Michelle Wu Quotes

Boston is not a city that takes our rights lightly. Here in the birthplace of revolution, we have always, always fought for each other. We're damn good at it.

If there's anything more exhausting than having to battle for our basic human rights, it's letting them go without a fight.

Together, we can build a Boston that’s more green than concrete. Where housing is a given, not a godsend, and mobility is the minimum, not a miracle. Where the things we build inspire—but don’t define—us; and where each generation shines brighter than the last.

What we need to just connect all the dots is leadership that has that sense of bold aspiration, urgent action, and community-based vision.

Justice for all means reproductive justice, gender justice, queer justice. Liberty for all means the all-inclusive freedoms that guarantee every person agency over their own body.

We all benefit when we stamp out injustice. We are all healthier when reproductive care is available to our communities. We are all free only if we are all free.

Here in Boston, in Massachusetts, we will do what we do best: We will fight back, fiercely—for our freedoms and for each other. This moment does not belong to the far right. It belongs to us, like our bodies. And we decide what to do with it.

Freedom is not a thing that we have, but a thing that we do.

We are proud to have the oldest police force anywhere in the country to have been known nationwide for innovations that focused on community, building community trust, and shifting the dynamic away from arrests and punitive measures and more towards community relationships... 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. And we know this is tied to the underlying contract, and it’s not just about slashing a line item because that has failed. It has been a show, a political statement, but then ended up setting up the city to overspend, because overtime hours must be paid out by contract and by law, no matter what the budget line item is. And we also need accountability for misconduct or misuse of force, and again, this is tied into the underlying police contract.

And as we marched through Dorchester that day, I saw in the eyes of every proud coach, and teammate, and day-one supporter—the spirit that burns bright in every corner of Boston…The grit, & courage, and deep sense of community that drives us to overcome the impossible—for the people we love and the place we call home.

None of us move through this world as individuals in isolation. We are all the constellations of people in our lives who believe in us, trust us, and empower us to do the work that it takes to make each moment possible.

We need to make sure that every single seat in our Boston Public Schools is nurturing, high quality access to a whole child’s education and opportunities — rigorous academics, arts, sports, extracurriculars... Rent stabilization is not a generator of affordable housing, and over the long run, it has the opposite impact. But it’s very important that, if we want to be a city where all income levels are represented, where we are not displacing families of color at an accelerating rate out of Boston, we need to take steps for immediate relief for families and ensure that we’re managing both the increase in supply and the transition period where our residents shouldn’t be facing double-digit rent increases, year after year after year.

None of us should have to be resilient to systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, any kind of harm being done to our communities. We shouldn't have to be resilient in the face of violence, or hunger, or homelessness. Resilience, and our ability to survive injustices, are never reasons to stop fighting for justice.

There is power in being open and honest about your "behind-the-scenes." In showing others that sometimes it's okay not to be okay. Because those moments are all a part of a longer, and larger, process of becoming who we are.

Boston is a city that will never stop reaching—up toward the progress we know to be possible, and out to the community whose work makes it lasting.