Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Pod for the People.
Speaker: I'm your host, Dr. Tammy Gouveia.
Speaker: Each week I invite everyday Americans, community activists, and status quo disruptors to share stories about the power of connection and finding the courage to heal our political divisions.
Speaker: So super excited for the guests that we have with us today, Dr. Natalia Alinos, who's a first generation Greek American, mom of three.
Speaker: She's the executive director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard.
Speaker: She ran for the 4th Congressional District here in Massachusetts and continues to stay involved.
Speaker: She's currently an elected town meeting member in Brookline.
Speaker: She's also a member of Brookline's Advisory Council on Public Health and an active board member of the Environmental League of Massachusetts.
Speaker: So welcome, Natalia.
Speaker: Thank you so much, Tammy, for having me.
Speaker: We have some similar backgrounds in public health and running for office and trying to bring public health into policymaking.
Speaker: I'm of Greek descent.
Speaker: You're a first generation Greek American.
Speaker: So I think there's some experiences that we have that we can share in these next minutes that we have together.
Speaker: We'd love for you to say a little bit about yourself and what has drawn you into public health and policymaking at the intersection with justice and what drew you into this work?
Speaker: Sure, of course.
Speaker: And Tammy, it's wonderful that we share the same backgrounds because I think a lot of the motivations are probably similar to some of your motivations.
Speaker: So excited to talk about that.
Speaker: I grew up in Greece, so I spent the first 17 years there.
Speaker: My parents had been in the U.S. as international students.
Speaker: They're both physicians and I was born here, but the intention was always for them to raise their kids in Greece.
Speaker: So when I was one month old, they moved back to Greece and we grew up there.
Speaker: I grew up in a pretty religious household.
Speaker: And I bring that up because I think some of the kind of the moral, more left leaning policies that I get behind are actually intertwined with some of the religious upbringing.
Speaker: So my parents were both physicians, so scientists, my mom is actually an epidemiologist too, still very active in Greece.
Speaker: And, you know, we would go to church every Sunday, we used to go to camps that were
Speaker: sponsored somewhat by the church.
Speaker: So they were very affordable.
Speaker: They were mostly for low income, you know, Greek families paid something like one euro a night for, you know, three weeks of camp.
Speaker: And that allowed me to sort of be a little bit more grounded in the reality of people in a different setting.
Speaker: But also, you know, then I came to the US to go to college.
Speaker: I studied anthropology, went overseas to Beirut and worked as a high school teacher for a few years, learned Arabic.
Speaker: I thought I was going to be an anthropologist, but then realized that I really want to be having an impact on people's lives.
Speaker: And I thought public health was the path.
Speaker: So I started studying public health and joined the United Nations, posted again back in Beirut because I spoke Arabic probably, and spent my career mostly at the UN, so at the global level, working on issues from gender equality, human rights, public health to some extent.
Speaker: But it wasn't until about 10 years ago when Dr. Mary Bassett was appointed New York City Health Commissioner that I actually tried to merge my two interests
Speaker: of public health and policy.
Speaker: And I worked with her as her science advisor in New York.
Speaker: I bring this all up because I think I'm an unusual candidate for public office in Massachusetts.
Speaker: Most people born and raised third, fourth generation.
Speaker: But I think I bring a lot of perspective from having grown up overseas, but also worked a lot of my life at the UN.
Speaker: Your question as to what motivates me
Speaker: I have always worked in political spaces.
Speaker: You know, the UN is a political organization and it is about bringing about people's well-being and dignity, looking at the countries that are facing strife, whether it's war or true poverty.
Speaker: And I've worked closely with some leaders,
Speaker: who were formerly political leaders.
Speaker: And I will say it wasn't surprising that some of them are women politicians.
Speaker: So Helen Clark, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, I was her speechwriter, Rebecca Greenspan, the former vice president of Costa Rica, who now leads a big UN entity, I was her speechwriter.
Speaker: So I had role models of women politicians who were making a difference.
Speaker: And part of our work at the UN was showing that women in leadership positions across the globe was having an impact on the types of policies, whether it was more investments in education, health, better social policy.
Speaker: So while I hadn't done much political campaigning, I had been in these political spaces.
Speaker: When COVID hit, I found myself at Harvard.
Speaker: writing papers, interviewing, you know, for the New York Times or the Washington Post.
Speaker: And then I was like, I can't, I can't make a difference from an academic position.
Speaker: I need to run for office because really it's the political decision making that happens right now that will chart a path of whether
Speaker: The COVID response will be equitable.
Speaker: And now in retrospect, we know that there were a lot of failings along the way.
Speaker: So I wish I had been in a position of political influence.
Speaker: But the lesson from running is that you can remain politically involved at every level and that there is a role for all of us.
Speaker: As you were on the campaign trail, what are some of the things that were striking to you that were different in going from more of an academic perspective and trying to communicate with everyday average people who you were trying to influence to support you in your campaign?
Speaker: What were the highs and the lows of running for the fourth congressional district in Massachusetts?
Speaker: So it was a pretty condensed campaign.
Speaker: I don't know, for those listening in, it was an open seat.
Speaker: So there were already, I think, eight candidates when I decided to step in.
Speaker: And I stepped in very, very late.
Speaker: I was the last candidate.
Speaker: It was April, end of April 2020.
Speaker: The election was going to be in September.
Speaker: So that gave me, you know, five months of runway.
Speaker: Very short.
Speaker: A lot of people told me that that was not enough time.
Speaker: But I felt an urgency.
Speaker: I felt an urgency that COVID had changed everything.
Speaker: So the candidates who had declared pre-COVID, there was a reason for them to run then.
Speaker: And there was no reason for me to run before COVID.
Speaker: But then COVID hit.
Speaker: And suddenly the skill set that I thought would be needed in Congress, including people who understood epidemiology or at least numbers, that legislators just did not have that skill set and that
Speaker: COVID wasn't going to be over in two weeks or two months.
Speaker: It was really a two to five year timeframe ahead of us.
Speaker: And so it wasn't that I was being opportunistic.
Speaker: It was that I was really wanting to serve for a number of years as we went through this.
Speaker: So knowing that, that it was a very short campaign, my focus was not on doing the traditional things, which is trying to get support from established political leaders, but going directly to people.
Speaker: you know, really overstepping that kind of interim, like knocking on doors and talking to established politicians who would then open more doors.
Speaker: There was no time for that.
Speaker: And they already had to open doors or decided on which candidates they were supporting.
Speaker: So it was really trying to make the case directly to people that my skill set, my message of science and equity together was valuable.
Speaker: And I found that it did resonate.
Speaker: And it resonated with people across kind of the political areas.
Speaker: spectrum in some ways.
Speaker: And it's interesting that while my policies would very clearly fall on the progressive left, I never, you know, there were quite a few candidates who claimed this, you know, I am the progressive or the most progressive.
Speaker: I didn't use that language because at that moment, it wasn't about being the most progressive.
Speaker: It was about bringing forward policies that I thought were critical in the COVID response.
Speaker: That was my training in epidemiology and
Speaker: But I did put forward some other policies around reparations, for example, which is based on the work I do on racial justice.
Speaker: And several people in my campaign were like, oh, my gosh, why are you going there?
Speaker: And it was like, this is an opportunity when you're campaigning to bring issues to the forefront, to force all the candidates to have the difficult conversations.
Speaker: And I wasn't going to waste that opportunity.
Speaker: But what I enjoyed the most, Tammy, was really I did something called...
Speaker: asked me anything.
Speaker: I was on Zoom every day at noon and people would just show up.
Speaker: And because it was an open Zoom link, oftentimes it would be people from across the district.
Speaker: So there would be someone from Brookline and someone from Fall River and someone from, you know, Wellesley on at the same time.
Speaker: And sometimes their questions were difficult questions.
Speaker: People who are religious and asking me about my thoughts around abortion rights at the same time as people who were concerned about, you know,
Speaker: housing insecurity and you know we would have to sort of have a conversation in public across issues with people who came from different political views and what i found was that people were actually interested in each other's opinions and it kind of broke down these silos we typically stay in our neighborhood speak to the people with the same views but these ask me anything zooms required us to talk across geography and across issues and across backgrounds and i found that to be some of the most rewarding
Speaker: part of campaigning.
Speaker: And I wish campaigning was really about that and not about fundraising.
Speaker: First, I just want to say I love this idea of ask me anything.
Speaker: And what I love about it and what I think is persistently missing in politics, in decision making, is A, having those hard conversations and coming at a conversation like this with humility and vulnerability and openness.
Speaker: I do believe that part of the path to addressing the
Speaker: and even healing the political divisions is for people to get into these rooms together and to hear what the questions are that other folks are bringing from a completely different community because those questions indicate what the challenges are that people are facing, what they're afraid of, what they're excited about, and just what's kind of on the top of mind and what their top issues are in their community.
Speaker: I think it does help build a lot of those bridges that we need to really be building and repairing.
Speaker: as we try to navigate the next four years, the next 20 years, so that we're really creating the conditions for our children and grandchildren and our neighbors' children and grandchildren to be able to succeed and really thrive here.
Speaker: So I love this, and I think we need to ask more candidates to do something very similar.
Speaker: And it probably was kind of scary at times, but talk about powerful.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think, you know, the other sort of lesson that I hadn't thought about, again, because I was new to politics, I had an older gentleman, Dr. Michael Walker-Jones.
Speaker: He's in his 70s.
Speaker: He's a black man who lives in Franklin.
Speaker: And he was by my side a lot of the times.
Speaker: And I remember once we were doing an event in Franklin, and we were going into the public square to hold signs.
Speaker: And at the same space, there was a protest, a Blue Lives Matter protest, and people were
Speaker: And, you know, to be honest, I was intimidated for a second.
Speaker: I was like, I can't walk into the space.
Speaker: It was mostly men.
Speaker: They were, you know, larger.
Speaker: I felt that my messages were at odds.
Speaker: And he turned to me and he said, you know, if you win this election, you will represent every single one of them.
Speaker: You need to go introduce yourself.
Speaker: You need to talk to them.
Speaker: You need to listen to them.
Speaker: That is your role.
Speaker: You are not going to be representing only the people who vote for you.
Speaker: And that was transformational for me.
Speaker: You know, it gave me the sort of the message that you need to listen.
Speaker: And that's your first requirement.
Speaker: And yes, you have your views and your political kind of messages and you should stick by your values.
Speaker: But listening is really important.
Speaker: And that...
Speaker: Played out well.
Speaker: I was in another part of our district and it was, you know, outside of a farmer's market.
Speaker: And someone came out and kind of aggressive to me and said, you know, I'm a Republican.
Speaker: Do you hate me?
Speaker: And I turned and I said, of course, I don't.
Speaker: I don't hate you.
Speaker: Tell me what you care about.
Speaker: This was in Hopkinton.
Speaker: And he was like, really?
Speaker: And I said, of course.
Speaker: And I, you know, I echoed Michael Walker-Jones in my response.
Speaker: I said, if I win this election, I will need to represent you and I want to understand what you care about.
Speaker: And we had a 25 minute conversation and he cared about automation of, you know, in industry and what that would do for jobs, how that would impact workers.
Speaker: And fundamentally, I agreed with so much about his top priority, which was, you know, how do we protect American workers?
Speaker: How do we ensure that people have a living wage?
Speaker: And he identified as a Republican with strong beliefs around, you know, workers and I identified as a progressive Democrat.
Speaker: But in the end of the day, the issues and, you know, I pointed out some of the issues that we disagreed with.
Speaker: I came home.
Speaker: He asked for my, you know, information and he had sent me a book and a card and made an $1,000 donation to my campaign.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he said, you were the first Democratic candidate who has actually cared to listen to me and not sort of, you know, rub me off or assume that I didn't have anything worthwhile to offer to the conversation because I couldn't vote for them.
Speaker: You know, it was at the primary level.
Speaker: So he wasn't going to be voting for me.
Speaker: You gave me time.
Speaker: And that's all I want.
Speaker: I want time to express my views.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I found that one of the most powerful conversations.
Speaker: And, you know, we don't often think about that as candidates.
Speaker: We think about who's going to vote for us.
Speaker: And we focus so narrowly about our subset.
Speaker: Since the election, I've gotten into ranked choice voting and thinking about whether our political system is forcing us into these narrow views and whether an alternative of ranked choice voting would force us as politicians to really have the conversations that would make us
Speaker: better suited to serve the entire populace that we represent afterwards.
Speaker: So I don't know if you have any views around that or if you had any unexpected conversations on the campaign trail.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I had what was really interesting for me.
Speaker: So I ran for 15 months for lieutenant governor, started off campaigning pretty hard in Western Mass in particular.
Speaker: But even in
Speaker: throughout different parts of the state when I would go to a meet and greet or have, you know, a Q&A kind of opportunity.
Speaker: Sometimes people would say you need to go hard after Republicans.
Speaker: And I would have this pretty visceral reaction.
Speaker: That's not the way that I choose to put my values out there.
Speaker: As a social worker, as someone who cares about human rights and dignity and respect,
Speaker: And fundamentally, as a progressive, you know, I really do believe that we have to have conversations and work together across different political perspectives.
Speaker: And it's interesting just hearing you.
Speaker: It makes me think of a conversation I had yesterday.
Speaker: I was out in Lancaster getting my turkey at Bob's Farm and standing in line.
Speaker: for about 40 minutes and had this wonderful conversation with a total stranger.
Speaker: And we started to get into politics.
Speaker: I had on my Tammy for Lieutenant Governor sweatshirt.
Speaker: So we eventually kind of put it together who I was.
Speaker: looking at him, you could make an assumption that he would be perhaps a Republican or pro-Trump.
Speaker: And that wasn't the case.
Speaker: And he talked a lot about women's rights and, you know, really caring about, he's a business owner, really caring about employees and making sure that, you know, we're really taking care of each other.
Speaker: But also, you
Speaker: that our, the level of concern that a lot of people have around corruption in our politics, or, you know, that people are not necessarily putting people first when they're making decisions and the level of money that is involved in politics.
Speaker: So would love to go back to the amount of fundraising and
Speaker: And the focus on fundraising that I believe detracts from candidates really spending that quality time with voters, regardless of whether or not they'll be voting for them in a primary, and just how much money does really influence where candidates are able to focus their efforts.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I agree.
Speaker: I mean, it not only detracts, it also distorts.
Speaker: You know, it forces you to have more of your time having conversations with people who are very, very wealthy, especially for Congress.
Speaker: You know, you can get a donation of twenty eight hundred from one person if if it's a person and their spouse and their older kids.
Speaker: You know, you can have one household donating ten thousand dollars and that forces you to spend hours building those relationships with people who can.
Speaker: donate that amount.
Speaker: I didn't do that.
Speaker: And, you know, in retrospect, it could be said that that's one of the reasons I didn't win.
Speaker: You know, I'm very proud.
Speaker: My team did run the numbers that I had the most votes per dollar.
Speaker: So I got one vote for $10 when most of the people in my race got one vote per $100.
Speaker: So there is some truth that money can buy elections, but money alone can't.
Speaker: So I feel very good about the fact that I spent more time having conversations with people than fundraising.
Speaker: Some people said you have to spend as a candidate six to 10 hours a day fundraising.
Speaker: And that's six to 10 hours that you can't have good conversations with people who you'll be representing.
Speaker: And for people like me and you who are moms, that's also six to 10 hours that you're taking away from
Speaker: your children.
Speaker: And, you know, obviously running for office is a huge sacrifice, but it feels more difficult to spend that amount of time simply on fundraising when the value that you can bring either doing public events, speaking to people, doing debates, talking one on one,
Speaker: you know, is really what you value.
Speaker: So fundamentally, I mean, both you and I didn't win.
Speaker: And so our approach, both for not going after Republicans, not focusing on the money is not working.
Speaker: If we want to start electing more diverse candidates, people who come with lived experience, people who are willing to have these, you know, conversations and spend their time there, then we need to think about the system structurally.
Speaker: What is impeding that?
Speaker: Some cities and states have
Speaker: public finance options that are more appealing or could be used.
Speaker: We have ranked choice voting as an option that kind of motivates you to be appealing to a broader cohort, not just a subset.
Speaker: You can't win with 25% of the vote in a ranked choice vote type scenario.
Speaker: So I've gotten quite interested in these systemic barriers from having a truly representative government and more candidates like me and you who are entering...
Speaker: first time candidate for me, not for you, obviously, entering because we feel like we have a skill set that is useful at a moment.
Speaker: And probably that's still true.
Speaker: I do think that I did have a skill set that would have been useful given how, you know, what we know now in 2022 about how COVID has played out, what I was worried about in 2020 did play out.
Speaker: And I think I was raising the alarm and I would have raised the alarm throughout using, you know, that political approach
Speaker: power as a member of Congress.
Speaker: And would it have made a difference?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Would the issues have been escalated more?
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: Yeah, it makes me think of something you said at the beginning of our conversation here about, you know, what compelled you to run for Congress and using that skill set and being at the table.
Speaker: I will say as someone who has been a state representative going on a full four years, I finished my doctorate in public health in 2020 after COVID had hit.
Speaker: Because I was wrapping up that and have had a 25-year career as a public health social worker, in early March, I reached out to leadership in the House and I said, what are we doing about COVID?
Speaker: and I got nothing back.
Speaker: I reached out to the chair of public health, who does not have a background in public health at all.
Speaker: What are we doing about COVID?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And then I kept trying to raise those alarm bells with the Baker administration, with the leadership, both in the House and the Senate, to say we have to take quick action and we can do it in a way that we are also ensuring that we are not causing people
Speaker: even more harm financially because calling for restaurant restrictions, closing schools and sending people home, that it was going to have these massive, massive financial impacts.
Speaker: And I don't believe that we have done nearly enough as a Commonwealth or as a country to support the financial well-being
Speaker: of our very hardworking folks, particularly those who are essential workers, those who are immigrants, who are lower socioeconomic status.
Speaker: How did you think about that?
Speaker: Did you have those conversations on the campaign trail?
Speaker: Yeah, fundamentally, it was very clear from day one that the U.S. was not set up
Speaker: appropriately.
Speaker: I co-authored a piece in March 2020.
Speaker: There had only been one U.S. death.
Speaker: And it was sort of alarmist.
Speaker: I wrote it with Dr. Mary Bassett.
Speaker: It was posted in the Washington Post.
Speaker: And it basically said, our country
Speaker: is systematically, you know, the issues of structural racism, the fact that we have immigrants who may be undocumented, who may worry to step forward.
Speaker: In a moment of COVID, we talked about the fact that we don't have running water in some of our, you know, reservations or native, you know, native communities have such disinvestments in the built environment.
Speaker: And, you know, we're telling people, wash your hands.
Speaker: We're telling people, stay home.
Speaker: What about the thousands of people who are homeless or, you know, don't have secure housing?
Speaker: So we sort of stressed this country is a wealthy country with a lot of technological scientific expertise and yet these underlying social inequities that made us so vulnerable.
Speaker: And we had a sentence in there saying that we predicted that the U.S. would fare worse from all other wealthy countries because of this underlying structural issues, the fact that we didn't have paid leave, you know, paid sick leave.
Speaker: These are things that I was hoping in 2020 would be a wake up call.
Speaker: that the silver lining coming out of COVID would be honest conversations around some of these fundamental policy solutions that can be put in place to prevent us from being in such a vulnerable place in a future pandemic, not just about, you know, making our public health response stronger and our institutions, because that technocratic approach
Speaker: You know, science is very strong.
Speaker: It was more about our social vulnerabilities, about the structural racism and those conditions that I was paying attention to.
Speaker: And during the campaign, also issues that I highlighted quite actively.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, and that's why I'm so grateful that when you ran for Congress, that you were putting these issues right on the table, because even though you and I did not succeed this time around in, you know, winning, winning our races, the ideas that we put out are the ones that need to be out there for sincere discussion, you know, Medicare for all, real bold action on climate change, making sure that,
Speaker: We are putting economic and racial justice at the center of the ways that we're thinking about issues from jobs and economic development to the housing crisis that we're facing to educational opportunities.
Speaker: I mean, the list really goes on.
Speaker: And I love that the work that you're doing is really starting to focus more here on the issues that we are facing when it comes to civil rights and justice and human rights, because we do have a lot that is really causing a lot of human suffering.
Speaker: At least that's what I really heard and learned a lot about in the 15 months that I was traveling across the state.
Speaker: And I think that a lot of these challenges that individuals and families are facing, they just hide it.
Speaker: We're not talking about it.
Speaker: You know, there was a recent report that Kaiser Permanente put out.
Speaker: They interviewed folks and surveyed folks across the country.
Speaker: 90% of Americans agree that we are in a mental health crisis.
Speaker: And around 50% of Americans or those who responded to the survey said that they're not talking to their family and their friends about their own mental health challenges because of the stigma, because they don't want to burden family members, because we don't have the mental health workforce that we need to meet the demands and the needs.
Speaker: And when you break that down by race and language spoken, our workforce is even
Speaker: even more, you know, short of what we really need to support getting families and residents and neighbors in our state and in our country
Speaker: really, truly back on track.
Speaker: And I think that has also been so overlooked in our response to COVID and our recovery efforts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think, you know, while mental health isn't an area that we have expertise on, one concern has been that the COVID narrative has been just about death, as if living with long COVID or mental health challenges or
Speaker: a sick child at home and having that disruption for 10 days isn't valuable enough.
Speaker: And I think the focus on death and saying, oh, death rates are going down, therefore we are over,
Speaker: is sort of so inappropriate because the vast majority of Americans are still facing the daily impacts, whether it's the mental health challenges, the decisions around whether they work or what to do with a sick child.
Speaker: And so we need to keep focusing on that everyday life.
Speaker: And I really, really appreciated your social work background and bringing mental health
Speaker: to the forefront of the conversations, because that's what I heard too.
Speaker: And that is not a partisan issue.
Speaker: Everybody is facing these public health challenges and the solutions do require us to pay attention to how
Speaker: we as a society support each other?
Speaker: And what measures do we put in place to allow us to do that?
Speaker: Too often the narrative of individuals can succeed in this country, you work hard, you get there, takes us away from the fact that we have a communal obligation to each other.
Speaker: And I don't know if this is an appropriate set, I'm really proud to be raising my children
Speaker: here to be Americans.
Speaker: But my parents, you know, were Greek.
Speaker: They went to university for free.
Speaker: They went to medical school.
Speaker: My mom came from a very poor background.
Speaker: Her dad was a baker in a small village.
Speaker: Her mom had gone only to third grade.
Speaker: She made it.
Speaker: She came, you know, she studied medical school in Greece for free.
Speaker: She came to the U.S. to do some further studies, went back.
Speaker: My father's father was a refugee from Turkey.
Speaker: You know,
Speaker: While the narrative that we tell ourselves is that Americans have this life of opportunity, and it's true, there is so much wealth here.
Speaker: My parents in Greece has gone through it.
Speaker: dramatic economic crisis too, the possibilities that were afforded through free education were actually probably stronger there than they are here for today's Americans, for people who are today trying to live that American dream.
Speaker: And I think that is on all of us and the systems that we've put in place and the inequality that is so large.
Speaker: You can live
Speaker: in great wealth in Massachusetts and be oblivious to the pain that people are facing, the daily struggles.
Speaker: And it's not up to individuals to fix that.
Speaker: There is a responsibility of the government to do better and, of course, of corporations to serve their workers better.
Speaker: And so it's good to elevate those stories because I do think that some people just don't hear them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think, you know, having greater representation in our halls of government, people with lived experience, people with different professional backgrounds, people who are working in the spaces around structural inequities, because they're what drive the fact that we live in such a segregated state, that people of means and wealth
Speaker: many of us are just going about living our daily lives.
Speaker: It's not because we don't care.
Speaker: It's not because people necessarily only want to put their head in the sand and ignore
Speaker: what challenges someone in a completely different city or town might be facing because of those structural inequities.
Speaker: And those divisions are really, they're big.
Speaker: I do believe, and what gives me hope is that we are having more of these conversations.
Speaker: I'm hearing about people talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, more so now than I heard 10, 15, 20 years ago when I was
Speaker: in graduate school for social work and at Mont Julio studying politics and growing up in the city of Lowell.
Speaker: So I'm encouraged by that.
Speaker: What gives you hope and what are the resources that you go to if you need a burst of hope or just resources that are kind of in the vein of helping us address and understand and learn
Speaker: more about the challenges that so many folks might be facing and what we can do, what action steps we can take to support those greater investments in public goods, common good, and in each other.
Speaker: I mean, what gives me hope is actually the younger generation.
Speaker: You know, I've engaged with them in different capacities.
Speaker: When I was in Beirut, I taught in a high school.
Speaker: Now, you know, I'm at a university, so they're a bit older.
Speaker: And on the campaign, I had volunteers who were
Speaker: 13, 14, 15, not even able to vote.
Speaker: But they were, they cared deeply about issues, including climate change, which we haven't spoken a lot about tonight, today.
Speaker: But they also understood how interconnected these issues are.
Speaker: Like, I feel like a previous generation thought about, you know, I know healthcare, I focus on healthcare, I know jobs, I focus on jobs.
Speaker: And yet, the younger generation is able to
Speaker: really eloquently thread how injustice plays out, how racial justice and climate justice and, you know, low wage workers and worker rights are interconnected.
Speaker: And I feel hope that that sort of complex thinking and breaking down of silos will allow us to
Speaker: to, you know, join forces.
Speaker: There have been really important movements that I think in the past have been siloed, but there is this opportunity to come together.
Speaker: And COVID was such a wake up call for some people.
Speaker: It's been surprising because, you know, I've worked on health equity and racial issues for a long time, so it wasn't surprising.
Speaker: But I have heard from doctors
Speaker: And even, you know, other public health folks who are sort of like, wow, we didn't expect this to come out.
Speaker: So I think everybody has sort of become a social epidemiologist through COVID, paying attention to how housing and neighborhoods and workplace, you know, rules and
Speaker: workplace protections play out in times of crisis.
Speaker: It has also made us understand each other.
Speaker: As a mom of two-year-old twins during the pandemic, I was suffering like every other mom of young kids who suddenly had kids at home and was trying to juggle
Speaker: work and life.
Speaker: And I come from a privileged background where I could work from home.
Speaker: So I think it has also been a wake up call for for people that there's a lot that unite us.
Speaker: And obviously the mental health crisis crosses all, you know, there are very wealthy folks in Massachusetts whose children and they themselves are facing mental health crises and wealth can't buy you out of that, but community can.
Speaker: And so hope comes from the youth that I have met along the way.
Speaker: But they are demanding that politicians right now do better.
Speaker: And I hope that this demand will be listened to right now.
Speaker: Otherwise, there will be this wave of more voters who are 18 and 19, and they will force that change.
Speaker: But it is them.
Speaker: And it is why...
Speaker: even though I didn't expect to find myself in academia, you know, I really like to be out in the world doing practical work, whether at the UN or at the health department, I'm okay being in an academic setting because that energy and that kind of insight that comes from interacting daily with students who are younger, more thoughtful and kind of pushing, pushing us to do better.
Speaker: It's a good reminder.
Speaker: So for now, that is what brings me hope.
Speaker: I appreciate that.
Speaker: I surrounded myself with young people, both in my legislative office, as well as in my campaign.
Speaker: And my kids are 21 and 18.
Speaker: I'm always impressed by the astute brilliance that they bring to a lot of policy conversations and a lot of social issues that are on the table.
Speaker: One that we didn't talk about, and I'd love to just sort of wrap up here maybe, is
Speaker: climate change.
Speaker: So you have done a lot of work in the climate space.
Speaker: What, what any parting words that you might want to share around your work in climate change with Environmental League of Massachusetts and how you're perhaps integrating that in your current work and what you think, you know, what's really at stake for us and for our young people, if we don't get this right and take that, that urgent action that's needed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I think there's this false, not false,
Speaker: there's this narrative that the environmentalists have been primarily concerned about the environment and polar bears and not being able to make it about people.
Speaker: And there are sort of the activists who are in the environmental arena, climate arena, and then the activists who care about racial justice and health inequities around racism.
Speaker: What my work tries to do is show that the two are integrated.
Speaker: And so it's impossible to talk about one without the other and really highlighting how action on the environmental front, the environmental crisis is a health equity crisis.
Speaker: At the global level, we're seeing it with, you know, small island developing states like the Maldives trying to think through, you know, where are they going to move their populations or countries that are least responsible for the climate crisis, countries that still haven't even given their people's
Speaker: access to electricity, having to face monsoons in Pakistan, a third of the population lost their homes during the last floods, like serious health inequities that are playing out because of inaction on the climate front.
Speaker: The U.S. is responsible for that in large part with other wealthy countries and other countries like China and Russia.
Speaker: You know, the U.S. is one of the greatest emitters.
Speaker: So we have at the national level a huge responsibility.
Speaker: And here in Massachusetts, we have a responsibility to think about
Speaker: which communities, environmental justice communities are most at risk and what we can do.
Speaker: And I am optimistic that Massachusetts can be a leader on the climate front.
Speaker: I am optimistic around what we're doing with offshore wind.
Speaker: and the jobs that that can create.
Speaker: But we have to be intentional, thinking about who can benefit from the new technologies.
Speaker: You know, it is workers who may be displaced from other professions.
Speaker: How do we ensure that women, for example, who might not typically find themselves in STEM or engineering jobs can have access to future green jobs, or people who come from communities that, you know, don't typically...
Speaker: you know, end up at MIT or something so that it is, you know, really an equalizer and not creating even more an industry that will make it worse for us.
Speaker: But the climate emergency is real.
Speaker: It is not something that we can sit on.
Speaker: And we have a responsibility at every level of government from the very local level.
Speaker: So I'm a town meeting member in Brookline and we are currently in town meeting.
Speaker: And there are six articles on the table around, you know, housing code and zoning and
Speaker: and, you know, electrification, and I am supporting all of them from a health equity lens, but also as an environmentalist, I don't think the urgency is, you know, I think we can all do more.
Speaker: And I do think Massachusetts can be a leader.
Speaker: But of course, you know, more what is happening at the state level.
Speaker: So I don't know, what are your final thoughts on climate and
Speaker: Yeah, I agree that there's a lot to be optimistic about.
Speaker: I also think it is important to make sure that women and residents of color who could benefit from having some of these really great jobs in solar, wind, et cetera, and in clean energy,
Speaker: that we're making the investments to support education in those areas.
Speaker: So I think there's a lot of excitement for the potential that moving into the clean energy space and really making major state investments can really bring when it comes to economic justice and also
Speaker: energy justice.
Speaker: You know, I think a lot about, I've been a single mom for 14 years, and there were a lot of times that if we lost power, I was really concerned because I can't afford to lose the $300 worth of food that's sitting in my refrigerator.
Speaker: So as we move towards battery backups and solar and heat pumps, that puts us in a better place for that level of independence that we really need.
Speaker: And independence within a
Speaker: person's own apartment dwelling or household.
Speaker: So I think about those kinds of opportunities.
Speaker: And I do believe that Massachusetts is serious about making those investments and really excited about what is happening at the local level in Brookline, in the town of Acton, where I'm sitting right now.
Speaker: These are communities that really care about addressing climate change and taking bold action.
Speaker: And looking at it from the perspective of, it's not just about the individual who has to change their behavior and go out and buy an electric car, but we need to have the EV infrastructure to support people in buying electric vehicles and the rebates.
Speaker: We need to make it easier for people
Speaker: to make the switch and to make those adjustments.
Speaker: And our local leaders really been fierce advocates of this really important work.
Speaker: And I think there's more to come and there's more for us to do.
Speaker: And I also think it's really encouraging that last session we took up climate legislation, this session we took up climate legislation,
Speaker: I can't imagine that we won't be taking up some sort of climate legislation every single session in the Massachusetts legislature.
Speaker: And that's really exciting.
Speaker: So appreciate the work that you do at the local level around this.
Speaker: Any parting thoughts?
Speaker: Any last questions?
Speaker: It was wonderful just to chat with you.
Speaker: I think final takeaways is that if people want to be represented by people who care about these issues, people with lived experience, then we need to think about
Speaker: how we get there and what we can do outside, you know, when we're not running for office and the amazing community organizers that are doing great work, how we can support that work.
Speaker: And just ending again with the note of hope in the next generation, the youth.
Speaker: My children are nine and five-year-old twins.
Speaker: I hope that when they are
Speaker: 20 and 30, their leadership looks very different from what we have today.
Speaker: But I'm also hopeful with the new administration coming in here in Massachusetts that it offers a lot of opportunities to push forward on the issues that you and I care about, that we spoke about today.
Speaker: We didn't speak about
Speaker: incarceration and policing, things I care about a lot.
Speaker: So maybe we have a second conversation down the line, but it was wonderful chatting with you today.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Yeah, I'd love to have you come back and talk about incarceration and over-policing.
Speaker: Just really appreciate you being here today and appreciate the ideas and the work that you're doing every single day.
Speaker: And I look forward to our next conversation.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to Pod for the People, where we share everyday stories about health, dignity, and opportunity for our collective well-being.
Speaker: My guest today was Dr. Natalia Linos, and I'm so grateful that she joined us to share about her experience running for Congress and some of those key moments that she had on the campaign trail.
Speaker: I especially appreciated her stories about the power of listening to each other and engaging across the political spectrum, because so often there are common issues that we care about.
Speaker: We just got to stop and listen and engage with each other to find out what those are.
Speaker: Her take on the role of government in supporting our communal responsibility to each other is also something that I appreciated.
Speaker: I hope you will join us for next episode.
Speaker: Carla Montero is our guest.
Speaker: She's a social worker, a social justice advocate, and a past candidate for Boston City Council at large.
Speaker: I hope you'll tune in to hear about mental health, the social work workforce, and what more we can do to support each other through these difficult times.
Speaker: To learn more about how you can be part of a thriving community, building a future of opportunity for everyone, please follow me and check me out at TammyGovea.com.
Speaker: Also subscribe to this podcast as well as Doctor's Orders, my latest newsletter at TammyGovea.substack.com.
Speaker: Have a great day.
Speaker: Until next time.
