Aligning private development with community needs for equity and resiliency is one of the most powerful roles of city government.
Michelle WuRead
I think, at the end of the day, especially for municipal elections, we see relatively low voter turnout. So the goal is to expand who sees themselves reflected in government, who's empowered to take the lead in politics.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of representation in government and the need to engage more people in the political process.
Michelle Wu's quote highlights the challenge of low voter turnout in municipal elections and the necessity to make politics more inclusive. She suggests that by ensuring a broader representation in government, more individuals can feel empowered to participate actively in the political landscape, thus enhancing democracy and civic engagement.
In practice
In a speech advocating for civic engagement, a speaker might cite this quote to emphasize the need for increasing voter participation.
Aligning private development with community needs for equity and resiliency is one of the most powerful roles of city government.
We can build wealth in all our communities, value public education, plan for our neighborhoods, invest in housing we can afford and transportation that serves everyone, truly fund public health for safety and healing, and deliver on a city Green New Deal for clean air and water, healthy homes, and the brightest future for our children.
When I first ran for City Council in 2013, I was told over and over again that I would likely lose, and for reasons beyond my control: I was too young, not born in Boston, Asian American, female.
During natural disasters or emergencies, the most resilient communities - places that suffer the fewest casualties and rebuild more quickly - are not the wealthiest neighborhoods or ones that have spent the most on physical infrastructure, but rather the communities with the strongest social infrastructure.
Free public transportation is the single biggest step we could take toward economic mobility, racial equity, and climate justice.
I think if we're going to be serious as a city, as a country, about addressing climate change, addressing inequality and racial disparities, we have to start taking action at the scale that matches the urgency of the problems.
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
You realize that for all the shenanigans that go on in the big circus of politics, everybody wakes up and goes to work.
Politics in America is the binding secular religion.
The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship [in the Soviet Union], if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture.
Obama is making a choice now that will lead to the deaths of many thousands of civilians in Afghanistan by American hands. By ordinary standards of presidents, he is a decent man. But those standards aren't good enough. He's in a position either to kill or not to kill, and he's made the decision to kill.
Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
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