remove them because they make it less safe for everybody when they're allowed to persist in those systems.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the fact that I didn't get a citation, I wasn't taken out of the car, nothing abusive happened to me. This wasn't in the age of watching these videos on YouTube or whatever. And even though after I got released to go, I could only drive like a block or two and I had to pull away because I couldn't stop shaking, right? You never, ever, ever, ever, ever forget what that experience is like. And so to cause that kind of trauma and to not fully reckon with what you're doing really bothers me. And so as a mayor, I was conscious of that. I tried to move our police force in the direction of conscious, of restorative justice, where we would take young, you know, non-violent offender kids under the age of 18 if it was a nonviolent first time offense. It wasn't adjudicated before judging a court of law. We moved you through a community panel. I was proud to have resurrected this program in my city. You go before Ms. Jackson, Ms. Jefferson.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For sure. For sure. I mean, I was always terrified. I mean, I said this when we were talking, I hate to go back to the presidential, but when I was sort of internalizing the idea of 700,000 black and brown boys being thrown up against the wall over the course of a year, stopping Fris, it took me back to the first time I ever got pulled over for not coming to a complete stop-out-a-stop sign”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, come on, yes. I mean, you got very clear instructions about how you were supposed to act. And I remember it from an early, early. When you encounter...”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, for sure. I mean, well, I will tell you, my parents, my grandparents wanted the neighborhood to be as safe as anybody else in any wealthy neighborhood wanted it. I mean, they would, my grandmother, I recall very well her calling the police when she thought there was some activity going down that she, you know, you needed them to be caught. So I was, I've always seen the dichotomy of, you know, the desire for communities to be safe, but I've also seen the harassment that occurred that was, in my opinion, provoked other than a bunch of guys just standing around in a circle. And whether they were playing crabs, throwing, you know, dice on the floor, or maybe it was something more nefarious going on, it felt like a pretty constant state of harassment.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I wish that exactly, because I would have gotten that one wrong. My guidance counselor had the heartiest laugh at me when I took the form. I was like, I got a defective sheet. Like, Hillman's not on here. Took her a while to figure out what I was talking about. Let me ask you one question. I wish that exactly because I would have gotten that one wrong. Yeah. What I was talking about.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Made some formative difference in their life. Especially when you are so limited in your worldview, I mean, it wasn't that I had a friend that I could touch and feel who had gone to university. My touching and feeling was Thursday night through the television screen. Yeah. And that was enough to motivate me to say, oh, that's where I want to go. That's what I want to do. And thought that I was going there all the way up until I had to send my SAT scores off and Haleman was not on the schools. You could send your scores. I, of course, am my own. It's a good thing that whereas Hilmann Clifford.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was terrified. I was one of three black kids. And I remember one of three black kids because those same other two are like my friends to this day We grew up through that experience. And so thankful for a teacher who picked me out, but it could have gone the other way. Yeah.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, to a lesser degree, I know that that's kind of a theme. They didn't chastise me necessarily. You just wanted to be with me. You just wanted a fellowship. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we wanted the fellowship. And when I got into the honest course,”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I didn't want to be separated from my friends. I see. Yeah. I mean, these were the people who, when the neighborhood went that I knew. Was there”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of black students at an HBCU Hilton College. And when I saw Hilman College in Jalisa and Dwayne Wayne and Whitley Gilbert, I was like, I'm going to Hillman. And it just stuck in my head. I got more serious about my academics than I ever had before. I had a teacher, Miss Alexandria, who told me in the seventh year she says, Andrew, you are too bright. I'm going to recommend you for honors courses. And I kept saying no, all my friends were not in them. I was like, I'm good. I'm good. She persisted. I resisted. Well, let me ask you about that. Was this that?”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More than your brothers. Well, they didn't take a lot of interest. For me, you may find this crazy, but I remember growing up, my dad used to say, if I stayed out of trouble, I could go to the military. And then this little known show called The Different World came on Thursday nights, nine o'clock PM, and it was Hillman College.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will tell you my grandmother Ella Baker Jackson was probably the biggest impact on me in that regard. My grandmother snatched me up and had me in church Wednesday nights, Thursday nights, Friday night what felt like all night Sunday was an all day affair and she just grabbed a hold of me very different than how it was done with my older siblings and so I grew up in that kind of structured religious environment at the same time what was going on. But she gave you”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Until the Wisconsin go, and then she dropped them off at a city bus stop where they take the city bus because we used, I guess I could say this now, we're past any statue of limitations, but my mother wanted them to go to a good school so we would use my grandparents address in Gainesville and so her address meant that they didn't qualify for the regular bus system. So we'd have to figure it out. It would be akin to a parent having to drive their kid to school except for us. It was riding with my mama until, you know, it was early enough or late enough in the morning that they'd go to a regular bus stop and then go on to school.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so I have to tell you, my mother, growing up as a child, my mother did most of the former working where if she wasn't driving bus on the weekend wasn't pressing close. When she was driving the bus, by the way,”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am having been the first to graduate from high school and college and have my little brother and my little sister do the same thing. You can't tell anybody in our household, we don't know what it means to see intergenerational poverty disrupted, you know, thanks to that kind of care, love, and frankly just making a way.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yeah, I had a brother who went to prison moving drugs across the Florida, Georgia, border. And if I have to tell that story completely, I would have to add that, you know, as the first of my siblings to graduate from high school and I'm the fifth of them and the first to graduate from college, it was that very same brother who came with me to Tallahassee, took me to Target and outfitted my freshman dorm room with covers and a refrigerator and a microwave. And so the fullness of my story wouldn't be possible without also recognizing how all of this was interconnected. And I know how quickly many of us draw judgments about people who sell drugs or here or there, make really bad decisions. But I will tell you, I think for a lot of these people, they see it as a means to an end and that it's justified because at the other end, maybe you're helping to make a little bit different or better for somebody else. And I will tell you, yeah, I am.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, struggled with alcoholism. When we were young, all four of my older brothers had criminal background records selling weed. All of it began. It was very funny because my brother and I were talking about this the other day. This was my second oldest who got into trouble. You know, it all started when they used to send us to school. He would parse out Snickers bars and Twix bars and Skittles. And he'd give me a load of about $20 worth of material and tell me that's what I had. And I'd have to sell that. So at the bus stop, I'd be selling Snickers bars to folks. And obviously that evolved as times got more difficult in the household and my older brothers felt like they had some responsibility to help take care of some things.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was persistent. Her baby girl was the last one. And then it came to an end. I have to tell you, parenthetically, I'm very happy she came because she's the one that reminds us of everybody's birthdays. Who's sick? Who needs to go to the doctor? It all falls off my sister. But, you know, it just, I had an incredible experience, you know, growing up in Miami for a period of time. Obviously rough moments as well. Your dad.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take us down to the corner, we'd unpack it, it'd have watermelons and grapefruits, and this is the stuff you could grow on trees or easily go down the homestead and pick up, you know, the roughage or the leftovers for some of the farm workers. And he sell it on the street corner. On Saturday he would sell flowers to bereaved families in the open, you know, field across from the cemetery. I remember those experiences so well from my dad and my mother, you know, was a school bus driver, but Florida, when it got rid of summer school, she became a presser in the dry cleaners. I mean, in the hot heat, these things would be saunas. My mother, sweatener, you know, tail off with these big machines pressing clothes every day. And as one of seven kids, because we were not a small family, all boys and one girl. My goodness.”
2020-03-05 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 373 — Andrew Gillum · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source