Issues Overview

Improving Our Public Schools

I’ve been a public school teacher, and I will never forget the struggles—and victories—I saw my students, parents, and fellow teachers go through every day. I know first-hand the importance of providing our schools with the support they need to give every child the chance for success. Our public schools are ground zero for our country’s promise of equal opportunity, and they are the driving engine of Massachusetts’ economy.

As your State Senator, I will work ceaselessly to ensure that our schools have the resources and tools they need to complete this job: quality teachers, small class sizes, well-rounded curricula, excellent school leadership, and active community and parental involvement. I will also work to give parents the support they need to be active participants in their children’s education.

Quality, Affordable Health Care for All

Everyone deserves access to high-quality, affordable health care. Massachusetts has taken important, pioneering steps in recent years to expand health care to more Commonwealth residents—an accomplishment we should be proud of. But health care costs continue to rise, putting our new health reform law at risk and keeping adequate care out of reach for many hard-working families in our community.

As your State Senator, I will continue the tradition set by our landmark health reform law by asking all parties to share in the responsibility for keeping the system solvent—employers, insurers, the public sector, health care providers, and individuals. I will also work with colleagues in the legislature and experts in the field to pass the next step in health care reform: creative cost-containment measures to help hold spiraling health care prices down.

Keeping our Neighborhoods Safe

We all deserve to live in neighborhoods where we feel safe. We should never accept young people killing each other as a reality of city life, and we should not resign ourselves to crime and recidivism rates that are preventable. We have successfully reduced youth violence rates in Boston before, and we can do it again. Likewise, a wealth of data points us in the right direction for reducing crime by adults. As a city and as a state, we need to re-invest in the tested solutions that we know work and be willing to try new ideas that have gotten results elsewhere.

Working as an urban public school teacher, I saw, first-hand, the difference between the paths of young people who had hope and high expectations for their futures and those who did not. The latter felt they had little to risk by choosing a violent lifestyle. Working in the classroom, I fought every day to change that equation for young people by equipping them with skills and high expectations for themselves.

As a parish council member in one of the city’s youth violence “Hot Spots,” I’ve worked to preserve the neighborhood institutions and programs that provide positive alternatives for our young people. Successfully organizing against the closure of St. Mary of the Angels church in 2005, we prevented Egleston Square from losing an anchor of youth and family service and a major broker of peace during the Boston Miracle.

As State Senator, I’ll carry this work from the classroom and the neighborhood level to our state government, fighting to address youth violence on a larger scale. I’ll be guided by three fundamental strategies for addressing youth violence at its roots: giving kids a more hopeful sense of their own futures through rigorous education and meaningful afterschool and summer programs; increasing their relationships with caring adults; and decreasing easy access to weapons.

Beyond youth violence prevention measures, there are many tested, effective solutions we can support to make our neighborhoods safer—from drug courts to sentencing reform to re-entry programs. I will support policies and resources that put these solutions into place, or protect and expand them where they already exist—always pushing to get real, practical results for our neighborhoods.

Affordable Housing for All Families

Our communities are stronger when all families have access to affordable housing options—options that allow families to stay in the neighborhoods they’ve helped build over the years and that help keep new, young families in the communities where they’ve started to put down roots. But the demand for affordable housing continues to outpace the supply—a fundamental problem that Boston cannot solve alone. Additionally, our neighborhoods now face a new level of challenge with the national foreclosure crisis turning more and more family homes into abandoned structures. It will take the best of our city and our state’s creativity and dedication to progressive values to solve these complex challenges.

As your State Senator, I will push for both long- and short-term solutions to stabilize the housing market and keep the dream of home ownership within reach for working families. I will work closely with affordable housing advocates, development experts, and municipal leaders to target immediate resources into programs that have shown the most success—both locally and at the national level. Longer-term, we need to invest in “smart growth” and mass transit in the Commonwealth, in order to expand housing options across the state and distribute demand pressures more evenly between Boston and other areas. We also need to put in place safeguards to address the factors that caused the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, in order to prevent a similar crisis from coalescing in the future.

Creating Economic Opportunity

Economic development partnerships have the potential to enliven neighborhood economies, open new job opportunities, and build new ownership possibilities for local residents. Alternately, economic development can be used as a label for inappropriate public benefits to corporate special interests. Too often, we’ve seen states and municipalities get caught in a race to the bottom for who can offer the biggest tax give-away to large corporations. We need to always make sure our development efforts are strengthening those in the city who need it most, and that we’re using our resources in the most efficient, effective way.

As your State Senator, I will support economic development investments that are targeted to build stable and broadly-shared wealth within our communities, rather than subsidize large profits that will be owned outside our community. I will fight for the strongest transparency and accountability standards when development projects involve taxpayer dollars—so that when job-creation promises are made to taxpayers, they are kept.

We must also reform our CORI system, to make sure that jobs in the Commonwealth are accessible to those who are working hard to become self-sufficient members of society.

Finally, as your State Senator, I will always be a strong voice not just for more jobs, but for good jobs. That means a fair minimum wage that’s indexed to inflation—just like legislators’ salaries. It also means remembering that our public education system is the most proven jobs program we have. It’s our most powerful tool for making Massachusetts an attractive place for businesses in the new economy, and it’s our most reliable way to make sure our people get good-paying jobs, that can sustain families and neighborhoods.

Protecting our Environment

Protecting our environment is both a moral responsibility to future generations and a health and quality-of-life issue for us today. It is also a matter of economic justice, as it is low-income neighborhoods that most frequently bear the brunt of environmental degradation and health risks, and it will be the poor who feel the earliest and the most extreme consequences of global climate change in the future. While the federal government has, for many years, abandoned its responsibility to steward our environment, many great opportunities exist for us on the state level to take up that challenge. We have the ability to make a real difference—locally and globally, now and for future generations.

As your State Senator, I will support strong state action to make Massachusetts a leader against global climate change. As a commonwealth we can and should set ambitious, achievable goals for reducing our energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions over the next few decades, and for diversifying our energy sources to include more renewable energy. Then we must do the hard work of following through on a plan for achieving those goals. Likewise, I will support strong clean air and clean water standards, investment in our public transportation infrastructure, the “greening” of building codes, and rigorous environmental justice standards.

I will also advocate for continued investment in our public parks and greenspaces. These spaces are integral to the fabric of neighborhood life in our city—providing a place where neighbors, parents, and families can come together. They also help keep the city healthy and active. Our parks and greenspaces are assets that we, as a city and state, have constructed over the years to great public benefit. We should not allow these assets to fall into disrepair.

Open and Accountable Government

I believe our government functions best when it is open, transparent, and accountable to the people. As your State Senator, I am committed to these principles in whatever work our government is undertaking—from setting high standards for the responsiveness of my own office staff to constituents to pushing for clear disclosure and evaluation on corporate tax incentives and grants; from maintaining strong campaign finance laws to making our annual state budget more transparent and understandable to the average citizen.

Marriage Equality

I am a strong, long-time supporter of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, and as State Senator I will actively work to ensure our government protects, respects and values all families.

Choice

I strongly support a woman’s right to make her own reproductive health choices. I also believe that ensuring freedom of choice means ensuring all our residents have access to the important reproductive health services and education necessary to keep them healthy and safe.

Death Penalty

I oppose the death penalty and will oppose any effort to bring capital punishment into our state.