Sharp Solutions to Real Problems

Promote and invest in homebuying programs specifically targeted toward neighborhoods with high numbers of people of color to establish household wealth
Investigate and eliminate lingering redlining
Promote inclusive zoning practices and combating exclusionary zoning in wealthy, white suburbs
Invest in affordable housing and mixed income and race communities. Raj Chetty finds that children raised in mixed income communities have better outcomes later in life.
Ensure right to counsel in eviction proceedings
Invest in creating safe, clean communities to address environmental justice and health disparities like asthma in zip codes with high numbers of people of color.

Promote primary care and chronic disease management specifically in communities of color which have historically been left out of preventive care and have disproportionately high rates of chronic disease
Implement trauma-informed care practices across the health system (research on the crisis of disproportionate maternal deaths among women of color has shown that race, in and of itself, causes increased levels of chronic stress which impact health outcomes)
Pass the Mental Health ABC act to ensure parity for behavioral health services and specifically promote access to mental health services in communities of color
Expand and make permanent reimbursements for telehealth services (which were expanded on an emergency basis during the COVID-19 pandemic) to help address transportation barriers to care for people of color and low-income communities
Require implicit bias training for doctors
Address environmental justice inequities where, for example, higher rates of air pollution in communities of color have led to higher rates of asthma, which has also exacerbated death rates from COVID-19

Our transportation system was designed to keep communities of color out. We must address this by focusing on improving bus service to the point that it is far more frequent and reliable and routes better serve communities of color
Invest in dedicated bus lanes in communities of color
Invest in bike and pedestrian infrastructure in communities of color
Expand the two state health and human services transportation benefits to include ridesharing options and to cover rides to more types of services to address the real challenges communities of color face accessing health and human services due to transportation disparities
Promote homeownership and the building of intergenerational wealth for people of color, especially when it is transit-oriented

Invest in universal pre-K, the best-evidenced way to improve outcomes later in life
Invest more in within-district equity through special education and English language learning in K-12 schools
Boost funding for underperforming districts and those in communities of color to promote between-district equity
Study and find better tools to measure educational achievement than our current standardized testing regime, which is more closely correlated with race and class than it is with outcomes later in life
Admit more students of color to our elite admissions schools in Boston, including by supporting test prep for students from low-income schools
Make state college debt-free

Create transparency and a common understanding by tracking and publishing the racial makeup of the populations at each step of the justice system, and using this data to specifically target interventions at each stage following the model of Sequential Intercept Mapping for mental health
Reduce the use of police in emergency response by removing 911 from police agencies and sending social workers instead of police on most calls
De-militarize police, add civilian auditing and oversight of disciplinary proceedings, end qualified immunity, completely overhaul the police academy to focus on de-escalation instead of weapons training
Systematically reduce mandatory minimums on non-violent crime and eliminate them for drug crimes
Require racial bias training for all workers across the justice system, but especially judges, and publish statistics on sentencing by race individually for each judge and for each courthouse
Work with District Attorneys to reduce prosecutions for low-level crime and publish statistics on race across the decision to prosecute/not prosecute
Bolster programs in jails and prisons for reentry that support connections to housing, work, healthcare when people are released

Prevent siting of toxic/polluting infrastructure in communities of color
Proactively address air/water/environmental quality in communities of color
Add environmental justice as a mandated component of every decision made at agencies under the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs banner

Boost jobs and small business by improving access to credit for entrepreneurs of color
Address disparities in licensing (for example, only 9 liquor licenses are held by businesses run by people of color)
"Ban the box” to help people with criminal records get employment and investigate ways to reduce implicit bias through regulations around hiring practices
Hire more people of color in government at all levels

Racial justice is a policy area that encompasses all others.