On March 31, I was honored to share a few words with the new inductees to the Pi Sigma Alpha organization at UMass Amherst, which is the National Honors Society for Political Science.
Read on for my remarks that I offered to these exceptional students.
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Good evening!
Thank you to Professor Spector and to the Executive Board of Pi Sigma Alpha — Hunter, Lilyana, and Samuel — for inviting me to join you tonight.
Congratulations to the new inductees. It is an honor to be among you.
I’ve paced and paced in mind and body as I’ve thought about speaking with you this evening.
What does one say to the rising generation of political science leaders in 2025 with Donald Trump back in the White House? I was tempted to say simply, “Hurry up please. The folks doing this work now — we have made a hash of it and we need you.”
But that’s not fair. You need to rise on your own terms. At your own pace. Toward your own horizon.
So to honor your journey, I’ll share six lessons I’ve learned — some in the very hardest way — along mine.
#1 There’s no such thing as a straight line when it comes to any career, and especially one in politics or public service.
When I was your age, I had no idea I’d run for political office. I couldn’t have defined political science. Frankly, I was very busy worrying about my hair and my nails and dating. I spent more than a decade as an actress in and out of New York City — spending more time as a witch stirring a caldron in MacBeth than thinking about politics — before getting my masters in social work and becoming a community organizer.
For nearly two decades after that, through a range of great jobs, I pressured people like me — in government at the local, state, national, and international levels.
I believed that the people were more powerful than the people in power. And I was right.
I believed that there was NOTHING stronger than an informed, engaged, and active public on the move for justice. And I was right.
I believed that government could work in the best interest of everyone, but ONLY if people made it work. And I was right.
Then one day I wondered what it would be like to be inside state government and reach out to constituents, experts, stakeholders, and especially those most affected — and pull them inside so that they were at the center of any change and of every decision. (I’ve always been partial to work at the state level. I’ll talk about that later.)
And so I ran as a write-in candidate and won. The first woman to hold this seat. Which is bananas but true.
There isn’t one path, though dominant culture will scream that there is. Or the perfect path. Or the right path. There’s only your path. Follow it.
#2 Along the way, there will be setbacks.
Just like your path, policy making or making change through your work won’t follow a straight line.
We should NEVER be afraid to think big thoughts — or shy away from transformative ideas.
We should NEVER forget that everyone has a right to not merely survive but to thrive.
Our work is to crystalize those ideas and then build the social and political capacity to make them real.
But remember, in policy, political science, and politics, nothing is simple.
For my first five years in office, I worked with a legislative director named Brian Rosman. He had a pretty stunning career in public service. And he used to say to me, “nothing is simple.” At first I’d receive that bit of wisdom with some skepticism. I came to understand that I was listening like an organizer — and an organizer’s job is to say that everything we need to get done is simple. No sweat. Just do it.
Over the years, I started to listen more like a lawmaker and realized that it’s not supposed to be easy to pass a law. The framers of our constitution had been living under a monarchy. As you know, those framers were very wary of tyranny from any group — a majority or a minority — and they built checks and balances throughout the lawmaking process to ensure it would be a deliberative process.
Those boundaries are being tested right now.
And although I’m often cranky about it, I understand now that changing laws and regulations requires being willing to dive into a dark cave and trace a line of thought to the very bottom — untangling and prying loose a sometimes slimy, sometimes fossilized rope along the way.
Then of course, the work is never done. Because it’s not enough to pass a law, you have to see it through to implementation. Government is a living, breathing, very flawed — but ultimately good thing. But there’s no guarantee it works unless you make it work.
And finally, the word “no” has got to mean “not now” when it comes to government. (In other areas of life, no means no. You understand what I’m saying.)
There almost always is another road to victory, if you’re willing to hunt and work. And if you can keep the faith.
#3 A word about faith.
I’m a spiritual mutt. Not religious. But I am faith-led. I was raised through a lot of my life by my aunt who was a Sister of St. Joseph. A Catholic nun. Generally speaking, you just don’t mess with the nuns. Somewhere between my thoughts about hair, nails, and dating, Aunt Joan taught me about justice. And the peace that will come when we have justice.
When I graduated from college 400 years ago, I came home to my Aunt’s apartment in New York City. She said, “Congratulations. Good for you. Pack your bag for a week. We’re leaving soon.”
I had delusions of some fabulous cruise. Some resort. She told me that I should pop that thought balloon, but I hoped she was kidding.
She wasn’t kidding.
We left her Chelsea apartment and walked a few blocks south east to a shelter in the basement of a church. And for the next six days and nights we traveled from shelter to shelter — sometimes for unhoused women, sometimes for unhoused men — cooking, cleaning, making beds, doing laundry, being in community.
I grew up middle class. My dad was a social studies teacher. I had never grappled with the brutality of generational poverty, sometimes mixed with mental health challenges, sometimes mixed with domestic abuse, sometimes mixed with addiction, most always mixed with savage racism.
Aunt Joan and I spoke very little that week.
On the last day she said to me, “This is the world we live in. It is our job to change it. I have faith that we can. You should too.”
In the forty years since, I’ve tried to always remember that moment.
I also hang on to a passage I read from author Annie Dillard, in a piece titled The Abundance. Dillard talked about writing, but I have internalized it as a lesson about life.
She wrote, “One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place…Something more will arise for later, something better.”
I try always to imagine my life as a well which fills up from beneath and never ever runs dry.
#4 Failing is just fine.
Many of you have come of age during a very turbulent time. The global pandemic may have interrupted your learning. And I won’t deny that this current moment is terrifying. Perhaps some of you came to Massachusetts from other countries. You are welcome here. You belong here.
The big problems we are facing will not be solved by half-measures. We will have to do hard things.
(As an aside, President Obama used to have a sign on his desk that said “Hard things are hard.”)
It is OK to feel fear — but use that fear as motivation. As my aunt said to me repeatedly, “This is the world we live in. It is our job to change it.”
This is a “leap and the net will appear” moment. We’re facing major upheaval. Problems and fractures, festering long before 2025, are now cavernous. Big problems need big solutions — the kind that are driven from people in public service.
People will tell you, “It’s not possible. It’s just not done this way.” Hear those words as an invitation to try. And if you fail, terrific. Just fail fast, learn, and move on. If you hold on to something that’s not working, you’re blocking what’s next.
#5 Find your home.
I found my political home in state government.
Here are three reasons why:
First, state government offers my team and me the opportunity to do high-impact policy and budget work that can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives while still allowing us to be deeply rooted in the 25 communities we represent. My constituents are my neighbors — like Regine. I watch their children grow up with mine. I see them in the grocery aisle. They walk their dogs by my home. I live where they live. I can see what they see. I can meet them for coffee.
Number two: In more normal times, state governments truly are laboratories of democracy. We can work out big ideas — like Massachusetts did with health care reform, the foundation for the Affordable Care Act. States signal to each other by passing far-reaching policies — around healthcare, climate, civil liberties protections — and in doing so, we pave the way for national change.
And three: state government can act as a line of defense for our people. I call this keeping the lights of democracy ON. In Massachusetts, we guarantee the right to choose. We believe in intellectual freedom. In education. In science. We welcome immigrants and know that a diverse public is our strength. And even more than that, it’s our super power. We guarantee the right to gender affirming care. All of it — especially in times of great peril.
#6 This is a time of great peril.
There isn’t a playbook for this time. No one I’ve spoken with anticipated most of what we’re experiencing.
In many ways this levels the playing field for young leaders like you to emerge with your own ideas. But I have to say that I’m sorry that you’re entering the fight amid such strife and consequential turbulence.
What’s happening in Washington and across the nation is not normal.
From my position at the state level, it’s requiring minute by minute calibration.
Offensive and defensive moves. Organizing inside and outside of government.
We are being tested beyond what anyone imagined and it will be up to all of us to not capitulate.
To hold fast to a belief in a common humanity; in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people; in a government charged with alleviating suffering not creating it; and in a nation able to withstand the body blows we’re enduring.
And then we’ll have to rebuild — building back so much better than before.
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I’ll close with this.
For years and years, I’ve had a 1907 passage from playwright George Bernard Shaw stuck in my brain.
It begins: “This is the true joy in life. Being used for a purpose.”
Shaw continued, “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community. And as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.”
Those words — do whatever I can for the whole community to which I belong — have taken on new urgency.
Here’s the end of Shaw’s famous passage: “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. Life is no ‘brief candle’ for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
The splendid torch of public service belongs to all of you now.
You’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. I’m already humbled by what you will do in the world. Lord knows we need you.
Thank you for the opportunity to join you.
