BOSTON CITY COUNCILOR Michelle Wu formally launched her candidacy for mayor on Tuesday with a campaign that promises to be a distinctive grassroots effort.
One example is her campaign website, which comes with a digital tool kit designed to help her supporters amplify her message on social media, on signs, and on apparel in six different languages. The tool kit even explains her campaign’s color scheme (it’s rooted in “Michelle’s signature dark purple”) and preferred typeface – Fellix, “an optimistic geometric voice.”
Wu takes this stuff very seriously. “This campaign is of and by grassroots supporters, and we can’t wait to see what you make!” the introduction to the tool kit says.
Her campaign-launch video shows the same attention to detail, casting the Boston city councilor and Harvard College and Harvard Law School grad as a representative of the minority communities of Boston that now make up a majority of the city’s population.
“For too many during this pandemic and before, it’s been impossible to dream while you’re fighting to hold on, fighting to afford to stay, fighting for our kids, fighting for a system that wasn’t built for us, doesn’t speak our language, doesn’t hear our voices,” Wu says in videos in English, Spanish, and Mandarin.
The 35-year-old Wu, who grew up in Chicago, announces her candidacy by saying: “I’m a mom, a daughter of [Taiwanese] immigrants, and I’ve lived my whole life knowing what it’s like to feel unseen and unheard even when you most need help.”
The video wraps Wu in the Black Lives Matter movement, showcases her support for Sen. Elizabeth Warren and US Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and references her grassroots effort to pressure the MBTA to back down on a fare increase by saying she “changed the conversation about what is just and what is possible.”
Wu didn’t win that fight over the MBTA fare increase, and she didn’t gain any traction on her call for all fares to be eliminated. In some circles, she was ridiculed for her naivete. But she got a conversation rolling about whether fares should automatically go up, the need for more transportation revenues, and whether Boston deserves a seat on the board overseeing the T. It’s a conversation that continues today, as the T experiments with lower fares to encourage greater ridership in low-income communities.
Wu has tackled these issues by blending policy advocacy with the personal experience of an actual T rider. It’s a potent combination, and one that served her well at meetings of the T’s Fiscal and Management Control Board and in one-on-one discussions with riders on T platforms.
One of Wu’s sons is in the Boston school system and she made clear in an interview with the Boston Globe that she intends to use the same combination of policy advocacy and personal experience as she debates education issues with incumbent Mayor Marty Walsh.
“It will make a difference to have a mom in charge of the Boston public schools. Every issue is real. Every action or inaction is personal, and I live with the stakes of whether we’re meeting this moment and acting with the scale and urgency our families need,” she said.
BRUCE MOHL
FROM COMMONWEALTH
Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ralph Gants, who died yesterday, spent the morning on the phone talking to lawyers and advocates about the coming eviction crisis, 10 days after being hospitalized for a heart attack.
As it prepares to make hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts, the MBTA is considering prioritizing service for riders who are low-income, people of color, and those with one or no cars.
T notes: Battery-run buses not ready for primetime yet…Four mainline train derailments through July this year, one more than expected for entire year….Dedicated bus lanes can get expensive….New pass tap machines at Charles/MGH.
FROM AROUND THE WEB
BEACON HILL
Under a newly proposed bill, businesses not allowed to open until Phase 4 of the state’s reopening plan would be able to apply for municipal property tax abatements, paid for by the state. (The Salem News)
In a Globe op-ed, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins and former state representatives Byron Rushing and Juana Matias decry the fact that the data reporting requirements of the state’s sweeping 2018 criminal justice reform bill have been largely ignored. (Matias is the chief operating officer of MassINC, the public policy think tank that publishes CommonWealth.)
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Framingham starts handing out $500 fines to people who violate restrictions on gatherings. (MetroWest Daily News)
The Salvation Army’s food distribution program is causing major traffic congestion in Lynn. (Daily Item)
HEALTH/HEALTH CARE
Nantucket has seen a surge in coronavirus cases. (Boston Globe)
The Patriot Ledger reflects back on six months of pandemic on the South Shore.
ELECTIONS
President Trump traveled to fire-ravaged California where he said poor forest management, not climate change, is responsible for the millions of acres that have burned there. “I don’t think science knows” what’s happening there, he said. (New York Times) Joe Biden decries Trump’s denial of the science behind climate change and calls Trump a “climate arsonist.” (Politico)
Central Massachusetts supporters of President Trump declare “go big or go home,” painting an airplane and displaying giant posters and flags in support of their candidate. (Telegram & Gazette)
Republican US Senate candidate Kevin O’Connor rips Sen. Ed Markey for only agreeing to one debate in their race. (Boston Herald)
Joe Biden is pledging to dismantle the sweeping changes President Trump has made to the American immigration system if he wins the White House in November, but that’s easier said than done. (NPR)
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
There is now a lumber shortage, driven by Trump administration tariffs combined with growing interest in home renovation projects. (Providence Journal)
Downtown New Bedford’s newest small business is a non-binary boutique. (Standard-Times)
EDUCATION
Dover-Sherborn Regional High School will start school remotely — and delay the start of its hybrid model until September 21 — after 150 students attended a party without wearing masks. A few days ago, Lincoln-Sudbury High School made the same decision, also due to a party. (MassLive)
Scores of teachers who are at higher risk for complications from COVID-19 still don’t know whether their districts will allow them to work entirely remotely this fall. (Boston Globe)
CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS
A State Police sergeant who became head of the troopers’ union in 2018 amid a payroll fraud scandal was himself the subject of a probe, but was only found to have “misrepresented his knowledge” to a superior officer, behavior the department told the Globe it did not consider to be lying.
There was an uptick in the number of complaints lodged against the Worcester police last year. (Telegram & Gazette)