Mobilize your friends and neighbors to understand that your day-to-day involvement with local government matters far more than a referendum on the White House every four years.Collection: Government
When we fall short of meeting community needs - for stable housing, safe streets, open space, reliable transportation, food access, a healthy environment - everyone faces greater vulnerability.Collection: Food
So many of our large anchor institutions also have tremendous purchasing power. If we were coordinating that and incentivizing good food procurement across the board, that's a tremendous impact that the city can drive.Collection: Food
Carving out space for protected bike lanes is the most cost-effective way to increase our transit capacity and move more people on our streets.Collection: Space
I'm tired but grateful: choosing to blend parenting and public service has made me a more confident mother and a better legislator.Collection: Parenting
To be clear, building a seamless and convenient network of protected cycling infrastructure will require trade-offs. On many streets, adding a cycle track means narrowing or removing car lanes, or eliminating on-street parking - scenarios that bring panic to car and business owners.Collection: Car
We can build wealth in all our communities, value public education, plan for our neighborhoods, invest in housing we can afford and transportation that serves everyone, truly fund public health for safety and healing, and deliver on a city Green New Deal for clean air and water, healthy homes, and the brightest future for our children.Collection: Future
I like to be out and about in the woods, in the quiet absorbing our amazing open spaces.Collection: Amazing
The strengths of our city historically have been connected to being a home for residents from all backgrounds: immigrant residents, residents who represent a diversity of race and economic situations and perspectives. And if we don't address our housing crisis, and the dramatically rising cost of living, we will lose that core of our city.Collection: Home
We can solve the car-bike conflict, and the solution unlocks a brighter, more inclusive economic and environmental future for Boston.Collection: Environmental
We are redefining what leadership looks like and pushing for every single person to be part of that conversation.Collection: Leadership
I think, at the end of the day, especially for municipal elections, we see relatively low voter turnout. So the goal is to expand who sees themselves reflected in government, who's empowered to take the lead in politics.Collection: Politics
We need to see more resources in the combination of public safety and public health but we have to use our dollars wisely.Collection: Health
Everything that I do is shaped by the experiences that I've had with my family and that I've heard in families all across the city who share the same struggles and dreams.Collection: Dreams
The first time I set foot in Boston City Hall, I felt invisible - swallowed up by the cavernous concrete hallways, and shrunk down even more with every checkpoint and looming government counter. My immigrant family tried to stay away from spaces like these.Collection: Government
In the drive to prove our status as a world-class city, let's stay true to our democratic legacy and what Boston has already given to the world: informed independence and true debate.Collection: Independence
The City of Boston and the T need each other. From designating bus-only lanes to implementing transit signal priority, the MBTA and Boston Transportation Department must work together like never before to unclog roads and keep riders on buses and the Green Line moving - for the health of the entire region.Collection: Health
Certainly, workers in many industries do not have the privilege of being able to balance parenting at the workplace, and we must fight especially hard to support working parents in low-wage jobs.Collection: Parenting
Too often, our societal norms still set up a false choice between parenting and professionalism.Collection: Parenting
During natural disasters or emergencies, the most resilient communities - places that suffer the fewest casualties and rebuild more quickly - are not the wealthiest neighborhoods or ones that have spent the most on physical infrastructure, but rather the communities with the strongest social infrastructure.
The success of Boston's economy is intertwined with the health and well-being of every neighborhood.
I put my name out there and ran for public service because I want more inclusion, diversity, and opportunity... I will fight for those values.
Free public transportation is the single biggest step we could take toward economic mobility, racial equity, and climate justice.
Raising the cost of public transit would burden residents who can least afford transportation alternatives and punish commuters who are doing the most to ease traffic and improve air quality.
Food justice must be incorporated into the city's long term and big picture planning efforts.
To reverse the decline of our public transit system and end the transportation disparities that divide our city and region, we must channel calls for change into changed governance.
I am painfully familiar with the impossible juggle for caretakers trying to navigate language and cultural barriers, insurance pitfalls, and their own unyielding work schedules - only to be heartbroken by the limits of medical treatment.
Our continued economic growth depends on solving our transportation crunch.
When people know and care about their neighbors, they show up for each other in tough times and work together more effectively to boost quality of life in all the times in between.
Entrepreneurs are resourceful, resilient, and make such a difference in anchoring our neighborhoods.
When Boston harnesses the collective energy, activism, and joy of all our communities, we will make the change we need and deserve - at scale and at street level.
Investing in free public transportation would establish a right to mobility - the right of every person to access every part of our city, regardless of income level, race, background, or home zip code.
On the fourth Thursday in August, my neighbors and I cordon off the ends of our block and take over the street for an evening. The annual Augustus Ave. block party is an exercise in teamwork and deep democracy.
You can have great ideas, and you can have all the right policy goals. But unless you're expanding who is included in the political process, you won't connect the two.
There's magic in seeing slightly familiar faces become new neighborhood friends over ice cream and cold drinks.
In this country, we move on after Election Day and focus on the transition of power.
We need bold proposals to make public transit the most reliable, convenient, and affordable transportation option.
We love our history in Boston.
The antidote to the malaise and distrust that led to the rise of Trump is total civic engagement: working together from the grass roots, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, to implement progressive policies that build a fairer city for all.
In nearly a decade in city government, I have learned that the easiest thing to do in government is nothing. And in trying to deliver change, there will be those who are invested in the status quo who will be disrupted, or uncomfortable, or even lose out.
Growing up, I never ever thought that I would or could or should be involved in politics. I didn't see anyone who looked like me in spaces of power.
We are ready to become a Boston for everyone.
Working families need daily access to affordable, quality early education and childcare, not just an annual tax break for wealthier families.
There's a lot that the city can do, and it depends on having a partnership with community members who are living the realities.
City government is the level closest to the people, so our charge uniquely embodies the big and the small.
Block by block, street by street, our city has the resources, the activism, and the ideas to meet these challenges if we act boldly and reshape what's possible. After all, Boston was founded on a revolutionary promise: that things don't have to be as they always have been.
Contact your local legislators to talk about your community's needs. Show up at City Council hearings and demand change.
I reject the notion that Boston is a city hopelessly divided by neighborhood, income level or political outlook.
We, through city government, can add protections and regulations and have policy conversations about so many aspects of what affects our residents' daily lives.
We should be demilitarizing the Boston police in weapons and tactics, and interactions with community. We should be reining in ballooning overtime for the police- a part of the city budget that has been eating into other necessary investments.