I just finished watching Sec. Castro’s CNN Town Hall from this past Sunday, and thought a diary was in order to cover the highlights. I’m assuming that alot of people missed it since it started at 10pm, Eastern time.
The show started with host Don Lemon asking Castro what he thought about the administration’s proposal to bus refugees to sanctuary cities. It was an excellent introduction for Castro to discuss his immigration proposals.
He began his answer with this powerful response:
The cruelty of this administration never seems to end. A year ago this administration told us that as Americans if we would just be cruel enough to separate little children from their parents that that would deter more families from coming to our southern border.
He eloquently captured the depravity of this administrations actions. Their plan all along was to be cruel, the separations served no other purpose, and we know that. Instead we have caused pain, and emotional damage to thousands of vulnerable people.
Castro goes on to say that he believes we can choose treating refugees with compassion, even as we maintain a secure border. He is absolutely right about that. We don’t need ever need to choose cruelty over security.
Also, the perverse separation plan did not work to deter people from coming to this country. Castro has a plan to address that too. He has offered a 21st Century Marshall Plan to assist countries in Central and South America.
Here are his remarks from the town hall about the reason for the plan:
If we can partner with those countries so that people can find safety and opportunity there, instead of having to come and knock on the door of the United States, that's what they want. Then that is going to be better for those countries in the long run.
Other questions that were asked included one about what he would continue from Pres. Obama’s presidency, and what he would do differently. His response was that he would continue the integrity that was consistent throughout Obama’s administration; and something very much lacking with the current administration.
His answer to what he would do differently was about being bold.
In some ways, this administration has been bold, like with judicial nominations.
And you know what? We're going to take that, we're going to make sure that we combat climate change, by being bold. We're going to invest in things like universal pre-K and higher education by being bold. We're going to invest in health care for everybody. We're going to be bold, and that's something I'm going to continue.
He was also asked about his time as Secretary of HUD and some people’s concerns about Wall Street’s coziness with the Agency. He gave a solid answer which I’m including in its entirety.
Thanks a lot for the question. You know, I -- it was the honor of my lifetime to serve at HUD. And I got there in 2014. One of the things that we worked very hard to do is make sure that people could stay in their home, and that more folks who were responsible could become homeowners.
And so some folks had a critique about one of the programs that we had called DASP. And what I did was that we listened to the critics and we started making changes soon after I got to HUD so that more people could stay in their homes, that when a property did have to be sold, that more of them would be sold to nonprofits and to community organizations that cared about community.
And that's what I also think that we need to do going forward. We need to ensure, number one, that we never make the mistakes of 15 years ago, 10 years ago again, but if we ever find ourselves in that kind of situation, that we always put people first -- that we always orient our policies to ensure that people can stay in their homes, that folks can find a good, safe, decent place to live.
And during this campaign, one of the things that I've called for is for us to invest in affordable housing. I bet you that if we went through the debate transcripts of the last 40 or 50 years, Democrat and Republican debates that we wouldn't see one question that was about housing, even though today, in big cities and small towns, there is an affordability crisis, people are paying 50, 60, 70% of their income in rent.
What I learned -- what I learned from my time at HUD was that we did a lot of great work. We reduce veteran homelessness in the Obama administration by almost half, from 2010 to 2016.
We did make sure that people could stay in their home. We made fundamental improvements to investing in communities.
At the same time, I think we still need to do a lot more. And I look forward to doing that in my President.
If you’d like to see/read more about the hour long town hall, the link to the video in full is at the beginning of the diary. The transcript can be found here: poolreports.substack.com/…, and here’s an article that includes some clips of the event.