Once a year, the elected chief executive of Boston delivers a speech to talk about the state of the city and how as mayor she or he plans to move it forward.
This year, Mayor Michelle Wu gave the annual speech at a time Boston has been the target of hostility from the Trump administration for the city’s support of immigrants who live here and for their communities. These attacks have been focused on Wu and a handful of big city mayors from states that Democrats dominate.
Two weeks before her State of the City speech, Wu was called to Washington to testify before Congress. Facing attacks from conservative Republicans on her and mayors of other cities that welcome immigrants and foster a supportive environment for immigrant communities, Wu went on the attack in her testimony, bringing to the hearing the spirit and vigor that Boston is known for.
Her speech in Boston was imbued with the same righteous fighting spirit. Wu started her speech by thanking city employees for carrying on their good work during a strange time when public servants are being “dismissed and discredited,” a reference to the arbitrary layoffs of thousands of federal civil servants.
Wu rallied the city’s population to its defense. “I went down to D.C. because Congress had some questions about how we do things here in Boston. It might have been my voice speaking into the microphone that day, but it was 700,000 voices that gave Congress their answer: This is our city,” she said.
The last remark was a family-friendly rendering of a quote from Big Papi, former Red Sox star David Ortiz, defending the city. He is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic.
“No one tells Boston how to take care of our own,” Wu continued. “Not kings, and not presidents who think they are kings. Boston was born facing down bullies.”
Wu, the daughter of immigrants from Taiwan, was invoking the city’s history in the lead up to the Revolutionary War. There was the Boston Tea Party protesting unjust taxes imposed by George III, a real king of England. And the American patriots who confront his redcoat British troops on Boston Common and gave their lives to the cause of freedom, including Crispus Attucks, who was of African and Native American descent.
The mayor might have also included a reference to the state legislature that meets on Beacon Hill standing up to the racist tyranny that once prevailed in South Africa. Responding to the advocacy of the late Mel King, then a state representative from the South End, the legislature made Massachusetts the first state in the country to divest all its holdings from apartheid South Africa.
As Wu continued her speech, the mayor noted how different quarters of the city were expressing their support for immigrants who share the city, as she learned when she took breaks in D.C. to nurse her newborn. “I caught up on the scene unfolding back home: Hands joined in prayer across an interfaith circle at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church; bright letters illuminated on the Old State House bricks; homemade signs held high among the crowds on City Hall Plaza: ‘We stand with immigrants,’ ‘You belong here,’ ‘Somos una ciudad de inmigrantes,’ ‘Boston doesn’t back down.’”
The speech offered a number of local examples that refute the Trump administration’s contention that the acceptance of immigrants and the practice of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, is somehow bad for business. She cited a Haitian man who immigrated at age seven and became homeless at one point but now works as an engineer after going through the city’s green jobs program. Wu also noted the number of high-profile Black-owned businesses has increased during her tenure, in neighborhoods that include the Seaport and Back Bay.
Boston’s efforts to promote the upward mobility of immigrants and the growth of diverse businesses, Wu suggested, has been undertaken while the city remains a magnet for innovative, cutting-edge businesses.
The mayor pointed out the city is a high-tech hub and one of the most highly sought after locations for corporate headquarters. Strong DEI supports and immigrant protections alongside a thriving business environment is the balance all great cities should strive to achieve.
In Boston, the intersection between immigrants and DEI is clear. About 30% of immigrants are Hispanic, while 25% are Black and 25% are Asian, according to 2023 data from the Boston Planning and Development Agency. Just under 30% of the city’s residents are immigrants.
As she concluded her speech, Wu invoked the names of two freedom fighters past associated with the city, Paul Revere and Martin Luther King Jr.
“Boston is not a city that tolerates tyranny,” she said. “We are the city that leads in the storm; that stands up under pressure, together; and finds strength in each other. We will defend the people we love with all that we’ve got.”
In these times, that’s what the city of Boston needs to be, one that rallies behind friends, family and neighbors, one that pushes back against a deluded president who imagines himself a king.
Ronald Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, Bay State Banner
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