Michelle Wu

Michelle Wu ( zh, t=吳弭, first=t; born January 14, 1985) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the mayor of Boston, Massachusetts since 2021. She is a member of the Democratic Party. The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she was the first Asian American woman to serve on the Boston City Council. She was first elected to the council in 2013 and served from 2014 to 2021, including a stint as council president from 2016 to 2018. Wu was elected mayor in 2021, winning with 64% of the vote, becoming the first woman, first person of color, and first Asian American elected to serve as the mayor of Boston.

While on the Boston City Council, Wu authored several ordinances that were been enacted. This included ordinances to prevent the city from contracting with health insurers that discriminate in their coverage against transgender individuals, protect wetlands, support adaption to climate change, enact a plastic bag ban, adopt Community Choice Aggregation, and provide paid parental leave to municipal employees. As a city councilor, Wu also partook in a successful effort to regulate short-term rentals.

An advocate for a municipal "Green New Deal", Wu signed an ordinance to divest city investments from companies that derive more than 15 percent of their revenue from fossil fuels, tobacco products, or prison facilities. She also has announced plans for the city to spend $2 billion on school construction projects as part of the "Green New Deal" for the city's public schools. As mayor, she has also taken actions related to increasing affordable housing in the city and taken actions related to the city's COVID-19 policies. A supporter of fare-free public transportation, Wu has funded a three-year period of fare-free service on three MBTA bus routes, expanding on a single-route pilot program that had previously been started under Kim Janey's preceding acting mayoralty.

Wu is considered a political progressive and a protégé of Elizabeth Warren. Warren was one of Wu's professors in law school and Wu worked on Warren's 2012 United States Senate campaign.

Family, education, and early career

Wu was born in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois to Taiwanese American parents. She is the oldest of four children. Her first language is Mandarin Chinese. Wu's parents eventually divorced.

Wu graduated from Barrington High School in 2003, where she was valedictorian. In 2003, she was selected as a Presidential Scholar from Illinois. Wu moved to the Boston area to attend college at Harvard University, where she graduated with a degree in economics in 2007. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 2012.

After college, Wu worked as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. When her mother began to suffer from mental illness, she quit, moving back to Chicago to care for her mother and two youngest siblings. To support her family financially, Wu started a teahouse business. In 2009, she returned to Massachusetts with her mother and youngest siblings to earn her J.D. from Harvard Law School.

In 2010, Wu worked in Boston City Hall for Mayor Thomas Menino in the Office of Administration and Finance and later as a Fellow at the Rappaport Center in Law and Public Policy under Menino's chief of staff, Mitch Weiss. In 2010, Wu graduated from Emerge Massachusetts, a training program for women who aspire to elected office.

In her first semester at Harvard Law School, one of her professors was Elizabeth Warren. When Wu explained her family's situation, a long friendship developed between them. In 2012, Wu worked as the constituency director for Warren's 2012 campaign against Scott Brown. In this role, she coordinated outreach to all constituency groups, including communities of color, the LGBT community, veterans, and women. Wu is considered a protégée of Warren.

City Council

Wu, a Democrat, became a member of the Boston City Council in January 2014, after being first elected in November 2013, and was re-elected three times, the last time being in November 2019. Wu was the first Asian American woman to serve on the council, and only the second Asian American member to serve on the council. In late 2014, Wu became the first city councilor in Boston history to give birth while serving on the Boston City Council. From January 2016 to January 2018, she served as president of the council, the first woman of color and first Asian American to hold the role. During her tenure, Wu has chaired the Post Audit; Planning, Development and Transportation; and Oversight committees. Wu was regarded as a progressive on the Boston City Council.

Wu was first elected to a Boston City Council at-large seat in November 2013. She finished in second place to incumbent Ayanna Pressley; the top four finishers are elected to the council. She was re-elected in November 2015, again coming in second place to Pressley. She was re-elected to a third term on the council in November 2017, garnering the most votes among all at-large candidates; her tally of over 65,000 votes was the most since Michael J. McCormack in November 1983. Wu was again re-elected in November 2019. In 2021 election, Wu decided not to seek a fifth term on the City Council and to run for mayor instead.

In her 2019 campaign, Wu shared a campaign office with Kim Janey, who was seeking reelection as a district city councilor, and fellow at-large city council candidate Alejandra St. Guillen.

In the weeks prior to taking office, Wu announced that she would vote for Bill Linehan member. Wu said she believed that Linehan would be the most effective at running the City Council, and that she supported Linehan's promises to decentralize power away from the City Council president's office, empower the council's committee chairs, and reorganize the central staff of the City Council. The Council ultimately elected Linehan as its president by a 8–5 vote, with Linehan defeating a last-hour challenge from Ayanna Pressley.

Ahead of the start of Wu's third term on the city council, she began supporting Kim Janey to be the next president of the City Council. In the weeks before the 2020–22 Boston City Council term, the elected members were initially sharply divided in their support between Janey and Matt O'Malley. Wu's support played an important role in helping Janey secure the support to become City Council president. On January 6, 2020, Wu nominated Janey to be the council's president. Janey was elected with every member voting "yes" except for Frank Baker, who voted "present".

COVID-19 pandemic

Wu criticized some of Mayor Marty Walsh's initiatives amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Wu specifically criticized some of Walsh's COVID-19 initiative, which as the Boston Resiliency Fund and Racial Equity Fund, that solicited private sector donor funding, saying that "Philanthropy is wonderful" but that the government soliciting money from corporations and distributing it to nonprofits "creates a very disruptive and dangerous dynamic" with the effect of "distorting the political process." Wu criticized Walsh over a lack of minority-owned businesses receiving emergency coronavirus-related contracts (less than 2% of the $12 million in such contracts issued prior to July 2020 went to Boston-located minority-owned businesses, with only one such business being among eighty businesses to receive such contracts per data the Walsh administration had provided).

Wu has called for the city to facilitate an "equitable recovery" from the pandemic, chairing City Council hearings on the issue in 2020.

In February 2021, Wu proposed legislation that would seek to create an equitable distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine in Boston by requiring that at least one vaccination site be established in each residential neighborhood. She also partnered with fellow city councilor Annissa Essaibi George to propose a measure that would provide paid leave to municipal employees who felt ill after receiving the vaccine.

In early August 2021, Wu criticized Acting Mayor Kim Janey for failing to commit to require city workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Wu supported a mandate for city workers, including public school employees, to be vaccinated. Fellow mayoral candidates John Barros and Essaibi George opposed this.

In August 2021, Wu voiced support for implementing a vaccine passport program, requiring proof-of-vaccination for indoor dining and other public indoor activities. Fellow mayoral candidate Andrea Campbell had, days before Wu, made similar calls for the city to put in place rules which would require that many businesses require patrons provide proof of vaccination.

In the late summer of 2021, Wu's office compiled data that suggested that half of the city's Restaurant Revitalization Fund money that had been allocated to restaurants was given to establishments in only three of the city's 23 neighborhoods (Back Bay, Downtown Boston, and the Seaport District). It was noted that these were largely white and wealthy neighborhoods in comparison to the rest of the city. In June 2021, Wu expressed support for having a municipal eviction moratorium once the federal eviction moratorium expired.

Economy

In April 2015, the Boston City Council passed a paid parental leave ordinance that was authored by Wu. The ordinance provided city employees with six weeks of paid parental leave after childbirth, stillbirth, or adoption. Roughly a month before its passage in the City Council, Wu and Mayor Walsh co-authored an op-ed in ''The Boston Globe'' calling paid parental leave, "a must for working families". Mayor Walsh signed the ordinance into law in May. In 2021, Wu proposed the idea of expanding paid child leave to also provide leave to those who have had an abortion. In September, by voice vote, the Boston City Council passed an ordinance written by Councilor Lydia Edwards and co-sponsored by Wu and Annissa Essaibi George that changed the wording of her earlier ordinance from "stillbirth" to "pregnancy loss", and also extended paid family leave to those welcoming a new family member or acting as a caregiver. The ordinance was soon after signed into law by Acting Mayor Kim Janey.

Small business

In 2014, Wu headed the Boston City Council Special Committee on Small Business, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation. In June 2014, it released a report making 25 recommendations to streamline the city's licensing and permitting process for small businesses. In 2016, as City Council president, Wu supported a successful proposal to allow diners to bring their own alcoholic drinks into certain restaurants ("BYOB"), a move meant to promote economic vitality and assist restaurants unable to afford liquor licenses.

In January 2017, the city adopted an ordinance that Wu had introduced which allowed small businesses to forgo the fees and the bureaucratic approval process to host musical performances. In July 2018, Wu, along with fellow city councilors Lydia Edwards and Kim Janey, introduced legislation to remove as-of-right designations for chain stores, thereby requiring a conditional use permit for chain stores to open and operate in any area designated as a "neighborhood business district". Wu characterized the proposed ordinance as protecting small business from "commercial gentrification" and pressures from large retail chains. She declared, "this legislation supports jobs in our neighborhoods by giving residents and stakeholders a voice, so that our business districts are not just shaped by which multinational corporations can offer the highest rents".

Environmentalism

In October 2017, the Boston City Council voted to unanimously approve a resolution by Wu and fellow councilor Matt O'Malley, having the city adopt Community Choice Aggregation. In November 2017, the Boston City Council unanimously passed an ordinance written by Wu and fellow councilor Matt O'Malley which implemented a plastic bag ban. In December, Mayor Walsh signed it into law, despite his administration having previously opposed such a ban when it was previously debated by the Council in 2016.

Shortly after Senator Ed Markey and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled their congressional resolution to recognize a duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal, Wu introduced a resolution to the Boston City Council to declare the council's support for the proposed federal resolution and urge the federal government to adopt it. In April 2019, the Boston City Council passed the resolution. In December 2019, the Boston City Council passed an ordinance that Wu had introduced with Matt O'Malley that protects local wetlands and promotes adaption to climate change. Mayor Walsh signed it into law later that month. Wu also partnered with Councilor Kenzie Bok on a proposal aiming to create more affordable and climate resilient housing. For years, beginning in 2014, Wu spearheaded efforts to have the city divest its financial resources from fossil fuels. She would partner with City Councilors Matt O'Malley and Lydia Edwards on this matter.

In 2019, Wu marched in a protest with Extinction Rebellion Boston.

Proposal for a municipal Green New Deal

In August 2020, Wu released plans for "Boston Green New Deal & Just Recovery" program. The proposal aims to achieve carbon neutrality (net-zero carbon footprint) for the municipal government buildings by 2024, running the city on 100% renewable energy by 2030, and achieving citywide carbon neutrality by 2040. The proposal calls for creating "just and resilient development" through the establishment of affordable green overlay districts and standard community benefits agreements; priority planning zones informed by urban heat island maps, in order to expand the urban tree canopy; and a "local blue new deal" for coasts and oceans, using coastal and ocean resources for clean energy generation, sustainable food systems, carbon capture, and jobs.

Food justice

In March 2019, the City Council unanimously passed the Good Food Purchasing Program ordinance authored by Wu. The ordinance set new requirements for public food purchasers, such as Boston Public Schools. The new policy, supported by the Food Chain Workers Alliance, pushes the city towards greater purchasing of local and sustainably grown food, and focuses on racial equity in the food chain. In October 2020, Wu published a report on a "food justice" agenda in Boston; The agenda includes increasing the minimum wage for food-sector workers and providing guaranteed paid sick leave to them. The plan also calls for the city government to support state legislation that would gradually phase out the tipped wage for restaurant and bar workers.

Housing

Wu was the leading force in efforts to regulate short-term rentals of housing units. Wu pushed for increased restrictions, including the elimination of investor units. In April 2018, Wu was targeted by Airbnb for her stance over short-term rental regulations in the city of Boston. The short-term lodging platform accused Wu of being "aligned with big hotel interests against the interests of regular Bostonians". Boston adopted an ordinance, supported by Wu, that restricted short-term rentals to owner-occupied housing units, required hosts to register with the city, and required the city to collect and publish data on short-term rentals.

Wu has, since at least 2019, supported the idea of reviving rent stabilization in Boston, which would first require a change to state law. She argued that it will assist in preventing people of color from being pushed out of Boston.

Law enforcement

In June 2020, Wu, alongside fellow city councilors Lydia Edwards and Julia Mejia, introduced an ordinance that would establish an unarmed community safety crisis response system, moving the response to nonviolent 9-1-1 calls away from the Boston Police Department, and instead transferring the response to non-law enforcement agencies and trained health professionals. In 2020, Wu was one of eight city councilors to sign a letter urging Mayor Walsh to decrease the Boston Police Department's annual budget by 10%. Activists had been calling for such a cut, in order to instead allot that money to COVID-19 relief, housing and food access, and other programs that would benefit communities of color. In June 2020, Wu (along with Ricardo Arroyo, Kim Janey, and Julia Mejia) was one of five members of the Boston City Council to vote against Mayor Walsh's 2021 operating budget for the city. While the budget made $12 million in cuts to the overtime budget of the police department, Wu argued that the city was still contractually obligated to pay for every hour of overtime work, meaning that it was inconsequential what the line item in the city budget proposed.

Wu voiced her desire to " demilitarize" the city's police department. Wu led an effort to take account of the Boston Police Department's military equipment. In June 2020, Wu introduced an order to the City Council that, if passed, would have required the disclosure of information about the Boston Police Department's heavy-duty equipment, and regarding how it had been deployed during recent protests. In Boston, such City Council orders require the backing of all City Council members. Wu advocated for closing loopholes in the policy of the Boston Police Department regarding body cameras.

Transportation

In April 2016, Wu filed a petition seeking to offer an annual excise tax break to electric vehicle owners. In the early summer of 2019, Wu led protests of Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) fare hikes by riders complaining about inferior subway, light-rail, and bus line services. In 2019, Wu was the lead sponsor on a City Council proposal that would have established a fee for resident parking permits. Her proposal exempted low-income

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