Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Michelle Wu
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American politician Michelle Wu.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
I'm the daughter of immigrants and my parents came to this country with nothing in their pockets and not speaking English and all of us kids were supposed to grow up and just get a stable job that kept us out of trouble. So, that was what I was always aiming for.
We have lived through so much alone and isolated.
We, through city government, can add protections and regulations and have policy conversations about so many aspects of what affects our residents' daily lives.
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.
We need to see more resources in the combination of public safety and public health but we have to use our dollars wisely.
Certainly, workers in many industries do not have the privilege of being able to balance parenting at the workplace, and we must fight especially hard to support working parents in low-wage jobs.
You can have great ideas, and you can have all the right policy goals. But unless you're expanding who is included in the political process, you won't connect the two.
The strengths of our city historically have been connected to being a home for residents from all backgrounds: immigrant residents, residents who represent a diversity of race and economic situations and perspectives. And if we don't address our housing crisis, and the dramatically rising cost of living, we will lose that core of our city.
Often when we talk about food and food policy, it is thinking about hunger and food access through food pantries and food banks, all of which are extremely important.
Food justice must be incorporated into the city's long term and big picture planning efforts.
Entrepreneurs are resourceful, resilient, and make such a difference in anchoring our neighborhoods.
When it comes to fighting for progress in Boston, there's a long history of people in power trying to label advocacy and hard work as being political in order to avoid accountability and distract from community demands for better leadership.
Women especially are often asked to choose between being a mother and being a leader. Without adequate policy support, too many women face not only financial barriers to balancing motherhood and leadership, but cultural stigmas too.
I reject the notion that Boston is a city hopelessly divided by neighborhood, income level or political outlook.
I've learned I can't really affect or control what journalists write, so I just try my best to be transparent and answer the questions that are asked of me.
I will stand on the side of moving forward and ensuring that we are putting in place the changes and the policies to aim for our brightest future.
As a newborn, my older son could sleep through anything so long as he could sprawl out on a flat surface, arms and legs splayed out on either side.
So many of our large anchor institutions also have tremendous purchasing power. If we were coordinating that and incentivizing good food procurement across the board, that's a tremendous impact that the city can drive.
There's always a way to make progress.
We should be increasing our investment in the infrastructure for public safety and public health. But when we talk about those as two distinct and separate departments or budgetary items, we're missing out on the ways in which we should be most effectively using our resources and serving our residents.
We're ready to be a Boston that doesn't push people out, but welcomes all who call our city home.
Any candidate should put forward a vision and plans that really show how we can move with urgency.
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.
We do the big things by getting the little things right for our communities.
I remember very vividly being little and bringing my lunch to school and taking out what was my to-die-for treats from home, whether it was pig ears or dried seaweed, and the reactions of my classmates just hurt, down to my core.
I'm tired but grateful: choosing to blend parenting and public service has made me a more confident mother and a better legislator.
We are ready to become a Boston for everyone.
Our family tradition is to make a trip up to Acadia and do some hiking and enjoy the outdoors there.
I like to be out and about in the woods, in the quiet absorbing our amazing open spaces.
If you focus on the very narrow, myopic interaction between students, their teachers, and the curriculum, you are ignoring 90 percent of what's affecting that student's ability to learn and be ready to absorb that curriculum and perform well in school and reach their potential.
In city government, it's about getting things done, not being judged on a scorecard of whether you said yes or no on a certain thing.
We should be aiming for our entire system to reflect that public transportation is a public good.
When new moms and dads can better support their families and give our youngest Americans the healthiest, most loving start to life, we all benefit.
I play piano, a little Gershwin, before debates.
Business as usual has been failing Bostonians since well before the pandemic, and COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated deep inequities across our city.
When we talk about big issues like climate justice, of course that involves global and statewide implications. But it's also how we double our street-tree canopy to clean the air. It's converting to electric school buses. All of these issues at the city level start from the day-to-day impacts on people's lives.
I love being ankle deep in conversations about sewers and potholes. That's where my heart has always been, and city government has the chance to get it right on both.
Working families need daily access to affordable, quality early education and childcare, not just an annual tax break for wealthier families.
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.
We need federal legislation guaranteeing paid family and medical leave.
In the drive to prove our status as a world-class city, let's stay true to our democratic legacy and what Boston has already given to the world: informed independence and true debate.
Our public schools are an area where I will be rolling up my sleeves and spending a lot of my time, pushing for political will.
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.
In nearly a decade in city government, I have learned that the easiest thing to do in government is nothing. And in trying to deliver change, there will be those who are invested in the status quo who will be disrupted, or uncomfortable, or even lose out.
We've got to change the culture of riding the T. It is a civic space for community conversations, but everyone's always really quiet on there.
We are redefining what leadership looks like and pushing for every single person to be part of that conversation.
My boys, Blaise and Cass, run Halloween at our house with the help of my sister who always makes their costumes.
We must center restaurants, bodegas, and other food businesses as critical food infrastructure for racial and economic justice.
I think the interesting thing about elections, as someone who has run through a couple of them, is that people are so busy in their lives that there are kind of waves of when people tune in and do the research and really dive in to decide who they're supporting. People take it at different paces, but there is this roaring focus at the end.
When I'm by myself and get some quiet - when the kids are doing something else - I spend time playing piano.
It is not enough to simply dismiss policy, because it's too complicated or we're scared about what the unintended consequences might be.
In bringing my baby to work, I am happy to be a visible reminder of how messy and difficult it is to be a working parent.
My mom had a sense that... there are always these barriers up for certain groups of people. That's always been core to how I understand the world and navigate it.
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.
We need to be fearless in reaching for the scale of change that our residents deserve.
Too often, our societal norms still set up a false choice between parenting and professionalism.
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.
I'm proud to have partnered and worked with Congresswoman Ayanna Presley, Sen. Ed Markey as they filed federal legislation that would generate billions of dollars for transit agencies across the country to offer fare-free transportation.
We can't afford to just nibble around the edges of the status quo. We need to take the actions to secure our neighborhoods, to make sure that everyone has opportunity.
Boston has jobs... And we have plenty of talent in our communities, who either physically can't get there because the transportation system isn't working well or need a little bit of a boost in terms of training and access.
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