IF MICHELLE WU has moved quickly on lots of fronts as Boston’s new mayor, it’s because she has spent years thinking about the issues she now has the power to actually do something about.
It’s “incredibly exciting to be now rolling up my sleeves and just getting to work on so many of the ideas and issues and challenges that as a [city] councilor I talked about or held oversight hearings on for many years, or even as an intern back in the day for Mayor Menino had thought about and seen some of the early beginnings of issues that we’re still now coming full circle on about a dozen years later,” Wu said on this week’s Codcast.
That pent-up energy to push change has led to her overseeing the clearing of tent encampments (though certainly not all the deep-seated problems) at Mass. and Cass. She’s worked with the MBTA to expand a free-fare pilot program for bus service, and she decided that change was needed in the leadership of the Boston public schools. Making change can also generate fierce resistance, and she’s faced a healthy dose of that, too.
When it comes to those who have protested for weeks outside her Roslindale home against a vaccine mandate for city workers – or those North End restaurant owners who she said joined up with them to rail against her outdoor dining policies – Wu struck a tone of resolve and defiance. She has regularly tangled on Twitter with detractors, and last week was no exception.
“We will not normalize harassment as acceptable behavior. When members of this group have taken part in the yelling outside my house, bullied City staff & fellow restaurant owners—there is no right to get inside & shout down a press conference too,” Wu tweeted in response to a video showing some restaurant owners complaining they were kept out of a press briefing she held on the outdoor dining policy.
Asked about her decision to challenge critics in that way, Wu said, it’s been a very conscious choice.
“It has been 13 weeks that people have been outside our home starting at 7 a.m., even this morning,” she said. “It almost feels as if people, and I don’t just mean the people outside my house in this case, I mean, broadly, it feels like our politics has become so divided and so toxic that there’s almost a normalization of feel free to say whatever you want to say and disagree, and don’t quote-unquote comply. And if you just are loud enough and angry enough and hateful enough, then maybe you’ll get a little bit of your way.”
“We should disagree. We should have open conversation. We should protest and demonstrate. Boston is a home of that activism. But there need to be limits, and that doesn’t mean that whenever, wherever people have the right to be in everyone’s faces all the time,” she said. “I know there are many people who would say, you know, this is unbecoming, and the mayor should be above any sort of rancor and just not elevate the back and forth or don’t get into it. I am very aware, though, that there are many people watching what’s happening, young people who are thinking about whether or not public service is for them, women and women of color in leadership positions, who face similar hate and toxicity. And I am choosing to set boundaries for my staff for myself, and to make, hopefully, a shift in the dynamic where we cannot tolerate people feeling like it’s okay to harass someone until they give in. That’s just simply destructive for our communities in so many ways.”
Wu said her involvement with MBTA policy – unusual for a Boston mayor – is very much driven by her own background as a regular T rider. “I rode the Orange Line in today,” she said. “What I like to say is that city government is special because we do the big and the small, but we do big things by getting the small things right. And there are small things that matter so much to people’s day-to-day lives, that you really can’t fully understand how much it matters and what they are unless you’re experiencing it directly or in constant community and having folks who are experiencing it directly shaping decision making.”
She said she’ll work with other communities to expand free-fare bus service beyond the three Boston routes that are now part of a two-year pilot. She said a range of fare reforms could work, and she suggested there is no need to choose between free-fare service and reduced fare for lower-income riders, an alternative approach that some have advocated.
Wu decided to part ways with school superintendent Brenda Cassellius, but she said no one should look to her replacement for all the answers to what ails the system. “I keep emphasizing that this is not about finding one magical person who’s going to suddenly be able to fix everything. We need a whole team in place,” she said.
With a recent state review describing a system in chaos at many levels, with low student achievement and a graduation rate barely over 50 percent after excluding students at the three selective-admission “exam” schools, does Wu regard the system as being in crisis?
“Yes, absolutely,” she said. “It is the job of the mayor to help assess and make the case for the political will to be there so that our school system, our superintendent, and the school committee can make the big changes they need to make.”