Ward maps, news articles and pictures hung on the walls of Sonia Chang-Diaz’s campaign headquarters on Sunday, June 27 as friends, family and residents gathered inside to kick-off the 2nd Suffolk District State Senator’s reelection campaign.
Close to 50 people crowded the small Roxbury office that Chang-Diaz and her staff will be calling home for the next three months.
"I think the location of her headquarters is probably a telling decision on her part," said Swampscott resident and friend of the senator Steve Marantz, saying that it showed her commitment to gaining the vote in that neighborhood.
Having worked on Chang-Diaz’s 2008 election, when she went up and won against incumbent Democrat Dianne Wilkerson, Marantz attended Sunday to lend a helping hand to his preferred candidate. He expected that throughout the campaign he would be making phone calls, knocking on doors and doing the "grunt work."
"She’s contributing an enlightened way of thinking to the statehouse," he explained.
Chang-Diaz will only face competition in the September 14 primary election this year against newcomer Hassan Williams, whose website offers a biography explaining his wide- ranging background. Now a successful "educator, attorney and community activist," the Roxbury-born contender had a "troubled youth," spending some of his life homeless, and a portion struggling through school and trying to keep a job.
Third Suffolk State Representative Aaron Michlewitz stopped by to support Chang-Diaz at the kick-off event, which was also attended by Mike Lake, who is running for Massachusetts Auditor, and 9th Suffolk State Representative Byron Rushing.
After snacking and schmoozing, Rushing gave a speech to introduce Chang-Diaz, noting, to laughs, that after working together during the senator’s term, he felt like he’d known her much long than 2 years. Rushing reminded the audience of the diversity and uniqueness of the senator’s district, which includes Roxbury, Mattapan, Chinatown, the South End, Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Dorchester, Bay Village, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill and Fenway-hugely different neighborhoods facing very different issues.
Rushing told the crowds the he believed voting for Diaz would be a step in making those neighborhoods, and Massachusetts as a whole, a place where "liberty is for everybody."
"When you support Sonia Chang-Diaz for re-election," he continued, "you are doing something radical. You are saying that this Commonwealth needs change. You are saying that this city needs change."
Ending his speech to cheers from the crowd, Chang-Diaz took the soap box. She noted her and the State Senate’s achievements over the last two years - passing measures for CORI reform, ethics reform and pension reform, securing funds to renovate the Cass Recreation Center and adding $1 million to the youth summer jobs funds.
"Despite the severe economic crisis, we have accomplished some incredible things," the senator said, though she was quick to note there was more to be done.
For the rest of her first term, and if re-elected, Chang-Diaz mentioned the other issues she planned to work on: a racial profiling bill with Rushing, job access and environmental justice legislation, and a foreclosure bill that is heading to the governor’s desk soon. She spoke of a minimum wage policy that "allows parents to put food on the table and still have enough hours out of the day to help kids with their homework and know who their friends are." As a former teacher, she also noted her dedication to schools.
But the most emotional part of the afternoon came when the senator discussed youth violence.
"I’ve attended three funerals for young people in and around this district who have been murdered," Chang-Diaz started out, sharing that the most difficult part of her experience wasn’t meeting the family of the victims or writing letter’s to each victim’s mother. (Though she softly noted that those were "absurdly difficult experiences.") Specifically recalling 14-year-old honor roll student Jaewon Martin’s funeral, the senator said she remembered looking at the faces of his peers as they marched past his open casket, and wondering what they thought of their "prospects of survival and success."
"I carry those faces and that responsibility with me every day," Chang-Diaz said, voice slightly cracking. "It is hard to describe the sorrow and anger you feel when you watch those young men’s faces and think about how much we are failing them as a society."
"That is why I remain committed," she continued, voice rising, "to beating back youth violence in our neighborhoods, to defying this notion that young people killing young people is somehow a normal and inevitable reality of urban life.
Chang-Diaz said that the youth summer jobs funding, as well as passing anti-gun trafficking legislation and funding positive alternatives for youth would help to turn the tide against the burgeoning youth violence on the streets.
Ending her speech, the senator offered her own promise to "go to the mat" for her constituents.
"We know exactly what it is going to take to get our neighborhoods to live up to our aspirations for them...I will not stop fighting until I get there," she said.
Migdalia Nalls, who attended the kick off with her husband, community activist and kick off speaker Ra’shaun Nalls, said it was Chang Diaz’s passion that got them involved with her campaign.
"I could get the vibe that she seemed like a very grounded person, very practical in her solutions. And it seemed to me she came from a place of true passion," Migdalia said.
Ra’shaun agreed, saying that he had seen the senator bring about the changes she’d promised.
"You can tell when you talk to her that she really cares about the issues. She listens to you, she looks at you, she acknowledges you," he said, "and then she follows through."
While the Nalls and others left the kick-off for other engagements, Chang-Diaz, her mom, her staff and several supporters headed to the corner of Warren St. and Dudley St. to wave picket fences and coax honks from driver.
Supporter Jean McGuire headed to the intersection as well. Executive director of METCO, a voluntary program that, according to its website, expands "educational opportunities, increase[s] diversity, and reduce[s] racial isolation," McGuire was a Wilkerson supporter in 2008. She was quoted by The Dorchester Reporter as saying that Chang-Diaz, whose family emigrated from Costa Rica, was "not a person of color" - a controversial quote that made its way into several publications before and after the race was over.
As she spun signs with the rest of the senator’s supporters on Sunday afternoon, it seemed that two years had brought about a change of heart.
"Sonia’s demonstrated a commitment to the community and to issues that are on the progressive side," she said. "...If you come in and do a good job, I’m behind you."
