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Addressing youth substance use and gambling with Franklin’s SAFE Coalition: I visited Franklin’s SAFE Coalition, co-founded by Jennifer Knight-Levine and Jim Derick, which has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade to become a sought-after regional provider of programming and services for adolescents and their families struggling with addiction. As the new co-chair of the Fentanyl Working Group, I have been doubling down on engagement with Bay Staters affected by the scourge of fentanyl.
Joined by MA State Rep. Jeff Roy, whose state earmark kickstarted SAFE, Jennifer and I discussed opioid-use disorder treatment; grandparents as caregivers; the fentanyl supply chain; the growing problem of youth gambling on sports via smartphones, including on high-school sports; how commercialized cannabis has altered the substance-use landscape; and how alcohol use has changed from millennials to Gen Z (less overall use, but earlier uptake for those who do).
The most important takeaway is that if you or someone you love is struggling, SAFE in Franklin has open office hours on Friday mornings to learn more and converse with experts and the community.
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Pitching drug-pricing reform at Longwood Health Care Leaders: I addressed an audience at MIT’s Longwood Healthcare Leaders on drug-pricing policy. I emphasized the need for reforms of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) – the middlemen of the pharmaceutical supply chain – and pointed towards my draft legislation that would de-link PBM fees from list prices; cap co-pays; and crack down on self-dealing. We also discussed bio-pharma’s role in value-based healthcare, for example through outcomes-based payment models for cell-and-gene therapies and by quantifying the hospital costs that are offset by new medicines.
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Affirming a partnership with Taiwan’s Director-General Charles Liao: Last week, I met with Director-General Liao and Overseas Community Affairs Councilor Jing Ruo Lin to discuss Taiwan’s interests in Greater Boston. We discussed the Chinese Communist Party’s increasing belligerence directed at reunification and how the United States is responding by strengthening Indo-Pacific alliances, such as between South Korea and Japan, and by arming and developing Taiwan’s military. We also emphasized the mutual benefits of economic engagement – in R&D, manufacturing, and more – and agreed on the need to end the double taxation of Taiwanese businesses.
New investments in the Blackstone River Valley: Last week, I joined Mary Bulso, Selectwoman and all-around get-stuff-doner; Jeannie Hebert, Director of the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce; and Lauren Taylor, assistant town administrator, for a tour of Blackstone. We discussed the town’s history in the cradle of the Industrial Revolution and in the heat of the fight for abolition. We also walked the construction projects, including rail-trail segments, that will improve recreation, walkability, and economic development for the town. I was deeply impressed by Selectwoman Bulso’s hands-on approach to town improvements that incrementally compound, in keeping with the ‘Strong Towns' mindset that I admire.
Breaking down the issues that matter to young professionals: I met with the Charles River Chamber Young Professionals Group to discuss the cost of housing, policy for long-term care insurance, and immigration issues. The imperative to build more housing to drive down costs was the centerpiece of our discussion. I leaned into my ‘Strong Towns' mindset as we dug into the details of zoning that promotes mixed-use, multi-family, and walkable development that can deliver the hundreds of thousands of units Massachusetts needs.
Also: end parking minimums!
Visiting Sanctuary Place for sex-trafficking survivors: The concept of ‘holding hope for another person’ has stayed with me since touring Sanctuary Place, a residence in the MA-04 with programming provided by Health Imperatives. This home for victims of sex trafficking is run by incredible staff with both clinical and lived experience. Sanctuary Place helps traumatized victims get safe, gain confidence, quit using, find jobs, and attain custody of their children. As one of the directors said: at times the survivors have no hope for themselves, but we hold hope for them.
Finding common ground amid geopolitical tensions: I sat down for a Q&A with Brookline.News, where amongst other topics I shared my takeaway from engagement with the Jewish, Muslim, Israeli, and Arab communities over the last painful months:
“I have engaged intently with the Israeli community, with the Jewish community, with the Muslim community, with the Arab community in different tensions. What’s remarkable with these conversations is, that you can change a couple of nouns and verbs, but actually the sentiment is 90% overlap. And what I take in from these conversations, and I try to listen more than I talk, is people do not want the volatility and the vituperation of geopolitics to bleed into their communities here.
The great promise of America is that the circumstances of your birth do not determine the condition of your life, and do not determine how your kids are raised, who your kids’ friends can be and what their experience is like in school. And so the thing I try to convey…is that we’re not going to solve geopolitics around this table. And frankly, we’re not going to agree on geopolitics around this table. What I think we can agree on, though, is that…part of America’s promise is that we’re not a blood and soil country and that we don’t have to import the ugliness of this conflict here. And what makes communities like Brookline or Newton or Sharon or Franklin or Needham so special is that they’re pluralistic and they’re tolerant.
Your kids and my kids should be able to grow up and not carry the weight of this history on their shoulders…And I think that can be a unifying message and one that people deeply believe in.”
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Honoring Juneteenth from Needham to Fall River: I joined the Bristol Black Collective for a Juneteenth celebration that included a reading from Frederick Douglass’ Fourth of July address. I spoke on the importance of protecting Black voting rights in the face of election denialism and discussed the Collective’s mission with its leadership, including Black history education and support for wealth-building in the Black community.
I also gave remarks at Needham’s Juneteenth Observation, where I shared impressions from my congressional delegation trip to civil-rights sites in Alabama in March. We crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where John Lewis and fellow voting rights activists were savagely beaten for demanding the franchise. As Congressman Lewis reminded Americans before his death, voting rights were then – and still are now – the fundamental guarantor of the ‘absolute equality’ envisioned by the Juneteenth proclamation.
That right of access and empowerment at the ballot box continues to be undermined by the enemies of free and fair elections. Some of their tactics are new, but the theme is very old: denying Black voters the franchise. We will use every lever of law and every avenue of advocacy to ensure that every voter is clothed in the dignity of citizenship and that every vote is tallied. The legacy of Juneteenth demands nothing less. |