Chris Pilkerton and Ja’Ron Smith are authors of “Underserved: Harnessing the Principles of Lincoln's Vision for Reconstruction for Today's Forgotten Communities.” Pilkerton is the former acting administrator of the Small Business Administration, and Smith served as deputy assistant to the president for Domestic Policy, deputy director of the Office of American Innovation and director of Urban Affairs and Revitalization for the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Federal Newswire:

How do we find a balance between criminal justice reform and addressing lawlessness in our cities?

Ja'Ron Smith:

I think that the approach that President Trump took is the right approach. We called it our “smart on crime approach.” It's an approach where you focus on public safety first and you work with law enforcement officers to reform the system. That's what we did with the First Step Act. 

The focus there was lowering people's probability of returning to prison. If we're able to lower the recidivism rate, we can quickly impact crime. 

The First Step Act had a focus on creating incentives that would encourage individuals to participate in recidivism reduction programming. If they prove to the Bureau of Prisons that they will lower their recidivism, they can serve some of their time at home. As a result of that, we were able to lower federal recidivism rates from 40% down to 12%. If you look at those numbers, that's less crime that law enforcement officers have to worry about. Individuals are now productive. That's a smart on crime approach. 

However, we have rogue DA’s who don't hold certain criminals accountable. You have very progressive legislators and city councils that have created more of a magnet for crime. 

For example, San Francisco increased the threshold for what's considered a felony for certain theft crimes. By raising the bar to over $1,000, more people are committing petty crimes. In Washington DC they got rid of the pursuit policy, and so individuals do more carjacking. More youth crime has increased in places like Baltimore because they passed a law saying that the police can't talk to the youth.

At the same time, some progressive cities have also had campaigns to defund their police. It has demoralized their police departments, where police aren't even showing up to the communities that need it most. 

As a result, I started a coalition called Public Safety Solutions for America. We realized that public safety is the number one thing to revitalize a community. 

Without public safety, you don't get things like economic development and access to jobs, because employers are not going to want to move to a place where there's going to be crime.

That's what we talk about in “Underserved,” a common sense approach that brings community and police together in order to revitalize communities. We are championing this strategy because it's needed now more than ever.

Federal Newswire:

How are small businesses impacted by these crimes? 

Chris Pilkerton:

In 2019, when I was leading the Small Business Administration, one of the biggest issues was labor. We had conferences after the First Step Act was passed to bring some formerly incarcerated folks into job fairs. [We worked] with large and small businesses on ways they could hire these folks. 

That was [enabled by] the “rising tide” part of what was happening in the economy during that time period. Fast forward to today, you've got small businesses that are getting ransacked by theft, these flash mob burglaries. These are not just large businesses, these are mom and pop stores. These are people that put all their money back into inventory. 

I was just talking to a person who works at a very well-known chain of stores the other day, and they said they're going to have to remove greeting cards because so many are getting stolen. When you get to that level of theft, it's really going to be impossible, particularly for the mom and pop small businesses to stay in business.

Federal Newswire:

Is the role of government to empower people to act on their own behalf?

Ja'Ron Smith:

As conservatives, we've always championed a more limited role of the government, which puts more power in the hands of the people. Part of the reason that we wrote the book was to talk about free market ways of reforming our system, and in a way that empowers underserved communities. 

For example, I tell my personal story in “Underserved” of how I grew up in a Democratic household. I was taught that Republicans were for the rich, and that they were racist. Many households are taught that, without understanding our history as a party and our North Star–why it's important to have a more limited government to empower people.

More and more, you see the results of increased spending and how that's had a contribution to inflation. You're seeing more control over schools, and more control over decisions that should be made by parents. More underserved communities are understanding why the government needs to have a limited role. 

We're also understanding how we can work with the private sector to create more opportunity. That's what we're advocating for in the book. 

We tell the history going back to Lincoln of how this narrative has changed over time, and how politicians have kicked the can down the road on doing the things that empower communities so that they have a chance at the American Dream.

Lincoln was really intending to focus on empowering economically disadvantaged communities, whether white or Black, because he came from an economically disadvantaged background. He knew that the economic part was key to the American dream. 

He was assassinated before that happened, and Andrew Johnson really fumbled the ball when it came to Reconstruction. Then we had the Jim Crow era, and so we had this narrative that began pitting poor whites against poor Blacks. 

Federal Newswire:

Is there a relation between government regulations and so-called institutional racism?

Chris Pilkerton:

Milton Friedman said, "Governments don't learn, only people learn." 

Lincoln did see this economic opportunity for all. Of course, he had to deal with the inhumanity of slavery. In one of his early elections before the Civil War, he talked about the city of Huron–a fictional city. He envisioned a port city where there was trade, workers, and everyone was making money and living together within this community. 

In 1862, he passed the Moral Land Grant Act, which was looking more towards vocational schools, and it ultimately created the state school system. He was empowering communities theoretically, regardless of race or color.

When you look at the things we did around the Opportunity Now initiative that Ja'Ron and I were a part of, the idea was to spend time with the federal government, but also with state and local governments trying to advance community opportunities. Because once the federal government puts its hand in those things, it ultimately ends up imposing that red tape that you're talking about. 

The community knows what it wants. Opportunity Zones were a perfect example of that. Opportunity Zones were an economic development tool. It wasn't a magic wand, but the community had to come together and say, "This is what we want for our community, the jobs, housing, and everything associated with that.”

Federal Newswire:

What kind of red tape stands in the way of entrepreneurs in America's inner cities?

Ja'Ron Smith:

Occupational licensing reform has been something that's been on conservative minds for a number of years. Even when I did advocacy work for Americans for Prosperity, we were going into localities and trying to organize with barbers, and a number of different individuals who were drastically impacted by these laws that didn't make sense. 

But we've also created laws like Dodd-Frank that have made the compliance costs to even open up a financial institution so high that you've taken away community banks. 

[Nearly] half of Black banks closed or merged because they couldn't keep up with the compliance costs. It's hard for these financial institutions to even start to do a simple $50,000 loan or a character loan. 

We did some work with Bob Johnson and Robert Smith, as well as Ice Cube, to figure out how to create more capital access. Historically we know that the federal government has played a role in creating these disparities. If you look at the historic nature of redlining neighborhoods, it's part of the reason why we have concentrated poverty all across the nation. 

If you had to call anything institutional, that's the vestige, what happened from that. However, our country's grown, and two things can happen at once. It is still allowed for individuals like Barack Obama to become president. You have a number of African-American Fortune 500 and 100 CEOs. 

All of the things that we take for granted as Americans are right at our footsteps only if we step up to the opportunity. What we're trying to do is just create more opportunity for underserved communities, because many of the issues that we're dealing with aren't just racial in nature. 

When you talk about concentrated poverty and access to capital, that affects both Black and poor White neighborhoods as well as poor Hispanic neighborhoods. Which is why we wrote a book, because we realized that there's nuanced solutions for each of these communities.

We also don't want to continue making promises that we're going to fix the disparity issues and then continue to leave Americans behind, because the number one asset in America is our human capital. If we want to be competitive in the 21st century, we must be able to invest in all of our people no matter if you're from Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, Detroit, or Chicago.

Federal Newswire:

What does the SBA do, how does it help with access to capital?

Chris Pilkerton:

When I joined the SBA it was 2017. Linda McMahon was the administrator at the time, and she said that her biggest job at the SBA was to ensure it was no longer the best kept secret in government. She traveled to all 68 district offices. She would literally call the district directors herself, personally, and I think a couple of times people didn't believe it was her. 

What she was doing was being a CEO …  to ensure the services were being delivered, whether it was access to capital, business support, technical assistance, or workforce development assistance. 

When I took over as the acting administrator, we continued those efforts. The economy was different. There was more lending going on. Getting dollars into those communities is really dependent on the vision of those communities. 

Federal Newswire:

Where was the break between Lincoln's vision for Reconstruction and successive generations where minority communities are not being served? 

Chris Pilkerton:

I think it was at the point where Lincoln was assassinated. I know that sounds dramatic, but Lincoln not only had the passion and heart for this work, but the political skill to put it together. 

Johnson came into office and he was a southerner himself. He ended up pardoning so many different southerners in large part because when he was growing up, he was not a fan of the planter class, and they had to come literally on bended knee and ask him for a pardon. Then he ended up giving the lands back. 

You had people like Thaddeus Stevens who were fighting it. By the time President Grant, who was a General but not necessarily a politician, got to that period, he wasn't able to turn the tide back. Then we saw decades and decades after that, so many policies that came out of the federal government.

You can go all the way up to the 1980’s when globalization became an issue and so many jobs were being shipped away. Prior to that, I think 25% of the textile workers in the South were Black. After that, [globalization] dramatically changed and impacted communities all across that region. 

The federal government really plays a role in this, but if Lincoln had been able to survive, I genuinely believe our country would be different today. But you know what? It's not too late, and that's what the book lays out.

Federal Newswire:

Do some government policies drive people apart or create losers in the marketplace.?

Ja'Ron Smith:

All the solutions don't require the government to play a lead role. [The best] solutions require all of the community.

You're going to have challenges in life when you win and you lose, but how you pick yourself up when those things happen is extremely important. That’s the part of the America story that makes us a great country, is that we are a resilient people.

So many of our young people don't understand history and resiliency, and sometimes don't have that type of encouragement at home. Which is why we need to invest more into rebuilding civil society. 

We talk a lot about that in the book, and that's part of the holistic approach. It's realizing that the government doesn't have a heart, people have a heart. Some of our institutions have a heart for … helping them be the best person that they can be.

Federal Newswire:

How do mandates impact underserved communities?

Chris Pilkerton:

In the Trump administration, there was the two for one rule that for every new regulation you had to get rid of two.  I think it ended up being we got rid of seven or eight for every one when all was said and done. Even at SBA, we got rid of almost 10% of the regs and rules that were on the books because they were duplicative or just no longer useful.

But new regulations, particularly when it comes to small business, end up just being an anchor. 

There are regs that need to be there. There are safety regs of course. But when you start adding in all these different incredibly small regulations–[such as] when someone's getting fined because there's a sign that doesn't have anything to do with safety, but it's two feet off the ground as opposed to two and a half feet–that's a real fine to a small business, and that [affects] their ability to invest in that business.