Aligning private development with community needs for equity and resiliency is one of the most powerful roles of city government.
Michelle WuRead
Free public transportation is the single biggest step we could take toward economic mobility, racial equity, and climate justice.
Interpretation
Free public transportation can significantly improve economic equality and promote environmental justice.
In this quote, Michelle Wu emphasizes the transformative potential of free public transportation as a means to enhance economic mobility, promote racial equity, and address climate challenges. She argues that by removing the financial barriers associated with public transport, society can create greater access to opportunities for marginalized communities, thus fostering inclusion and sustainability.
In practice
In a discussion on urban development and social justice, you could use this quote to highlight the importance of accessible transportation.
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.
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.
Growing up, I never ever thought that I would or could or should be involved in politics. I didn't see anyone who looked like me in spaces of power.
The amelioration of the world cannot be achieved by sacrifices in moments of crisis; it depends on the efforts made and constantly repeated during the humdrum, uninspiring periods, which separate one crisis from another, and of which normal lives mainly consist.
Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope.
The only constant in life is change
Change is the sum of the universe, and what is of nature ought not to be feared. But one gives it hostages, and lays one's grief upon the gods. Sokrates is free, and would have taught me freedom. But I have yoked the immortal horse that draws the chariot with a horse of earth; and when the one falls, both are entangled in the traces.
We stand today on the edge of a new frontier - the frontier of the 1960's - a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils - a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.
If you try desperately to hang on to something that used to be a success for you, it's going to go away. You have to change.
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