Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said “everything that the city represents is under attack” by the Trump administration and local communities are being harmed.
As she runs for a second term, she said she’s focused on ensuring Bostonians are safe and healthy in this political climate.
“City government’s job really is not political in that way. We take care of potholes, we take care of streetlights,” Wu said during a wide-ranging interview at The WBUR Festival Friday afternoon. “We’re accountable to residents who care about what they see when they open their door, start their day, and every little detail matters. And that cuts across many of the usual political affiliations and lines.”
“But what we’re experiencing today,” she said, after months of efforts by the federal administration to target the region’s science and education institutions, as well as immigrant communities, “is truly unprecedented.”
Wu said what worries her the most are the “long-term impacts of even the uncertainty of the moment.”
Some of the effects, like the loss or delay of federal funding, could impact Boston’s efforts to address climate resilience and support medical research.
“That sense of delay when things are so urgent, even if we get to the right outcome eventually, the unpredictability of it, the cost of doing nothing or maintaining the status quo while we figure it out itself,” Wu said, “is already taking a toll.”
The national spotlight has been focused on Greater Boston in recent weeks as Harvard University continues to fight the administration’s actions against the school in federal court, and officials with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement ramp up deportation efforts. This week, people in Boston, Chelmsford, on Martha’s Vineyard, and on Nantucket have been arrested in raids.
“People are terrified for their lives and for their neighbors,” Wu said. “Folks [are] getting snatched off the street by secret police who are wearing masks, who can offer no justification for why certain people are being taken and then detained.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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