sponsored by The Boston Foundation
CommonWealth Voices aims to be a beacon of robust discourse, offering a platform for analysis and advocacy on the challenges and aspirations of political life in Massachusetts.
The Boston Foundation is deeply committed to civic leadership, and essential to our work is the exchange of informed opinions. We are proud to partner on a platform that engages such a broad range of demographic and ideological viewpoints.
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We welcome informed commentary about local, state and national public policy. Please include the author’s contact information when submitting.
Stronger primary care means better specialty care
Every specialist depends on a healthy primary care system. It is the front door to health care and the foundation upon which the rest of medicine is built.
It’s time to act on the state’s PFAS problem
If we don’t act soon, local water districts will have to go to ever greater and costlier lengths to prevent PFAS from contaminating our drinking water.
Gov. Healey should reject the federal education voucher program
Gov. Healey has an opportunity to lead by joining three other governors who have opted out – Gov. Tina Kotek in Oregon, Gov. Tim Walz in Minnesota, and Gov. Tony Evers in Wisconsin – and taking a stand for all students, while the federal government works to publicly subsidize private schools.
Massachusetts began the Revolution. We should lead the way in showing how to live up to its ideals.
Time and again this Commonwealth has demonstrated that progress begins when people are willing to challenge the status quo.
All politics is local — even the Declaration of Independence
“What I found to my surprise,” said Maier, “was this mass of local ‘declarations of independence,’ the greater part of which come from Massachusetts.”
Haverhill sewage spill underscores urgent need to fund climate-related infrastructure
Massachusetts has spent decades investing in cleaning up our waterways, but we have not invested enough in maintaining and modernizing the infrastructure that keeps them clean.
Honoring America’s promise by reading Frederick Douglass
In one of the greatest statements on American history ever written, Douglass demands that the country live up to the promises of 1776.
Massachusetts is failing to keep kids safe online. It can start by criminalizing AI-generated child pornography
THE GREATEST THREATS to children’s safety are no longer confined to dark alleys or strangers cruising in vans. They are embedded in the digital spaces children enter every day — on phones, gaming platforms, social media, and increasingly through artificial intelligence capable of generating child sexual abuse material. Predators now have unprecedented, real-time access to children. The digital landscape has never been more dangerous for young people or difficult for parents to navigate. The online targeting and exploitation of children is far from isolated, exacerbated by the fast pace at which emerging AI technology is becoming more publicly accessible. Just…
Why generic AI policies won’t protect students from AI sexual exploitation
When technology is used to fabricate sexual images of children, the response cannot be a vague AI policy, a delayed committee review, or a scramble after the images have already spread. It has to be immediate, concrete, and centered on protection: preserve the evidence, support the targeted student, notify families, stop the circulation, and hold those responsible to account.
We are shortchanging rural schools and the students they educate
An overhaul of the state’s approach to funding rural school districts is desperately needed in order to provide their students with the education they deserve.
$1.25 billion available for students. Why would Massachusetts say no?
Massachusetts Democrats do not need to embrace Donald Trump’s education vision to recognize an opportunity when they see one.
Massachusetts is a leader in public education — but not for students with disabilities
Those navigating the state’s special education complaint process often describe experiences marked by lengthy delays, procedural obstacles, limited remedies, and a growing perception that the system is more responsive to institutional interests than to the needs of children.
DiZoglio’s campaign to audit the Legislature is fueled by misinformation, political ambition, and personal attacks
There has been no better example in Massachusetts politics of the chasm that exists between what is actually true, and what the loudest voices are willing to say for their own personal gain, than the legislative audit spectacle.
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