[media-credit name=’Derek Montgomery’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Mayor Dave Cieslewicz spoke with the College Democrats Wednesday about civil rights, the upcoming state and presidential elections and the future of the Democratic Party.

He stressed the importance of local government in enacting positive and progressive change, citing San Francisco as an example.

“San Francisco is leading the way on the idea of gay marriage — on the local level there is a great opportunity for change,” Cieslewicz, who pointed to Madison as another leader in progressive politics, said. “We are the second city in the nation to lead the way on affordable housing; we are the fifth to set our own minimum wage.”

Cieslewicz painted a picture of “two Madisons,” an idea borrowed from vice-presidential candidate John Edwards’ “Two Americas” speech. He said in a poll conducted by the city, 72 percent of white Madison residents thought the quality of life in Madison was high, compared with 58 percent of the Hispanic population, 52 percent of the Asian population and only 20 percent of African Americans.

“We’re living in two Madisons, to paraphrase John Edwards, and we’ve got to do something about it,” he said.

These concerns prompted Cieslewicz to propose a Madison Office of Civil Rights Wednesday. If approved by the City Council, the office would conduct fair housing testing, require translators for meetings, provide translated city documents and make sure the city government reflected the ethnicity of those it represents.

Cieslewicz further discussed the current weaknesses of the Democratic Party. He said while the Democrats used to be the party of the people, they did better on economic issues in the past.

“We moved away from that, and now all that’s left to divide us are the hot-button social issues,” Cieslewicz said. “Now campaigns are taking the things that are really important — like the economy — and making them small. They are also taking the trivial — whether you windsurf or drive a Volvo — and blowing them up.”

Jessi Schober, co-chair of Students for Bush, agrees the Democratic Party is weak, but attributed the weakness to John Kerry himself.

“I think one of [the party’s] biggest weaknesses is not being able to rally behind their candidate,” she said. “All I’ve heard is ‘anyone but Bush.’ It’s crushing to a party when you don’t have a good figurehead to rally behind. Democrats are all suffering from that.”

Liz Sanger, chair of the College Democrats, agreed with Cieslewicz that the Democratic Party isn’t getting its message across as strongly as it should. She urged students to share their views of candidates with the voting public by canvassing or participating in phone banking.

“It’s frustrating to hear people say that you don’t stand for anything when you do,” she said. “It’s crucial that we do these things — they’re definitely important and you can have fun doing them.”

Cieslewicz praised student efforts to put Democratic candidates in office and encouraged students to stand up for what they believe in.

“We’re polled to death, and we’re terrified that if we tell the truth we’re going to lose elections,” he said. “If we’re just straight with people, they’ll get behind us.”