[Free Version] Interview w/ Boston Mayoral Candidate Michelle Wu
A Follow Up Interview to reporting I did for Bostonhassle.com
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I fucked up before this interview. I thought my conversation with Boston City Councilor, Mayoral hopeful Michelle Wu was scheduled at 1:30 on March 18th. It was at 1 on March 18th. & I was just getting out of the shower when I heard my phone ring and thought ‘it couldn’t be’ but oh, it was Councilor Wu’s aide asking me if I was ready.
To cut things short, imagine me half-naked and soaking wet juggling toiletries out of my bathroom, pretty much like this video below that features Michelle Wu imitating the viral-worthy photo of Ben Affleck juggling coffees, while I am on the phone with a progressive icon of Boston city politics.
Nonetheless, the interview went fine and is transcribed for your civic education below.
I also hoped you like my feature piece on Bostonhassle.com on Councilor Wu and her mayoral campaign, as well as my interview with Youth4Wu founders Lillian Gibson and Zoe Vittori-Koch I posted on here a few days ago.
If you like this interview please consider subscribing to The Lost Newsletters via No Direction Press to support my journalistic and artistic endeavors.
CH: COVID has decimated the art and music industries in Boston. But before COVID, art and music communities in Boston have been shrinking. If elected Mayor, what is your vision for the arts?
MW: I am so excited about the potential to make art a priority and a focus of our mayoral administration. Arts and culture have always been really important to me personally. As a daughter of immigrants, I grew up in a family whose income was connected to the arts as a way around language barriers. So I grew up doing all sorts of performances, playing piano, dancing, singing. It is a way for me to stay grounded in myself and everything that is happening in the world. And there is so much talent and energy and an amazing community around the arts in Boston, so we need to center artists and creatives as we are moving on recovery.
This community is not only one that needs support and immediate release in getting venues back open and adjusting from a long period of uncertainty and loss but making sure they are centered in how we celebrate Boston as a city. We have an incredible arts and culture community and I am looking forward to looking support, ensure that we are connecting arts education to our Boston public schools, to recognize the grassroots organizations, all the way through our larger institutions, and most of all to incorporate the perspective of the arts in all policies, because we can't silo the arts community into thinking about getting organizations back up and running. Artists are parents and family members and caregivers they are workers. So I am really eager to keep connecting with art communities throughout the city and to shine a spotlight on the incredible energy and talent that we have here and support that officially through the city of Boston.
CH: Cambridge City Council established a committee to address a venue crisis in the city, would you adopt a similar strategy for Boston going forward?
MW: We need to ensure that it's [inaudible] and the challenges that we have coming out of the pandemic as a way to address all of the issues that in fact were plaguing our communities long before COVID-19. Supporting venues and spaces is absolutely one of the ways we can stabilize and invest in the community. We also need to think about housing, we need to think about access to everything else that our artists and creatives might need on the entrepreneurship side, on the housing and transportation side and I am looking forward to really center the arts in our administration.
CH: Via the Carbon Free Boston Initiative, Boston plans to be carbon neutral by 2050 which some experts think is too late. What is your goal regarding Boston's carbon neutrality? Do you have a closer date in mind?
MW: I'm really proud to have put forward the first city-wide Green New Deal anywhere in the country, in coalition with credible activists and thought leaders all across the state and beyond. We are centering the baseline that climate justice is racial and economic justice. And there is a window of urgency that we need to act quickly to meet this moment.
So we put forward accelerating the city's decarbonization deadline, of ensuring that we are moving those big picture deadlines up by a decade. But also setting immediate milestones on a much more urgent timeline because the city of Boston should be moving towards a 100% renewable electricity grid even sooner than that. We should be transitioning all of our municipal buildings to 100% renewable energy in the next 5 years. That is between City Hall, community centers, libraries, schools, which in and of itself has a huge impact. So we are looking to map out a set of strategies and plans that would show the breadth of what city government can accomplish in climate justice.
CH: Why do you want to abolish the Boston Planning and Development Board? What systemic changes need to be made and how will they benefit all Bostonians?
MW: We have one of the most complex and opaque developments and approvals processes anywhere in the country and that means a tremendous amount of uncertainty and unpredictability for everyone and it means we are missing out on the chance to harness our resources to align with our goals and needs. So we're proposing streamlining, clarifying, and updating the rules for development in the city so that we can meet the huge need for affordable that would meet our climate vulnerability, and connect transportation and planning with development so that we are a region that everyone can access opportunities.
CH: All of my conversations with my friends revolve around rent. If elected, what would you do regarding rent control?
MW: Prior to the pandemic, the Boston housing market was out of reach for the vast majority of people of color and young people across the city with rent that had been going up by double digits and the pandemic has created a moment of increasing instability for so many residents and a chance to reshape the market to make sure residents and businesses have a foothold in the city. As we are looking to grow the supply of housing units that are affordable for residents we have to stabilize community members who are at risk of displacement. So we should have all the tools available for the city of Boston. Currently, there is a state law that prohibits any municipality from applying the [inaudible] stabilization to de-transition and will continue advocating so that cities have the full range of resources available to stabilize our communities and grow the supply of affordable housing.
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