Kate Kicks Off Campaign in Wakefield
The text below comes from Kate Lipper-Garabedian’s speech from her campaign kickoff event on December 12, 2019.
I’m honored to be standing before you to officially kick off my campaign. I am running for State Representative for the 32nd Middlesex District because I believe passionately about the role government can play in supporting individuals and their families. With the skillset I’ve developed currently serving both on the Melrose City Counsel and as an attorney in state government, I am prepared to hit the ground running and focus on the issues that matter to our District.
Now, I love a good, wonky discussion. And I’m happy to talk with any of you about policy ideas and questions. I learn a lot from our conversations.
But tonight, I’d like to focus on a few experiences that are foundational to my belief in the role government can play in improving people’s lives. At a time when it feels that faith in our government is under assault and the social fabric of our community is frayed, this concept is very much on my mind.
I grew up in Virginia and attended the Richmond City Public Schools. For the first 13 years, I was a racial minority in my classes. My unairconditioned middle school could be oppressively hot at the beginning and end of each school year, bathrooms were often lacking in basic supplies, and there wasn’t a single green space for sports and leisure. Plus, I had several teachers who never taught a single lesson, filling our days with worksheets and videos. But I also had imaginative, committed teachers who worked diligently to expand their students’ horizons and school volunteers who delighted us with interesting lessons and field trips. When I arrived at my public magnet high school, supported by a different funding model and a more resourced parent body, my access to technology, materials, and innovative curricula expanded tremendously. As a child, then, I lived how funding constraints and policy decisions impact a student’s daily experience. I also saw ways in which individuals –teachers, volunteers, students themselves – stepped up to improve the situation for me despite the challenges.
When I was in high school, my grandfather – who lived alone on a 200-acre farm in southwest Virginia – had a stroke and came to live with us. Our dining room was converted into his bedroom. Our kitchen became a makeshift pharmacy. That Medicare existed made all the difference for my family in caring for Pa. We did not have to shoulder the financial burden of hospital stays and rehabilitation totally on our own.
One of the home health care providers who helped our family with Pa was Carol. After she had been working at our house for some months, she shared that, a few years before, she pled guilty to the malicious wounding of an abusive boyfriend because her public defender told her it would be keep her out of jail and with her children. What the defender didn’t share was that, under a state law, her guilty plea would prevent her from her primary livelihood – working in a nursing home. And while the state law was well- intended, it didn’t provide any form of appeal. As someone who now serves on the state Council to Address Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, I can say Carol is not the person the Virginia legislature intended to bar from a nursing home. She is a domestic violence survivor who is warm and loving and who was left in a more precarious position because of a state law that lacked nuance and safeguards.
Being a teacher in inner-City Atlanta reinforced for me that safeguards are too often lacking for those who need them most. Teaching has been my most challenging and most rewarding job, and I expect I will say that for the rest of my life. Every evening, there were victories to share – when Douglass suddenly got pronouns; when Darryl, Ashley, and Tanisha put on their Lipperville news skit; when Malcolm opened up to me about being a Muslim in a school where the principal started every assembly with a Christian mantra. There were such sorrows, too – when Tamara stayed in my classroom to cry because her cousin had been shot; when Douglass, the same Douglass, was expelled from school. And there were frustrations with a dysfunctional system that disadvantaged my children – a school administration that did not support the teachers, a sudden decree that all reading teachers start using the same worksheet for each reading class regardless of grade, the uncovering years later that central administration perpetuated a district-wide cheating scandal. Despite all this, I saw in every one of my students innate potential and a desire to succeed. And with social media, I can see their successes – like when Reneatha graduated from the University of Georgia, entered the same teacher preparation program I had done, and became a classroom leader in the Atlanta Public Schools.
Serving in state government as General Counsel in the Executive Office of Education, I am honored to be in a position to have a tangible impact on the lives of teachers and children across the Commonwealth. The recent legislation that provided $1.5 billion in new funding in the coming years for our schools is a highlight of that. Countless people had a hand in this legislation. Parents, teachers, students, legislators all worked tirelessly to ensure that our schools will have the resources they so desperately need, and I am immensely proud of the role I was able to play in helping to draft that legislation.
A final foundational experience, of course, has been becoming a parent, a process that is continuously evolving as Harrison and Oscar grow. As I know is the case with all parents, raising children has produced in me an instinctive ferocity to nurture and protect, to prepare for hazards and pray to thwart tragedy. Parenthood also has revealed to me how critical resources and safety networks are for families. Whether that is humane family leave policy, sensitive responsiveness to mental health crises, or access to affordable child care, there are things government does and can do to make a difference in the lives of children and their parents who once were children themselves.
There’s a last moment I’d like to leave you with. In my second year of teaching, our class again decorated and filled two boxes of canned goods and other provisions to provide at Thanksgiving. I brought in plenty as did other kids, but Toni put us all to shame with the amount she contributed. More than everyone, on more than one occasion. Then, a few days before the break, the school’s part-time social worker approached me. Rather than send the boxes to a homeless shelter as often was done, she suggested that a family in my class would really benefit from the food. The family was Toni’s.
Each of these experiences leaves me with a fundamental belief in the honor of service and the importance of government. I am always amazed at just how much of an impact someone can have by simple acts of kindness, selflessness and courage and I look at government as having the leverage and the ability to harness that reality to make such a difference in our community.
I have a deep appreciation for the fact that people are at the center of everything and that government must exist to serve them. That is my core, and it remain at my core when you send me to Beacon Hill as your next State Representative.