Shadowing Practice: The unpopular idea that would save San Francisco - Learn English Speaking with Video

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If you told San Francisco politicians that they should take lessons from Rudy Giuliani, they'd think you're nuts.

Maybe even evil.

They see him as quite likely the second most destructive politician in America, who peddled conspiracy theories, tried to stage a coup, and is finally getting his due comeuppance.

But when Rudy Giuliani took over New York in 1994, it looked a lot like today's San Francisco.

Or for that matter, Chicago, Baltimore, Portland, or a number of other cities as well.

The fixes to these cities aren't state secrets.

Giuliani took care of New York with some straightforward solutions that can be used today.

First, let's take a quick look at San Francisco.

Now, I live in the Bay Area, and when I mention that to some people, they're stunned, thinking that I live in some sort of third-world smoldering city.

So let me be clear.

If you've only seen San Francisco through news reports and crazy clips online, it's not as bad as you think.

There are a whole lot of amazingly beautiful parts of town, and you'll find neighborhoods that are safe and clean.

But big parts of it are actually hell holes, and everybody who lives here knows it.

It's a mess.

Mentally ill and drug addicted people have literally taken over chunks of the city.

We have increasing violence, car break-ins, open-air drug dealing and shoplifting that's driving businesses right out of the city.

It's left some areas as wastelands.

And it's not just an eyesore, it's a human tragedy unfolding right before our eyes.

Drug deaths have exploded and people with horrific problems are living like zombies on the streets.

And the elephant in the room is that the government has no solution on the horizon.

Its policies aren't simply failing, they're making things worse.

Now I also lived in New York when it was in a doom loop of its own.

The city was dystopian.

Murder rates were astronomical.

Times Square was more about prostitution and drugs than tourism.

And no sane person would walk through Central Park after dark.

Schools were dysfunctional and the government was broke.

Mafia corruption was a real factor, and people cheered when vigilantes like Bernie Goetz shot muggers on a train, or the guardian angels patrolled streets.

Like troubled cities today, it wasn't one problem, but a whole litany of problems.

And in eight years as mayor, Rudy Giuliani turned all of that around.

Violent crime dropped by over half.

Robberies fell 67 percent.

The number of yearly murders dropped from 2,000 in his first year to 649 in his last, literally saving thousands of lives over his tenure.

Unemployment dropped from over 10% in 1993 to 5.6% in 2001.

Welfare rolls dropped by half.

School test scores went up.

He inherited a city with a 2.3 billion dollar budget gap and left with a surplus.

The city turned from an urban nightmare to a livable city and a tourist mecca.

It was the absolute reverse of a doom loop.

I saw it happen and I know it's possible.

But the first step doesn't start at City Hall.

It actually starts with voters.

They need to get fed up and they need to vote that way.

Politicians rarely push change on their own.

It's hard work.

So they're generally barometers of public sentiment.

They don't lead the marching band, they see where it's going and they jump out in front of it.

Now, people of San Francisco are generally very nice people, maybe too much so.

That comes through in city politics, with their real concerns about things like poverty, minority rights, the rights of accused criminals and police brutality.

Voters here don't want to criminalize poverty

and they We support harm reduction strategies like cash and needle giveaways that other communities might call enabling.

But values like safety and public order are increasing.

Voters recalled Chaso Bodine, who was essentially a pro-criminal district attorney, but the vote was fairly close.

He ended up with 45% of the vote.

But as the situation continues to deteriorate here, and it will, voters will eventually be ready for radical change.

In New York, that radical change was electing a Republican prosecutor who'd broken the mob

and sent more than his fair share of Wall Street criminals to jail.

His strategy to fix New York traces its roots to an Atlantic Magazine article in 1982.

It was called Broken Windows by George Kelling and James Q.

Wilson.

Imagine a building where vandals have broken a window or two.

If those windows go unrepaired, it won't be long before they're all broken.

Then graffiti appears and soon the whole place turns into a mess.

The theory argues that small signs of disorder send a message that neglect is acceptable.

And that attracts more serious crime and bad behavior.

By cracking down on these small offenses, a sense of order is set, creating an environment where lawlessness is the norm, not the exception.

This idea fundamentally changes the approach to law enforcement, shifting focus from just reacting to major crimes to actively maintaining community standards.

Before Giuliani was even elected, Bill Bratton had come in to lead the New York Transit Police and he used the broken windows approach.

Small fixes like cleaning up graffiti and going after fair jumpers and vandals signaled that even minor offenses had consequences.

The result was a drastic drop in serious subway crime as well.

Soon after the election, Giuliani named Bratton as the police commissioner for the entire city.

Their first target, the squeegee men.

These were guys who'd come up to cars stopped at red lights and start cleaning the window, whether you wanted it or not.

Then they demanded money, which was really closer to a shakedown.

Now, people couldn't easily get away, and you worry about getting your car scratched up by this guy standing right outside.

For commuters coming into New York, This was often the first person they encountered in the city.

So police started arresting the squeegee men, who were then immediately released because there was no law against aggressive window cleaning.

There was, however, a law against jaywalking, and the police started arresting them for that.

And when they returned, they got arrested again until they literally were harassed out of traffic and disappeared from the city.

On one hand, it was a trivial move, but it signaled to all New Yorkers that order was returning to the city.

It also showed what would become a pattern to Rudy Giuliani, tenacity.

He didn't hold a press conference and whine that his hands were tied unless the city council passed an anti squeegee law.

He pushed through obstacles to get things done.

And cities are filled with obstacles to change.

Lifetime bureaucrats, powerful unions, wealthy special interests.

It takes determination and a lot of stubbornness to make things happen.

New York also did the opposite of defund the police, increasing the number of cops on the streets by a lot.

By contrast, when it was trendy in 2020,

the San Francisco mayor slashed $120 million from the police budget and redirected it to prioritizing investments in the African American community.

In New York, there were more cops and they were empowered.

They also used something called comp stat targeting to go after large and small crimes alike.

Open air drug markets were shut down and with that, the violent crime that came with them.

When they would make an arrest and find a guy with a gun on them, that was one less gun off the street and one less body off the street as well often.

They took a tough stance on the homeless.

You'd be arrested for public urination, or drinking, or aggressive panhandling.

Giuliani literally harassed bad behavior off of the streets.

And at the same time, the city increased shelter capacity and transitional housing.

Beyond crime, the key word with the rest of the Giuliani reforms was accountability.

City agencies were held responsible for results.

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School administrators and teachers were held accountable to quantifiable measurements.

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Welfare reform reduced dependency and encouraged self-sufficiency.

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But all throughout, Giuliani was criticized.

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A lot.

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He was slammed by homeless advocates for violating civil liberties or pushing the problem off to other cities.

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Critics argued that the police strategies unfairly targeted minorities and that the city criminalized poverty instead of addressing the systemic issues.

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His hard-edged style made him a lot of enemies.

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But when he was done, he transformed a city that people said was unmanageable.

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Can San Francisco and today's cities copy that success?

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I'm not really sure.

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I do know there's a blueprint from recent history that they should take a very strong look at.

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Thanks for watching.

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I hope you come back again.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “The unpopular idea that would save San Francisco”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: Giuliani, Francisco, crime, San, window. This video has 112 sentences and 1461 words to shadow. The speech runs for 7:36. The speaker talks fast, about 192 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
voter noun	/ˈvoʊtɚ/	Someone who votes or is entitled to vote.
squeegee noun	/ˈskwiˌd͡ʒi/	A tool for scraping consisting of a blade of rubber or some other material attached at a right angle to a handle.
politician noun	/ˌpɑ.ləˈtɪʃ.ən/	One engaged in politics, especially an elected or appointed government official.
criminalize verb		To make (something) a crime; to make illegal under criminal law; to ban.
harass verb	/həˈɹæs/	To annoy (someone) frequently or systematically; to pester.
vandal noun	/ˈvændəl/	A person who needlessly destroys, defaces, or damages things, especially other people's property.
graffiti noun	/ɡɹəˈfi.ti/	Drawings or words drawn on a surface in a public place, usually made without authorization.
obstacle noun	/ˈɑbstəkəl/	Something that impedes, stands in the way of, or holds up progress, either physically or figuratively
doom noun	/duːm/	Destiny, especially terrible.
astronomical adjective	/ˌæs.tɹəˈnɑm.ɪ.kəl/	Of or relating to astronomy.
barometer noun	/bəˈɹɑ.mə.tɚ/	An instrument for measuring atmospheric pressure.
blueprint noun	/ˈbluːˌpɹɪnt/	A type of paper-based reproduction process producing white-on-blue images by means of a photosensitive ferric compound, used primarily for technical and…
bureaucrat noun	/ˈbjʊɹəkɹæt/	An official who is part of a bureaucracy.
comeuppance noun	/kʌmˈʌpəns/	Retribution or outcome that is justly deserved.
commuter noun	/kəˈmjuːtɚ/	One who commutes (etymology 1).

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
take over verb	To assume control of something, such as a business or enterprise, and sometimes by force.
clean up verb	To make an area or a thing clean; to pick up a mess; to tidy.
come back verb	To return to a place.
come up to verb	To approach.
get away verb	To move away (from).
go up verb	To move upwards.
push through verb	To force (legislation or a plan) to be passed or agreed to or a decision to be reached.
shut down verb	To close, terminate, or end; to stop operating, either permanently or temporarily.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	was called · is set · was even elected
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've only seen · have exploded · have broken

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 21 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, aren't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: politician /ˌpɑ.ləˈtɪʃ.ən/, shakedown /ˈʃeɪkdaʊn/, urination /jʊəɹɪˈneɪʃən/, transitional /tɹænˈzɪʃənəl/, prostitution /ˌprɒstɪˈt͡ʃuːʃn/
Long words — get the stress right: politician /ˌpɑ.ləˈtɪʃ.ən/, astronomical /ˌæs.tɹəˈnɑm.ɪ.kəl/, barometer /bəˈɹɑ.mə.tɚ/, deteriorate /dɪˈtɪɹ.iə.ɹeɪt/, dystopian /dɪsˈtoʊ.pi.ən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like voter, squeegee, politician.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: The unpopular idea that would save San Francisco - Learn English Speaking with Video

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