Politics is overwhelmingly decided by older generations, but we hope that is changing. Between the March for Our Lives, the climate movement, the push for student debt cancellation, and more, young people are increasingly burdened and have gotten more politically involved. We talk to Martha Durkee-Neuman about these policies and more.
Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics. You can watch the video version of this episode on YouTube.
You’re listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our goal is to help people understand state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.
To stay informed:
* Subscribe to our YouTube channel
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* Sign up to get updates at www.incorruptiblemass.org
Politics is overwhelmingly decided by older generations, but we hope that is changing. Between the March for Our Lives, the climate movement, the push for student debt cancellation, and more, young people are increasingly burdened and have gotten more politically involved. We talk to Martha Durkee-Neuman about these policies and more.
Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics. You can watch the video version of this episode on YouTube.
You’re listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our goal is to help people understand state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.
To stay informed:
* Subscribe to our YouTube channel
* Subscribe to this podcast
* Sign up to get updates at www.incorruptiblemass.org
Producer 0:00
[This transcript was produced by a computer program then hand edited. It may still have errors. Incorruptible Mass. is unscripted conversation recorded live, so the audio is the authoritative version of the podcast. Updated 8/30/2021 by CFH and FL.]
Anna Callahan 0:00
Hey there, everybody, this is Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our mission is to help you understand state politics. So we discuss why it is so broken, what we could have in our lives if we fixed it, and how you can get involved. So today, we are going to be talking about young people in Massachusetts. And we have here, one, at least one young person in Massachusetts, depending on how you define young. Um, we're here with with our excellent compatriot Martha Durkee-Neuman, hope I pronounced that right. And first, let me just have our regulars Jordan and Jonathan introduce themselves, and then we'll get to our wonderful guest Martha.
Jordan Berg Powers 0:43
My name is Jordan Berg Powers. I use he/him. And recently somebody said to my face that I'm the grandfather of progressive Massachusetts politics. So this would be an interesting conversation.
Jonathan Cohn 0:59
Jonathan Cohn, he/him, the comment reminded me of how when I turned 30 years ago-- I'll be turning 33 in September-- one of my first thoughts was, I'm no longer in the 18 to 29 year old bracket for [INAUDIBLE].
Anna Callahan 1:15
Yep. I'm Anna Callahan, she/her, I'm definitely no longer in that bracket. And yeah, we're super happy to have Martha here. Martha, do you want to first just introduce yourself, and after that, I would love to hear your story of getting involved in politics early as a young person.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 1:38
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much Incorruptible Mass folks, for having me. I'm so excited to be here and to get to have this conversation. And I missed the days in which we sat around the Mass Alliance office, the Progressive Mass desk and talk like this. And so this is just a joy to get to chat politics with y'all in this way. So my name is Martha Durkee Newman, I use she/her, I am colloquially, the last year of millennials or the first year of Gen Z, this in-between generation. I am originally from Washington State, I grew up in the Columbia River Gorge, and I moved to Massachusetts in 2014, to go to Northeastern University.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 2:18
So I got started in politics in my home community. I was raised by people who are environmentalists, and an ecologist who cared a lot about protecting the planet, and took me to marches and rallies when I was a tiny person. I remember marching for John Kerry, when I was like, very, very small. I was dressed in an American flag, and I handed out John Kerry buttons. And I think I was like six or eight, I don't remember. And so politics has always been a part of my life. And in my home community, I'm from a very rural place where there are a lot of presence of guns. Washington and Oregon both have really strong gun laws, but there are a lot of loopholes. And so kind of the way that I got into politics was losing a very beloved person to me to an act of gun violence, and starting to learn about the gun show loophole that allowed someone to purchase a gun and then murder this person I cared about. And so that really brought me into politics in high school, talking a lot with folks in my community and at school, and in my civics classes about gun laws, and trying to make things better.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 3:25
So when I got to college, I became involved with student organizing. And a lot of my training and development as a young person in politics happened in student organizing. So I belonged a lot to student movements around campus sexual violence and sexual assault prevention, and did a lot of work around domestic violence and campus sexual assault, changing Title IX policies on my campus at Northeastern. I also, because of the background that I had, in caring deeply about gun violence prevention work, had a couple of different community organizing roles and internships in demilitarization and peace movement work, working on demilitarization, on gun laws, and lived for a while in Washington, DC, where I did some demilitarization work as well.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 4:13
So, and then-- I now work for Mass Alliance, as a campaigns and fundraising organizer with Jordan, which I love. And to be honest, the way that I got into electoral politics was through student organizing. I've gone to a movement of students across the state that I'll talk a little bit more about later, that worked on legislation. And we had been working really hard for many years on really critical life-saving and campus intervention laws around sexual assault and sexual violence. And over and over, I saw really good policies fail in the Massachusetts State House and other systems of government, because the people we elected did not decide to vote on these wonderful things that we're trying really, really hard to pass.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 4:55
So I graduated college in 2018 right before the midterm elections. And I thought, I've been doing this community organizing work for my entire young adulthood and not seeing the change that I want to see. We need to elect some better people, we need some people who represent our communities in the halls of power. And that's what brought me to Mass Alliance and brought me into electoral work, was this kind of arc of seeing really good policies fail, and coming into the idea that we need to elect better people and have people to represent us in the halls of power.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 5:25
So over the past couple years, I have worked for Mass Alliance doing legislative organizing, doing electoral campaigning, working with young people to help run our internship program, which is really wonderful. And we get to work with some incredible young people in Massachusetts politics, and up and coming our newest next generation of people who will be progressive leaders, which is really wonderful.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 5:47
In my other life, I'm a religious educator, and I'm a grad student at Harvard Divinity School intending to pursue Unitarian Universalist ministry in another part of my life. So the two halves of my heart are religion and politics. I always say I'm no fun on a first date, because I can talk about nothing-- they say not to talk about religion and politics.
Jonathan Cohn 6:09
But what are you talking about at the dinner table?
Martha Durkee-Neuman 6:13
No work! Can't talk about work at all. Um, and so I always say in in my life as a religious educator, when I'm telling stories with children, that the stories are intended for those who are young, and those who are young at heart. So y'all are both young and young at heart.
Anna Callahan 6:29
Oh, amazing. Great. It's so good to hear your background and how early you got involved. And, you know, this reminder for folks who are my age that gun violence-- man! This is a bubbling movement. I think there are many movements that come in with these waves, these surges of protests and of movements. And that for young people, gun violence is a enormous, enormously important topic that I think doesn't get talked about enough.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 7:05
Absolutely. And I think that there is a bit of a generational shift, if you are the generation that grew up with active shooter drills, or the generation that grew up before active shooter drills, and how really traumatizing those are for young people. And if you were a young person watching Sandy Hook, your experience of gun violence in America, versus an adult person, is your ability to kind of receive that information from the news. If you're a young person watching, if you're a child watching and saying these are children like me in the place where you should be safe, which is school becoming a not safe place, like honestly, growing up with an understanding of governance has really shaped a lot of my adulthood and shaped a lot of my community organizing. And the way that I think about safety. And the way that I think about community safety has been really shaped by being part of this generation. And you see, like, the Parkland students, who were an amazing emergence of youth and young adult activism and organizing was really kind of a hallmark of the generation that currently is coming into political power. Gen Z is coming up. The Parkland students who are kind of the older of Gen Z, really coming into their activism in this public way, has been really powerful, visible representation of youth and young adult community organizing.
Jonathan Cohn 8:18
One quick thing that I wanted to chime in that I really appreciated and kind of connection that you have main initial discussion is the role of authentic a piece, demilitarization general approach of that, and connecting to combating gun violence, because you definitely have a strong tent, the general world of gun violence prevention, advocacy, often has a tension with it on that point of whether you emphasize a kind of community wholeness, public health, land, that kind of can easily segue into a kind of discussions of peace and demilitarization or a public safety or a kind of public safety mentality that ends up too closely reinforcing an existing police driven view of public safety, where-- and that there's kind of a fundamental tension and much of that in-- what role do police have in gun violence prevention? And can and can they ever get at the underlying root?
Martha Durkee-Neuman 9:22
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. The first professional role I ever had in organizing was with a peace movement organization. So the peace movement is really close to my heart, and I love the peace movement. A lot of folks in the peace movement who kind of are at the forefront of that movement are older folks. There's a lot of really amazing cross generational intergenerational organizing. I've been asked a lot within the peace movement, "what is the way that we get young people involved in the peace movement?" which is a question I love. The thing that always comes to mind is a lot of the young people that I am in community with are drawing really deep connections between demilitarization at home and abroad. So this kind of old guard piece like "end all wars," "bring our troops home," all of that, which is really, really important and deep work. There is like this really important bridge to a lens that I think a lot of young people understand around demilitarization at home. So I think of things like the Deadly Exchange, which was something I worked on in DC of police training programs in Israel and Palestine. So taking U.S. police training them in Israel, bringing them back to the US seeing things happen, like we saw in Ferguson. Angela Davis has drawn these connections. Other scholars have drawn these connections in a really broad way. A lot of the folks that I'm in community with in the peace movement, young people are talking really dramatically about what those connections are between demilitarization at home and abroad. So when I can make a connection to to reasonable when I was at Northeastern University, which is in Boston-- borders Roxbury crossing, and I think 2018, the administration decided to arm all campus police officers with assault rifles. And this is in Massachusetts, where we think of like having really strong laws around guns and gun violence is not always the case. And this they, of course, did this without consulting the student body, without consulting the neighboring communities that the campus police are like, often integrated, and in a way that can be really harmful into local communities, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Fenway Park. So arming all of the campus cops with assault rifles without consultation of the communities or student bodies, like a really frustrating administrative policy and led to a lot of student organizing in the movement spaces that I was in around, like, "Hey, this is actually not our understanding of safety." I think a little much more deeply rooted understanding of safety, which connects to some of the work that I did on my campus around sexual assault and sexual violence reduction. Of like--
Anna Callahan 12:00
Martha, I was gonna jump in with that connection, but you beat me to it. Talk about patriarchy and sexual assault and the entire idea of our military abroad being this macho show of force. But please-- you're there!
Martha Durkee-Neuman 12:18
No, absolutely! All of our movements are one, right. We constantly live at the intersections of all of these things. When I think about the scope of the organizing I've done as a young person, I've sometimes been asked, some of these things, are all these things connected? Yes, of course! They're connected through the way that I live my life in this world. So for me, something that I learned about when I was doing peace organizing in DC was about how many military families experience domestic abuse, with folks returning with PTSD in the home without access to really good mental health services and support services, and domestic violence interventions. I learned about my campus was having access to guns and rifles, students organizing against sexual violence, and how much violence and the centering of violence creates this unsafety.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 13:12
A lot of the work that I did was around strengthening and protecting Title IX on college campuses. I can talk a little bit about that if you want about movement building on college campuses around Title IX specifically. When I think about young people and movement building in Massachusetts, I think about how many colleges and universities we have, how many young people are engaged at colleges and universities, and in communities of young people off campus and outside of college, and how many folks get started in movement work on college campuses and learn about community organizing through college campuses.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 13:12
For me, a lot of that work was centered around strengthening Title IX. Something that I experienced was, on my campus, young people identifying what was happening in our lives. What were the gaps in Title IX? What were the problems happening on campus, and what we wanted to do about it? There are a couple of different things I think of, for example, a need to have confidential resource advisors. So all campus employees are mandated reporters, and this was an important Obama-era guidance around ensuring that we have safe reporting structures. However, there's a problem with this if someone is not ready to report something that's happened to them, because everyone they interact with on campus is a mandated reporter, they can accidentally report themselves and trigger a process that they may not consent to or be ready for. So there's a gap in needing to have confidential resource advisors to help students understand and navigate the system on campus of support services for sexual survivors and reporting options.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 14:46
So as one example, so this is a problem that I felt at Northeastern. So we started organizing around-- we brought students together. I learned about a lot of different kinds of organizing tactics. We did a banner job and we chalked campus and we distributed leaflets and we had popular education meetings and we, we created a back channel. So we knew we that we couldn't tell students, if you need access to resources, talk to XYZ person, we knew that wasn't possible because you could accidentally report. We said, here's a back channel we'll create the ensures students can be safe when they're accessing these types of services. So all these different kinds of community organizing tactics that I didn't realize when I was a student, could translate into the broader communities that I was a part of, but I could witness them playing out on my campus.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 15:30
And so we did a lot of this work-- microcosm in this one campus. I started meeting other students from schools all over the state, we came together, the colleges of the Fenway, so all these different colleges, the Porter, Fenway Park, and worked on a Take Back the Night movement together. And when we start talking, I realized that students at other campuses were working on this exact same policy around confidential resource advisors. We got connected eventually to some students from Harvard, and from across the state, who had the same experiences. All these students isolated on these campuses across the state are all working on the same policy, what would it look like to come together, take one step up and work on legislation together? And so there are a couple of students at Harvard who in 2014, started writing a bill around campus climate surveys. And then later joined in with some organizations across the state: Jane Doe, the Victim Rights Law Center, some others, in writing a larger package of bills and pieces of legislation responding to and strengthening and protecting Title IX in Massachusetts, including this piece that was really dear to me around campus resource advisors, and some others. This was grounded in student's lived experience with Title IX. And so we came together, all these students all across the state, to work on this legislation together. In my theory of change, I thought, okay, we were all siloed on our campuses. Now we're going to come together, we're going to build this movement, and we're going to pass legislation across the state that's going to protect every student. In Massachusetts. We're no longer going to have to be alone on our campuses doing this on our own. Instead, we're going to have the legislature all these people who are going to help us have our backs and protect us.
Anna Callahan 17:09
Did you say the legislature was going to have your back and protect you?
Jordan Berg Powers 17:12
Oh, please. Yes.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 17:14
I was naive. I was 20 years old. I didn't know how the State House worked. I thought if we went in, if we told our stories, if we said, here's this amazing bill that students, survivors and advocates have written together, maybe our legislature will help us out. Did not turn out to be the case, as you can see. So this bill on campus climate surveys, and then the subsequent kind of Omnibus campus sexual assault bill was first proposed in 2016, proposed again in 2018, proposed again in 2020. It took, from the time it was written in 2014, this set of bills passed in Massachusetts on January 6 2021. So it took seven years from start to completion in Massachusetts to pass what are actually very basic protections for survivors of sexual assault. In this seven year negotiation process, a lot of the parts of the bill that have to do with, for example, preponderance of the evidence standards, clear and convincing, all of this legal things around how to litigate sexual assault on college campuses, that is also really important. We were advised by some of these legislators that this was too controversial and hard to pass. So the things that ended up passing, were the most universal, most non controversial, most non problematic, like simplest things. For example, having one to two people on a college campus that can be confidential support services for survivors. Mandating campus climate surveys which is *just* data collection, it is *just* data collection! These things that are extremely-- to me, again, this is my personal opinion-- extremely basic protections for students and for survivors of sexual assault, took seven years to pass in the Massachusetts State Legislature to the point that when these bills failed in 2018, and so it's really really hard for a lot of us to take. We had been working on these bills-- for me these bills were written in 2014, which is my freshman year of college, failed in the legislature in 2018. failed on on the floor of the Massachusetts State House at 11:59 I will say, on the last day of session, on
Anna Callahan 19:25
As usual, on the thirty first.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 19:28
--this was a really hard blow to take. And so a lot of us started saying, "You know what, I don't know if we're ever gonna pass this in Massachusetts. I don't know if we're going to get these types of protections in Massachusetts." And so we started working with students in other states and proposing this bill, similar legislation working across the country. And these bills have been introduced in Hawaii and Indiana, and Ohio, I believe in Connecticut, and in New Hampshire. And as just an example, the bill identical to ours, almost identical to ours in Massachusetts that was proposed in New Hampshire, from from being proposed to passing took eight months!
Jordan Berg Powers 20:01
What? A regular legislative session? What sort of craziness is that?
Anna Callahan 20:07
And my understanding is the New Hampshire state legislature is not a full time paid position. These people are paid way less than full time. And yet they are able to pass legislation, no-brainer legislation, in eight months, instead of the seven years.
Jonathan Cohn 20:20
You have to understand that the New Hampshire legislature is filled with a bunch of lefties who are working time and a half.
Anna Callahan 20:26
New Hampshire is *such* a progressive lefty state! [sarcastic laughter] Oh, my goodness.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 20:34
So these legislators in New Hampshire, who are part time, who are underpaid, and who probably should be paid for, were able to pass this very simple piece of legislation in eight months, went to Governor Sununu, and was signed almost immediately, when our bill was passed, it went to Charlie Baker, and was punted around a bunch again, came back to us went back, on and on and on and on.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 20:56
So for me as a young person coming up into politics, being raised into a Massachusetts political tradition, this was kind of a stark experience of saying, I came into this with hopes. I remember being 19 or 20 and going into a meeting with Chairman Jeff Sanchez, and the chairman at the time of the Higher Education Committee, Jeff Roy, and us saying, okay, we're here, we're going to tell our stories. A lot of us were survivors of sexual assault. All these students are going to speak powerfully about their experience and these legislators, who have the ability to pass this bill. And they told us "No, you know, we can't, we can't pass it, the State House is XYZ, the speaker is XYZ, whatever." And I remember being 19 and being like, That can't be right. I just that doesn't make sense. Like you are elected officials, you are the Chair of Ways and Means and you are the Chair of Higher Education Committee, and it's out of your hands??!? Having this experience of being this young, and having this lovely experience really set the stage for me for what the rest of my career in Massachusetts politics would be like.
Anna Callahan 21:59
There's a great quote from Bernie Sanders. I don't remember what it is exactly, but where he's like 'if you feel despair, if you feel like giving up, that is what they *want* you to feel.'
Jonathan Cohn 22:03
And, it also reminds me of this weird dynamic in the legislature, where people who do end up having positions like a chair or vice chair, simultaneously like to inflate the power of their position, and minimize the power of their position in ways that can't both be true. Where it's kind of like when talking to people who could help you get reelected, for instance, sometimes you can basically puff out your chest, as a chair, and talk about how important it is to reelect you because of how much power you have and how much you can deliver. But at the same time, when people ask you for things, "oh my hands are tied, I don't actually have that much power in this role. It's everybody above me." And it's this weird tension that often exists there, where somehow the answer is always whatever is most politically convenient at the moment.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 23:11
Yeah, absolutely. I will say that. I have this this meeting of the Jeff's that I was just thinking about, in which in which Chairman Sanchez was I will say, just very rude to a survivor advocate, that was a dear friend of mine, who was telling her story and he was very rude to her. And immediately after that, I was like, this ain't it, right? Like, this really ain't it. And I put my own boots on the ground for Nika Eluguardo immediately after. And I remember talking to these other young people and activists and organizers who were like 'I thought something different was going on with the legislature, I thought that there was the structure, I thought he said he could pass these things. And we go into a meeting with them and he says my hands are tied, right? And I feel for me in my own kind of political education, there have been these moments, these kind of touchstone moments that I go back to and say like, oh, wait, this is a smokescreen. Right. When you take this down, this is what this actually is. Right. And I feel like for me as a young person, a lot of this understanding and political education came from these kinds of experiences, and how power mapping and power building on a campus and then transiting up to the legislature and then down back onto campus happened in this kind of cyclical way.
Anna Callahan 24:21
Yeah, absolutely. We don't have too much more time, but we'll do a little more. I think there's so much more to talk about. I would love for us to just hear from you, and maybe kind of bounce back and forth a little bit about the various different policies that Massachusetts really should be doing better on that affect young people more. I mean, one thing that I remember is that the last state primary election was held on September 1, which, you know, I mean, that's ridiculous, like renters move September 1, the vast majority of renters that are moving move on September 1, so that affects young people. We already have a lower voter turnout than we would like, you know lower than average and that really affects that a lot. But you know, climate is the one that everybody thinks of but you know, you were also talking about renters rights, like housing. You know, I would love to hear from you from my compatriots here about other issues that our state house really should be should be acting on.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 25:34
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think September 1, raises so many feelings. For me, I'm moving in September 1. And like two weeks ago, this is extremely timely. But I would say one of the biggest things, for me and for a lot of young people that I'm [INAUDIBLE] with, that it would be great to have some legislative or statewide support around housing, so overturning the ban on rent control, ensuring that there are affordable options in the city, and renters rights and protections. I know that in the past I have literally sought out law students as roommates because I'm like, my landlord says things and I have literally no idea if that is within my prediction or not like, who wants to live with me? Because I don't know how to read a lease. Like I don't know what my rights and protections are. I could tell you so many horror stories of landlords I've had in Massachusetts qnd what they have done to young people that didn't know what I am allowed to ask for and not ask for, what is abuse? What is right, what are my tenants' protections? So affordable housing is huge, especially in a city where rental costs are astronomical. And brokers fees are still somehow legal, which I I just went through this and tried to secure an apartment and it is absolutely unreal. And I was talking to some friends, the other states where this is illegal.
Anna Callahan 26:50
Lighting money on fire.
Jonathan Cohn 26:52
New York just banned that a few years ago, right, back in I think, was it 2018? Or maybe no, it wasn't 2018 it was like the session after that, right? when democrats finally got full control after the 2018 election. And then passed their omnibus housing bill.
Anna Callahan 27:05
It's really only like the people that benefit from this are out of town landlords. Well, no, we want to discourage all these out of town out of state, out of country landlords, don't we want to discourage that?
Jordan Berg Powers 27:17
Would somebody want to explain what it is for regular people?
Anna Callahan 27:23
I've had to pay so many it has crossed my mind that anyone wouldn't know about it.
Jordan Berg Powers 27:28
I could just say from how to deal with it with Worcester and other cities. But I realized that that's not a regular thing for most people.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 27:35
Yeah, so I can just speak from my own experience this summer in searching for an apartment is that I was prepared to pay first, last and security because I've moved in apartments in other states. And I know what is sort of standard. And the company that manages the building that I'm moving into was also like, you owe us an entire month's rent as a broker's fee. And I was like, I've never heard of this before. And they were like, Well, you know, it's just standard in Massachusetts. There's no wiggle room, you just have to pay it. And I was like, What is it? Okay, even ask the broker, I was like, You didn't help us search for this apartment, you provided no service. Like we found this apartment on our own. In fact, the person who showed me the apartment was 45 minutes late to the showing, I was like, I don't really feel like this is worth a month of rent. And they were like, no, it's just standard. And I was given no information besides you have to pay it. So I don't have any context other than it was this astronomical fee that didn't leave.
Anna Callahan 28:27
Yeah, any landlord decide that they are gonna, you know, have it that a realtor will show their place. And then the only way to see the apartment is that somebody with a key lets you into the apartment. So once they do that you're up for an entire month of rent 1000s of dollars $2000, $3000, $4,000 simply for someone to let you into the apartment once to see it before you sign the lease.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 28:55
Not tell us anything about this. Like if I had known that was the thing I would have been like give me a video walkthrough. I'll sign the lease with my eyes closed rather than a month of rent.
Jonathan Cohn 29:03
Do you know if they're still doing that like throughout the pandemic? And like you probably wouldn't have had it in person business, they probably still charge you for like giving you that virtual walk there.
Anna Callahan 29:15
Oh, yeah, we moved in the middle of the pandemic. We're renters with a move in the middle of the pandemic. We had move January 1, we were looking at places over Thanksgiving because no one was traveling.
Jordan Berg Powers 29:28
Yeah, I'll say I have paid it both as a renter and also as a landlord I had to give up a month's rent to somebody who, got somebody in our place, but it was somebody we knew. It was like a connection we made but we paid and you know, we didn't make the person pay because we're not evil. So we paid it. We just did it. You know, we just paid it. Who does that? This is weird. It just doesn't make sense, it's just weird. Like, I don't know, 50 bucks seems fair. But yeah a whole month is...
Jonathan Cohn 30:15
Is there even any legislation currently about banning broker's fees, this would be a good thing for people to start pushing for the next session.
Jordan Berg Powers 30:22
I don't believe so. And then you know, there's same day registration would obviously help with this. Other states, Vermont, New Hampshire have same day registration, Maine has same day registration. Rhode Island,
Anna Callahan 30:34
ACLU says that it is the number one voting rights protection that we could pass in all 50 states. The most important thing to do.
Jordan Berg Powers 30:41
We could send people ballots as well, that would also help with college campuses. College campuses are a critical part of the census. And for Massachusetts, that has been the reason that we didn't lose people, you count where you go to school, not where you're from. So all of those students who go to school in Massachusetts, we are a college state, that is the reason we didn't lose, right. That's part of the reason we didn't lose a congressional seat, it's part of the power that we have as a state. And so our say is tied to our college students, we should make it easier for them to get ballots here to vote here. And we don't do those things. There's, you know, as well as housing, so and those are, of course, as Martha rightly said, these are all one issue, they're all tied to housing, right, they're all tied to how much we're all forced to move as young people because it's really difficult to find affordable, reliable housing, right, anywhere near a college campus. Some of the most predatory owners of property are almost always around college campuses, right? Like, it's almost always the worst owners are in those locations.
Anna Callahan 31:49
And that's also related to PILOT. Martha, you were mentioning PILOT before, like these large institutions, these universities, you know, they count as nonprofits. And so they fall under this law that says that nonprofits do not have to pay any of their real estate taxes. And, you know, they are the billion dollar endowments, and then they don't build enough housing, which means that the students still have to pay, you know, their own housing costs. And the community is losing all of this real estate income. So it's a big problem that they they're not paying their fair share.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 32:32
Yeah, absolutely. And for those who don't know, PILOT is payment in lieu of taxes, which is trying to encourage these large universities that are the biggest real estate holders in the city and the state, and these colleges and universities, especially the private ones. Yeah, I think that housing connects to everything I was, I was, I think, talking about this recently with Jordan. But I recently had to fill out a background check, which I had to provide my seven years of residential history. But I have lived in 19 apartments in the past seven years. And the amount of places that I have received mail in the past seven years, I think, was around 18, or 19 different places.
Anna Callahan 33:09
You should get a reward for that!
Martha Durkee-Neuman 33:10
I'm not an outlier, I don't know. But I don't think that I'm an outlier. For people of my age in my generation, I will say to that, when it comes to housing costs, like rent is like 80 to 85% of my income. And I was talking to my parents, right, some friends of my parents, folks in their generation, that that was not the case when they were young, both housing costs and student debt. So that's another huge one is student debt forgiveness and access to higher education being really critical. And of course, all of these things are tied together. So I'm thinking a lot about how housing security, ability to stay in your home. And often [INAUDIBLE} a lot of the colleges and universities in Massachusetts that don't have enough housing for students and then are expanding out into the communities they border, pushing people and displacing eople from their homes, buying up real estate, above market value, turning it into dorms for students, and pushing folks who've been longtime Boston residents out of their homes is a really big issue in communities such as the one Northeastern borders, which is pushing people out of Roxbury and displacing people. And also the last one of two, of course, is climate. Like folks in my generation who face existential climate threats and feel existential dread around the climate crisis. Building incorporate environmental justice communities, which incorporate young people is huge for building a livable future that we get to grow up in that maybe someday we could see ourselves raising children in which for a lot of people in my generation doesn't seem feasible because it doesn't seem feasible that we'll have a world to live in. So anything related to climate, environmental justice.
Anna Callahan 34:47
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's it's super important to to get more young people involved. I know Sunrise has done an amazing job. And there are other, you know, groups that really have brought young people through fom the colleges, you know, in the colleges and then into the electoral fight. And just one final question, which is, you know, how can we inspire more young people to be involved? How can we as organizations be better about involving young people in all of our joint intersectional fights?
Martha Durkee-Neuman 35:22
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the biggest ones, too, there's a couple to me. One of the biggest ones is, is structural things that support young people in living healthy and safe lives: access to affordable housing, access to clean environment, access to abortion care, like there's all of these structural things. When young people have lives that are healthy and safe and fulfilled, then we can participate in politics. So creating structures that allow us to live those lives is the biggest one. The second I would say is supporting young people's leadership, supporting youth organizers, youth activists, involving young people in political processes and political decision makings. Young people are empowering themselves. So supporting that empowerment process is huge. And then the last one, and this is something I learned from Jordan, is that when you are growing up there's a lot of big influences on whether or not you become a voter. And one of the biggest ones is whether or not like you go along with your parents to vote or you start voting really early the age that you vote, and when you learn how to vote. So there's some projects around the state and around the country called vote 16. There's an organization Generation Citizen that is working on civics education with young people and pushing for vote 16, which is getting 16 and 17 year olds access to municipal voting and municipalities around the state. There are a couple of communities that have already passed this in Massachusetts. And there's a couple of communities that are already thinking of it. But having 16 and 17 year olds, who are impacted by municipal policies all the time, be able to vote in municipal elections is huge. Because the younger you start voting, the more likely you are to be a regular voter in your life. So empowering young people, literally with the vote is huge. And there's a lot of data that supports young people getting access to municipal votes. In Massachusetts passing a vote 16 policy requires a home rule petition, which has to go through the legislature and as we know from this podcast, the legislature is not the place where things always get done with expediency. So I will say there's some urgency and need to work around Home Rule petitions in the Commonwealth. Maybe more on that to come on another day. But getting 16 to 17 year olds access to the vote in municipal elections is a huge way to get more young people involved in politics throughout their life with lasting consequences.
Anna Callahan 37:35
Absolutely. 100%. Well, thank you so much. What a joy to have you, it's been really great and a totally great topic. Thank you so much. We will see everybody again next week.
Martha Durkee-Neuman 37:46
This was so much fun. Thank you all for having me.
Jonathan Cohn 37:48
Thank you so much.
Jordan Berg Powers 37:50
Thanks.