A post on Sonia Chang-Díaz

 ...in this world of ours none of us can afford to be lookers-on, the critics standing on the sidelines.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy, of his brother President John F. Kennedy, in his foreword to Profiles in Courage

 The danger of writing laudatory pieces of people who are ending one portion of their professional lives but still have many more years of good work ahead of them is that it ends of sounding like an eulogy. So let me start this by saying that I am unswervingly confident that Sonia Chang-Díaz will be making good trouble in new ways, and I am looking forward to seeing what those are.

However, she does close her time in the State Senate this month--her closing remarks from the Senate are here, about 44 minutes in, and if you're around education in Massachusetts, do watch--and I feel as if this blog wouldn't be doing its job if I didn't pause to talk a bit about that. If you search her name here, after all, there are literally pages of results, which start with her being appointed Senate chair of Education. She has shaped education policy in Massachusetts for the past decade (at least), and she's reshaped education funding for decades to come.

...and that WILL be in her eulogy!

And I know that this blog post won't come close to doing her justice.

People run for public office--indeed, get involved in government at all--for many reasons; to know that people's lives can be improved (or not) by public policy is one. One thing I have ongoingly appreciated in working with the Senator's office over the years is they (and in Senate offices, it is 'they') get that the details of a bill MATTER.

If that meant that they needed to know charter reimbursement, the foundation budget, or any other aspect of a thing backwards, forwards, and upside down, they'd do so, because without a doubt they got knowing that level of detail, then knowing what needed to be changed, was what actually changes people's lives. 

And of course, it has. 

In holding public hearings across the state, and then in hammering out the details of what became the Foundation Budget Review Commission's report, something I always appreciated (beyond the fact that the summer of "how many items are going to be in the final report," she was expecting a child; never let anyone tell you that you can't do things pregnant!) was how often in chairing, she'd stop to respond to testimony or to a comment, to make it clear that she heard the person. Because, again, it's always been about people for Sonia. 

And that, of course, is why she chose as she did (quoted by WBZ):

I don't regret giving the speech that I gave at the Boston MLK breakfast in 2017, saying that our communities were tired of hearing excuses year after year about why they should wait longer for real criminal justice reform. I don't regret kicking off the campaign for the Student Opportunity Act in 2019 by making it clear that my first loyalty was to students and not to Senate leadership. 

I know what these things cost: political safety, a committee chairmanship, my position in leadership, probably many thousands of dollars in pension benefits. 

But I also know what they helped win. I know there are kids in our state whose schools have been able to hire social workers that they never had the budget for before. I know that there are kids who have access to diversion programs instead of incarceration. And I know that I would make those trades again, every time.

It is also why she ran for Governor. Because policy matters, because people matter.
That is a brave thing to do. And we don't have enough people like that in politics. 

We are losing one, at least from the state Senate, this month, and I am sadder than I can tell you to see that. 

But the picture above, I think, tells the story: it may have been the Governor who signed his name, but the win was Sonia's, and the victory was all of ours, most of all our children's. 

I didn't recognize the final quote with which Senator Eldridge lauded her yesterday, so I looked it up; it's from Cesar Chavez, as he closed a hunger strike in 1972 in support of farmworkers. I agree it's a fitting close:

It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice in we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on this earth.

It is an awesome opportunity.

I'll miss you in the Senate, Sonia, but I'll be looking forward to what you do next.