Gary Mayor offers advice about ethical leadership

Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said at the fourth annual Men and Women of Color Leadership Conference she hopes to use her current resources to rebuild the city.
Freeman-Wilson delivered the conference’s keynote address Friday at the Wilkie Auditorium.

The conference focused on the theme “Good Behavior, Bad Behavior: Developing Leaders with a Moral Compass,” which echoes this semester’s College of Arts and Sciences Themester examining morality.

Freeman-Wilson spoke  to a group that she called “present and future leaders” about being a leader who is willing to serve ethically in their community.

The Gary native said when she became mayor last year, she had a willingness to change practices in the city’s government that were not in the best interest of the people.

The power one has in a leadership position, she said, must be wielded responsibly.
She told the audience to be aware of individuals who are there only for personal gain and the energy it takes to make change. 

Freeman-Wilson also said a few weeks ago,  she responded to a plane crash in Gary only a few yards away from an elementary school, a community center, a shopping center and a neighborhood. She said no one in those public institutions realized they were in danger until the plane crashed.

“I would argue that when people don’t even know when you’re fighting, it makes the fight even more essential to our community because, in many instances, you will be fighting for people who cannot even fight for themselves,” she said.

Freeman-Wilson told those who attended the conference they must be willing to be agents of change for the greater good, even if they are standing alone.

After her keynote address, Freeman-Wilson walked off the stage, ready to answer questions from the audience.

IU sophomore Chris Hooten asked Freeman-Wilson how her studies at Harvard Law School influenced her position as mayor. 

Freeman-Wilson said her experiences at Harvard helped garner as many resources as possible for the city of Gary. She said not only did her skills in law help her, but her experience as a born-and-raised Gary citizen did, as well.

Half a century ago, Gary, currently the seventh largest city in Indiana, had about 200,000 citizens. Since then, that number has dropped to about 80,000 residents due to job loss , an increase in crime and the “white flight,” a large-scale migration of white individuals out of cities and into suburban areas during the mid-1900s.

One-third of the city’s citizens live below the poverty level according to The New York Times, and the city been called the “murder capital” of the United States in the past.
However, Freeman-Wilson, who is the first female mayor of Gary and the first black female mayor in Indiana, said she hopes to lead the change in Gary from the ground up.

She said her various experiences in the national, state and local government sectors influenced her to take the key leadership role in Gary.

“I thought that all of those experiences could be brought together along with the people that I’ve encountered in those places to benefit Gary,” Freeman-Wilson said.

She said she wants to create a sustainable economic base to solve Gary’s $10 million budget deficit. She said she hopes to accomplish this by building on existing assets such as transportation, the trucking industry and proximity to neighboring Chicago.

Patrick Smith, executive director of IU’s Office of Mentoring Services and Leadership Development and the MWOCLC conference chair, said the reason the committee chose Freeman-Wilson to speak is because of her relevance to this semester’s Themester.

Smith said members of any community, not just communities of color, can learn from Freeman-Wilson.

“She has some really great comments and ideas concerning leadership, particularly from an ethical standpoint,” Smith said.

Senior Rashida Martin said that she hopes to one day give back to her hometown, as well.

“I love Gary,” Martin said. “That’s my city. That’s one of the things that made me want to come to college and become a better person. I don’t want to be stuck in Gary not doing anything. I just want to have something that I did positively, and I want to give back to people from there.”

Freeman-Wilson said building a new Gary will be a challenge, but it’s worth it.

“Rome wasn’t built in one day, so you’re not going to be able to resolve all the challenges that face the city in a day, and you have to constantly encourage people to hit the reset button,” Freeman-Wilson said. “It’s like ‘no, that was then, this is now.’ New day. New day. New day. And that’s what our slogan is: ‘It’s a new day in Gary.’”