What does it mean to represent a community on a day-to-day basis? Do you walk around the streets asking people their opinions? Or spend all your time in the local NextDoor group looking for what’s going on?
It can be hard to know how to fully represent an areas while working in elected office, or for an elected official, especially as other time pressures, commitments, and projects require your attention.
Kristen Halbert did this work for former Boston City Councillor-at-Large Michelle Wu, being tasked with working on behalf of the neighborhood of Roxbury in her office. In this episode, we discuss how to best do that, from liaising with traditional power structures, talking with constituents at the grocery store, and even checking out subreddits. A lightly edited transcript is available below.
Chris Oates
We often hear elected officials talking about their work in the community and with the community. But that doesn't necessarily mean a lot tactically, if you were to be hired by an elected official, and someone said, go work with the community. What does that mean? What do you actually do? And how do you do that? Well, Well, luckily, we're joined today by someone who's done that for Michelle Wu, now Mayor of Boston. It's Kristin Halbert. Welcome to the show.
Kristen Halbert
Oh, I'm so excited to be here. And yes, I'm also absolutely thrilled at the progression of Michelle Wu throughout Boston.
Chris Oates
So we'll get to now-Mayor Wu. But I want to start with you. How did you first get involved in the political world to the point where you were working forone of the more prominent city councilors.
Kristen Halbert
Honestly, it was, through community, it's the thing that serves me most, it's the thing that feeds my soul and keeps my heart happy. We had been neighbors, I live just a few blocks away from her. And I was working with Roslindale Village Main Streets as their entertainment coordinator, which is where I had my most interaction with her because a Roslindale resident coming to the farmers market. But when she was hiring in her office, I went to her annual Block Party, because Mayor Wu loves bringing people together in joy and community.
And I was talking with her chief of staff. And then I said I was interested if I if there was ever any way that I could work with them. When I left, apparently, he talked to her and said, We've got to get that girl. Which is great, which is also because my brother had formerly been the constituent services for city councilor at large Sam Yun, who also had then run for mayor of several years ago, and I had volunteer from his campaign even when I was still a Cambridge resident.
So David Areni, and my brother, David Halbert, have known each other for a while. So I also have to say, besides having this connection of being neighbors, of being in community of having many of the same similar values about how we move and how we act, there's also a big part of fact that my family is full of government employees.
My father was a clerk in the Georgia court system and mother was the chief of community programs and tribal relations with the EPA. And my brother has held both city and state positions and ran for office himself. So there were a lot of entry points for me. But as I said, every single one of them just comes back to community engagement. Because honestly, that's what politics should be.
It's based on your constituents. It's based on their needs. It's based on their hopes, their dreams and their desires. And unless you are in communication with them, unless you're in relation with them, you're never really going to succeed at politics at any level.
Chris Oates
And so how did this work? So once you you get elected, you don't get elected? Sorry, once you get hired by Councillor Wu's office, what is what was your first day like? I mean, did they just say, you now work for us go talk with the people of Boston.
Kristen Halbert
The start of my job was at the beginning of the year, it started in January. And I just remembered being so excited because the work really began immediately because there are there is that very first council meeting of the year where like kind of everyone is trying to lay out everything.
And so the work was pretty the work came pretty immediately. And it was going to neighborhood association meetings and meeting all of the different community leaders and the ones who did not hold titles. They didn't hold official titles, but they held titles in community and learning the entire ecosystem of Roxbury, which is the first community that I represented for
Chris Oates
That's an interesting point you made. There are people who are community leaders who don't actually have a title. How would you as a new staffer come into an area and identify who the important people are that you should be talking to, or maybe not important, you know, with money or power, but just important for the world that you're trying to understand and work with?
Kristen Halbert
Although I did have some more background here in Roxbury, I am a previous president, and a previous civic engagement chair for the Professionals Network at the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, which is located here in Roxbury. And so that did give me a lot of engagement with the Roxbury community, and especially the black community in the greater Boston area.
But if I were completely new, and coming into a community, the first thing I would probably do is check the socials, because there are so at this point, what social media does for our community is, it really is this amazing way for them to stay connected, and you have gotten every single way that people can get their voice out there from next door to your neighborhood association, Facebook pages to your board committee pages, to the Boston Reddit is hopping. Usually, I don't think that people look at that enough. As well as Twitter, there are so many avenues for people to get their opinions and their concerns out there right now that I think people need to just understand that even though you might have a personal social media profile, you really kind of need to get into the social media, the internet profile of the area that you're going to be researching or working in.
In addition to that, I will always say that while you're trying to surface new voices, you should definitely still have an understanding of the ecosystem of the traditional power structures. And that really is your ward committee leaders, your neighborhood association, your heads of community engagement or community development at the various CDC's that work inside the area, especially because they are usually not just developing housing, they have a lot of ties to the community, for outreach for Career Fairs and things like that.
Some of them you're going to talk to, and it's going to be pretty clear that they're quite comfortable holding up a traditional power structure, because they are near the top of it at the time. Then there are others that you are going to talk to who see who's not in the room and are constantly working about getting them into it. And those people are really going to be some of your best partners about finding those voices that haven't always had access to a loudspeaker that is getting an elected’s ear.
Chris Oates
This is a fascinating topic, because it's something that sociologists have been talking about for a long time is that we see declining civic participation across the country, not just in like voting, but in joining groups. And there's that classic book, Bowling Alone, talking about the decline of bowling leagues. But I can definitely relate to this, myself, because I've moved from one place to another. And when I got there, I didn't really know what to do to get engaged with the community.
So how would you work in an area where you see that - without that kind of vibrant civic life that we might hope for? Or did you not have to deal with that because Roxbury does have that?
Kristen Halbert
Roxbury has that in spades. Because Roxbury has always had to fight for what it needs or what it wants. It may be the center and the heart of the city, but many times is historically it has not been treated that way it has been last in line has been last and investment. And so the people of this community are in a constant state of defense.
That's not to say that there is not joy in organizing the present joy in the coming together and getting these outcomes. We are in a constant state of of battle here just to get general levels of service and respect.
So I would say that there's there's two prongs to that. On one side, it's that there's always this little civic engine kind of that's running here. And on the other hand, when you're in that kind of you can get really battle weary from that or always having to fight so hard and maybe not After seeing the results from engaging at your fullest 110% level of trying to get policy paths of trying to get service in your area. And so you can get a lot of disengagement.
But that's not disengagement because they don't care, it's disengagement. Because they might care too much. And it's like actually painful. And that's a balance that you'll find in a lot of communities that are under resource a lot of communities that are underserved.
Chris Oates
So it's, it's almost this paradox of the worse off a community is treated by by the government or by those in power, the more there might be a civic response to it to try to get that. But that doesn't mean that it's then any easier for the job, because the job of representing community might be easier. On the one hand, there are lots of groups people belong to the informational networks are there. But it just means that your job is even harder to try to get the resources that that you're trying to get for them.
Kristen Halbert
Exactly. I mean, there will always be people here in Roxbury, working and fervently trying to create change. But at the same time, there will also be people who have lived their whole life here and may have been incredibly engaged earlier, and are now more resigned to what's happening. And part of the job of a community engagement specialist, or the job of an elected is to give them wins, give them hope. Give them what they need, so that you can rebuild that trust.
Because otherwise you're just asking everyone to act on faith. And as a preacher's daughter, I will be the first person to tell you that faith without works is dead.
Chris Oates
Was it difficult being a community engagement specialist in an at-large councillor’s office? Did you ever feel that you were advocating for the neighborhood you were working with against the other folks in your office that may be working on other neighborhoods, because Michelle Wu was representing the entire city at the time she was elected at large?
So was the battle not what usually happens in a legislature - I'm fighting for my district. It was I'm fighting for the neighborhood that I'm working on against the staffer who works for are the same boss. But that person is representing a different neighborhood. And, you know, we're arguing about which project or which policy to prioritize.
Was there the was there that kind of initial battle internally in the office before you went to the council? Or did Councillor Wu set the agenda so that you knew what you were working on?
Kristen Halbert
We really lucked out, because I feel like we were very much a “yes and” office. I appreciate that really positive growth and asset based mindset that was central to the work in that office.
And yes, that sometimes did make it difficult if someone had more like a pet project or something inside of a district that didn't necessarily help everybody.
Let me give a bit of a case study. Our office loves transportation. I don't think there's anyone in Massachusetts that does not know that mayor who loves public transportation
Chris Oates
Her twitter handle was wutrain until she stopped using it recently.
Kristen Halbert
Yeah. And because of that, and because she is a legislator and a mother, you know, it's very important to have safe streets, it's really important to have traffic calming measures.
And there's a program in Boston is called Slow streets, where's districts and even smaller than districts honestly, like more neighborhood association boundaries can apply for traffic calming measures like speed humps and studies inside of their area.
But it is a competitive process and you would have to write a letter and put a proposal together to get these traffic calming measures. And our office was notorious because we did not write those letters. We did not submit those letters ever. Because our stance which is a hard stance to have, but it was values based and it was outcome based, was that everyone deserves these. So our policy was just, you know, that we supported these things, and we support the initiatives. But we don't support, how it was rolled out, or how it was maintained. And this competitive process that really could pick four different local groups against four other different Roxbury groups.
That was, that was a constant difficulty, because you would go into these neighborhood associations and go into these meetings, and they would be pretty annoyed that this letter wasn't written. But then there were also always people that really understood what we were trying to do, and what we were standing for, in making that stance. So I will say that sometimes you are in conflict, a values based conflict, because there are people who just who really need them with these resources, but you also know that the greater system might be wrapped in the way that putting them out.
Making that internal stand without internal knowledge can sometimes be really difficult. And that is kind of one of those areas where you needed to have a relationship with that community, you needed to build trust with them. Because when you don't come through in a way that they expected you to, you need to have built enough of a relationship that they understand that, but it's just a part of the relationship, rather the end or the period on the relationship.
Chris Oates
I think that's really interesting point, because I think we often assume that politics is, you know, these two groups agree on this, therefore, they support each other. They disagree, they don't support each other. But especially at the municipal level, you're dealing with someone on an ongoing period of time. And even if you think about an elected official trying to win votes for a voter, there's never going to be just one issue likely, that doesn't make or break for a voter, especially at a municipal level where you don't have the big national arguments to maybe crystallize an election.
So it does seem as if you have to work with them over time, continually, maybe on small projects that you always agree on, so that you then have the political capital to say, we're going to disagree on this issue, but hopefully, we're still largely on the same team.
Kristen Halbert
Yes, yes. That's basically that that really, is it? Because, again, you, teams, families, couples, it doesn't matter. No one has this perfect 100% agree all the time.
Chris Oates
We mentioned the mayor’s Twitter handle. Do you think that social media, Twitter specifically, has made that harder because I imagine if you go to a neighborhood events, and you're talking with folks from different groups, you can have a conversation exchanged a lot of ideas and dialogue back and forth in a very short amount of time.
Social media flattens things. It makes the more extreme positions more likely to go viral. Do you think it's harder to have that kind of nuance? And if so, do you think that's changed the way that politics and civic engagement and, and governance at the municipal level has evolved over the last few years?
Kristen Halbert
I think that when you have the full discussion, and that you're divorced from so much of the human element that Twitter takes away. You can't see tone, necessarily. I mean, there's implications of tone. But you can't see that and you can't like respond to it.
There are some things that I've read on Twitter, where I can just look at it and be like, if these two people were face to face, there's absolutely no way that these words come out of their mouth. Then obviously, there's many things on Twitter or like these people would love to have this face to face and would probably start wanting to go fist to face at the end of this particular tweet storm.
The more that you increase the amount of anonymity inside of responses and feedback, you'll get some you'll get some deeply honest responses, but you'll also probably get some more combative responses. Because if you don't have to be held completely accountable for these things.
On the other super positive tip, there are people who can't leave their house or don't want to, or need a little bit of protection. If they didn't have a little bit of that anonymity and protection that social media and these digital platforms provided, they may never really engage. And it can be a way for people or the worst of us to grow our voice. But it's also can be a way for the best of us to get some amazing ideas and things out there.
But you're right, and how you introduce this, it does flatten it significantly. So no matter what's happening on Twitter, I'm always going to be looking for the actual real world equivalent of that, to see if there's a community meeting or channel or just just any type of conversation I can walk into in person to see a better idea of what the actual climate of is really is.
Chris Oates
Interesting thing you had said previously, which is that your social media allows people who are housebound to get their voices out. And you would also said an earlier question that you want to make sure when you go to those events you know who's not there?
Because civic groups are a small section of the population overall, if you look at the membership list. A campaign might have a ton of volunteers, but they’re still a tiny fraction of the overall number of voters.
So how did you as someone responsible for a neighborhood of a lot of people go about making sure that you're engaging with them, but also not just engaging with only the people who are showing up to those events, but that you could try to reach out to find the folks that maybe weren't interested in politics, but were residents and citizens and and had issues that they wanted to address? How did you try to find the voices that weren't already speaking up?
Kristen Halbert
I became a super social media constituent services person, actually, at one point. When people usually contacted us for, if they needed a pothole filled, or there's a crack in the sidewalk, or needed help with a permit or something like that, they would usually call or email.
But though that's the main way that people reached out to us, we started wondering, like, what are we not catching? And where are people sharing when they're angry about things happening? And that was Facebook and Twitter, because that person may never call our office, but they be complaining about that pothole for like three weeks on the internet, even if they never contact the city itself, like that was where the complaint was.
And so it was it was public, you could find it, you can see it. And so we would start searching for my community, I would start searching Roxbury, I would start following accounts that were like taking pictures and putting them up and be like, I can't believe this is happening, or why, why are the chains on these swing sets, like who's even in parks right now. And we started just doing some literal social media constituent services, because that's where the people were.
It was much harder and keeping on top of some of this was exhausting. Any many days, especially during the winter it, it became exhausting, with potholes. But at the same time, it created these relationships with people that never would have wanted to call our office or have that conversation on the phone or an email.
I remember one particular instance, was a young man who had an issue on Twitter and I found it and we went back and forth, and it was fixed. And then we ended up following each other. When he found new things or had questions, he still wouldn't be emailing the officer at that he would still just be sending me Twitter DMs. And I was like, yeah, thank you for letting me know. I've got those. You know, I put it into our own internal system for tracking but you know, just take care of it and meet him where he was at.
It was wild because there was early voting at city hall and I was going down to the elections department to drop something off. And I hear this voice: are you KHalbert617 and it turned around and it was him it come down to City Hall. And to finally, actually meet me in person, this person, this constituent that I've been helping, you know, of course of months on the internet, now I know that he is out there and that he has been sharing about the responsiveness and engaging with city hall in a way that may never have happened.
If you're hearing these little rumors, actually follow up on them and to build the kind of relationships where people who may not want to engage officially with the office are still sending us messages, sending a DM, still telling someone to tell another person to get to you to make sure that you know what's going on.
Chris Oates
It's one of those things that it sounds like you're doing this newfangled stuff, because it's Twitter and Facebook. But at one point, having phones in the office that people could just call up, that was newfangled. It's getting information from where it is. Because while we may hope that every citizen writes in a nicely worded letter or email whenever there's a problem, we know that they don't often do that.
Kristen Halbert
We see all the time, like, oh, you know, we're listening, and we hear you. And, you know, that's great to a point. And if all you're doing is just continuously listening, but again, you're not following up with that action, try to get those win, all the listening in the world isn't gonna do anything.
Chris Oates
Exactly. So before you go, I got a few questions that we ask every guest. First, what is working in the political ecosystem really like the West Wing Veep or House of Cards?
Kristen Halbert
If anything, it's none of those. If anything, it's actually just The Office with a government lean.
Chris Oates
I think they call that Parks and Rec.
Kristen Halbert
Oh my God, you know what I wish you should add that in going forward. That is a show that many people on on city councils across the country know and relate to. I remember when our Chief of Staff finally was able to sit down like multiple years after it had started and watch it. And he really connected. He really, I really immediately connected because we have all been in those communities. I think that's what it is, Parks and Rec brings it back to a municipal level.
Parks and Rec really is the bread and butter of what it's like to work in almost any municipal office, you have people at varying levels of dedication, excitement of being there, and understanding and loving the process. But at the end of the day, all of you love your constituents, and all of you love your community. And even if it's a complete pain, you're still you're still going to get those slides installed, you're still gonna get that pothole filled. You're still gonna get that streetlight replaced, because that's why we're in government. That's why we're in service. Because we believe in it.
Chris Oates
That's a great answer. Okay, next question. What was your best day professionally speaking, while working in in the political world?
Kristen Halbert
You know, it's not even like a government day. But I would say the last block party that was thrown when she was still councillor was one of my favorite, favorite favorite days in government. A lot of people throw block parties or events or community events and things like that, and they'll throw them at this hall downtown or over this park or anything. But Councillor Wu, she she threw that block party every year in front of her own house, in her own house barbecuing or serving hot dogs and hamburgers that were cooked on grills in her own driveway, like using her own refrigerator.
And I think the first time that I got to work it and see all these different neighbors, but also people coming from like other parts of the city, to visit and to be in this wonderful community centered setting that was so personal, and just like really double down on the fact that like, she's also she's not just your elected representatives, she also lives here, she's also a constituent here, she is also has to deal with something if it’s passed. And I really, I just really, really love that.
Chris Oates
Okay, last question, What is something you wish you had known before you got started, or that you wish someone had told you before you get started in this world?
Kristen Halbert
I wish that someone had told me how important it would be to make sure that I had I had boundaries. Because that was really hard in the beginning to figure out exactly where my personal life began, and where my professional community engagement life ended.
Especially because I was just spending so much time in the district, I was available to so many people in so many different ways. To the point that there were there were times that I would just even be grocery shopping. And if someone like recognize me, they would come and say hi, but then at the end of the high, there would be like, just as quick question, and I would have to like really, you know, be switching the persona that I was in from I'm getting a can of black beans to I believe that this is the office you should talk to you. Can you send me a quick note, and we can follow about this on Monday.
I think that boundaries are incredibly important for your your health, and that you can just be so engaged and just want to help so badly. But you can't pour from an empty cup. And if you're really running low on those reserves, you have to know how to step back, you have to have the things that bring you joy.
I think that every single government employee that does not have a non-job related hobby is just on a path to burnout. Even if that path is really long, it's still a path to burnout.
I wish that someone had talked to me more about the different ways that you were going to need to care for yourself in order to provide the level of care that we gave to others in that office. It's just so much more important to protect yourself. And to make sure that you have the space so that you can always be as energized as the community needs to be and be fair.
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