This blog is written by Elena Cohen, who’s the District Director on our state Senate team and a Northampton native.
More often than not in these first two months, I have found myself going home at the end of the day deeply moved by the stories from our constituents about the pressing needs facing so many in our communities.
We are working hard to come to you whenever possible, and we will keep doing this. In these first two months in office, we launched our People’s Office in Greenfield, Orange, Northampton, Amherst, and Hadley. We’ve held these roving office hours at Winter Farmers’ Markets, libraries, and in community organizations’ conference rooms. We’ve loved speaking with you about education, healthcare, and climate change, or about issues that are often very personal to you and your families,. Thank you for coming to us with file folders and notes, prepared to ask for help and to trust us with pressing, personal issues.
I’ve been humbled to feel firsthand the power of a Senate office to advocate on behalf of families and individuals in our district with state agencies. One example: At the very end of January, we heard that a constituent, who has cancer and heart failure, and his 19-year-old daughter were on the verge of losing health insurance because of a bureaucratic miscommunication between the Health Connector and their insurance company. The family had tried everything they could think of to solve this problem. Days away from losing coverage, they reached out to our office, and we were able to speak directly with our colleagues at the Massachusetts Health Connector. After some back and forth and efforts on everyone’s part to untangle a series of miscommunications, they were able to expedite this family’s case and get them the resolution they were looking for. This family did not lose health insurance coverage for the month of February.
Recently I was back in touch with the family and heard that it was important to them that “folks know there is somewhere to turn.” We’re honored to be that place. Always.
This is just one example of the constituent work we’ve been able to lead and our all-out effort to harness the power of this Senate office on behalf of our district.
