This interview has also been edited for clarity and brevity.

MR: My name is Matt Rauschenbach. I was born and raised in South City between Hampton and Kingshighway. I was political director and spokesperson on Mayor Jones’ campaign. A lot of what my job entailed was how to communicate our message. I also did fundraising and social media and worked closely with Tishaura to both raise money and make sure we were getting her message out in the way she wanted, and in a way that allowed people to see themselves in our campaign.

I took a gap year between high school and college and then I took this semester off. So, I’m a first semester sophomore and I’m going back to college in the summer.

MR: I think St. Louis is interesting in that a lot of the barriers to success in seeing some of the changes the mayor has been talking about for the last few years is really that city government works almost like a bicameral legislative body because we have the board of E&A (Estimate and Apportionment, the city’s fiscal body) and you also have the Board of Aldermen. So, for the first time in two decades, you have a Board of E&A who really is unified on a few central issues. 

The comptroller and the mayor have both been opposed to airport privatization, both have been pro Close the Workhouse, and today (April 23), after public comments on the budget, it sounds like the comptroller has committed to reducing funds for the police and moving them towards social services. So when it comes to the Board, it’s interesting because it doesn’t act like a legislative body does at the state level or the federal level; it cannot add funds to a line item in the budget. The mayor proposed a budget that had all zeroes for the Workhouse. So effectively, the budget has already been cleared because the Board of Aldermen is not able to add to that line item. 

And so, to your broader question about Flip the Board and the Board of Aldermen, I do think that there is going to be a new level of cooperation between the mayor’s office and the Board of Aldermen, because in a very similar way to the coalition she built in her campaign, the endorsements she earned came from a cross-cutting group of Alders. It wasn’t just people who would traditionally be classified as progressives or more conservative. It was really from all different parts of the city, and I think that is going to be an asset in moving her agenda forward, partnered with the renewed partnerships at the board of E&A. 

MR: Over the last few years, there’s been the growth of the “Progressive” caucus and I think they have been at the forefront of some really progressive issues; opposing airport privatization,  the effort to decarcerate STL, raising the minimum wage, all these issues. There hasn’t been a candidate for mayor that I can think of that’s had the progressive caucus and almost the entirety of the Aldermanic black caucus. When you’re able to merge two groups like that-I think it’s really a testament to the momentum she’s going to have behind her agenda. 

You can even look at the endorsements outside of city government from organizations such as  Action STL, SEIU, UAW, CWA, NARAL, Planned Parenthood. It was a sweeping number of endorsements that came from different advocacy groups. I think to your point earlier, I think there is a really bold agenda, and I think that the agenda is informed by a lot of different areas of interest. What I mean by that is, there are reproductive justice groups, there’s labor, there’s activists, there’s the business community.

MR: The mayor, during the campaign and transition, has committed to closing the Workhouse within her first 100 days. On July 1, there won’t be funds appropriated to operate the Workhouse. What this means is that the city needs to bring all of the partners to the table who have access to the levers of power to reduce and decarcerate our corrections facilities and move people who don’t need to be held any longer. We need to work with prosecutors and our U.S. attorney and judges and figure out who we can send home, whether it be on GPS monitoring or bail. It is going to be a heavy lift but, it’s something that the mayor has committed to making a top priority. I think the budget that she proposed on Wednesday spoke very plainly to the goals she laid out on reform criminal justice in our city-she always says you can’t reform a broken system, you have to transform it. The Workhouse should have been closed years ago, and she’s taking very decisive action early on in her commitment to do so.

MR: You know, what the mayor has said is that there are a number of things that need to immediately be appropriated, like mortgage and rental assistance, business grants for small and medium sized businesses, and the things that keep people in their homes and healthy, but long-term-$517 million is something that can radically transform our city. She was asked throughout the campaign, “why do you want to be mayor?” I’ve even asked her why do you want to be there at a time when this city has experienced some of the highest rates of violent crime we’ve seen in four decades? You know, why do you want this job with 21,000 black residents leaving the city of St. Louis over the last 10 years? 

And she always says that she looks at this as an opportunity to hit the reset button on St. Louis. We can’t beat around the bush when we talk about this money and why we’re receiving so much. It’s because we have massive inequality, we have a really old housing stock. And we have poor health outcomes, specifically for black and brown communities. So, when it comes to the participatory budgeting process, this is the reason I have that whole intro to this is that there are some immediate needs, right? But long term, we are planning for a more sustainable and more healthy, more prosperous future for our city. So, the participatory budgeting process is really an investment in that belief that we can plan for a better future. One of the barriers to participatory budgeting historically has been that sometimes you get a group of people who are not necessarily representative of working families, right? Because if the meeting is held at 7 P.M. on a Wednesday, and then they collect the input, well, you’re missing people who work two, three jobs, according to the best real estate investing sites statistics. And the people who are working two to three jobs are the people who the city government should be looking out for most. So how do we get creative as a city, in reaching out to a really representative sample of the population of our city? 

I always say that the way that you run your campaign is a peek into how you’ll run your government. And if that is the case, then there’s every indication that Tishaura’s tenure as mayor is going to be one of the most transformative and transparent administrations that our city has seen. We had more town halls at more different times of the day than any other campaign. They were accessible, they were available on our Facebook. Taking that same spirit citywide in figuring out the best way to reach people and solicit their input on these funds is going to be critically important. And I believe that she’s got every intention to do so. 

MR: I would direct that question to the mayor’s office, I can say, because I know that she has received briefings from the health director, or will soon. I’m not necessarily sure if she’s met with him yet. But what I will say is that during the campaign, she talked about making sure that our health directives are in line with St. Louis County. A key concern is, how do we figure out what’s best for the entire region rather than operating in governmental silos?

MR: Yeah, I think we both go to schools that represent anchor institutions who could have an outsized, positive impact on their community. Wash U and Brown University both sit in extreme positions of privilege relative to the places that they reside. And so, something I would say about students is, it seems small, but be mindful of the way that you talk about where you live. Wash U sits at perhaps one of the most historic intersections of race and class and politics and disinvestment. Getting involved can be as simple as direct mutual aid, getting involved in local organizations, doing good work to connect people to resources. and there are campaigns [nearly] every year.  If you’re more interested in building power through the activist community, there are plenty of organizations, Action St. Louis, Arch City Defenders, plenty of religious organizations as well. And of course, there’s the political apparatus that exists here. There’s always a way to get involved.