I have been meaning to write a blog about my decision to run for governor of Massachusetts and the campaign since the spring, but we have had such a demanding and exciting time that I am only now making good on that intention.
In brief, I am a lifelong progressive — I am not kidding, truly lifelong — with a career that has taken me from a childhood in leg braces and wheelchairs due to hemophilia, to activism for Soviet prisoners of conscience while I was in high school, to the fight against discrimination against women, labor abuse, and South African apartheid in the 1970s, to being ordained in the Episcopal church (1982) and receiving a doctorate from Harvard Business School (1989). I have written three books, including the definitive history of the South African divestment movement (Loosing the Bonds: The United States and South Africa in the Apartheid Years (Doubleday 1998) which won the Lionel Gelber prize as the best book on international relations in the world.
I have also been one of the earliest national advocates in the climate movement, starting back when I organized the first large public meeting on climate at the Boston Museum of Science in April 1992. At that time I was convinced that it would take a full ten years for America to wake up to this existential threat. Twenty-five years later we are still moving far too slowly. I was proud to have been asked by my close friend Bill McKibben for advice at the beginning of the fossil fuel divestment movement, and to have earned his endorsement in this race.
I have been a leader for decades in battling corporate power, having served as the president of Ceres (the largest coalition of environmental groups and institutional investors in the US), created the Global Reporting Initiative (the international standard for measuring corporate impact on worker rights, human rights, energy, climate, and other critical impacts), and the Investor Network on Climate Risk, which meets at the UN and has mobilized trillions of dollars to moving the economy away from fossil fuel and to clean technology.
I am now running as a bold progressive Democrat for governor of Massachusetts — a supporter of Bernie’s who believes that we can heal the divisions within the Democratic party and move forward with force#. Massachusetts should be in the lead in battling Trump and in raising the bar on all the deep structural issues of the day — wage and wealth inequality, energy, education, health, housing, transportation, and many others.
I have already been in more than 120 communities (out of 351 in the state) and have spoken in small groups to almost 9,000 people. I have heard from mothers who have lost their children to the opioid crisis, men and women who have lost confidence in the American promise for themselves and their children, young people whose college debt has placed them in invisible cages that will make it difficult ever to buy a home, people of color who know that racism remains a major force, Dreamers who understand that our president wants to destroy their futures, rural citizens who feel trapped and ignored because they have little access to transportation or the Internet, urban families being abruptly displaced from neighborhoods in which they have lived for decades, women who know that Trump is maniacally determined to undermine their reproductive rights and protections, seniors who are terrified of losing health care and being bankrupted, and many others.
And I have invited people to share their hopes for the future. One woman in the town of Yarmouth on Cape Cod, when I asked the group what they thought the role of governor was, responded by saying that “a governor should be looking into the future, identifying the problems that we are facing, and helping us to prepare.” I couldn’t agree more. With technology wiping out jobs, with wealth disparity blowing up communities, with employees and union members and small business owners all wondering if they are going to be crushed by the rising force of monopoly and the capture of the Federal government by big business, we need new leadership to help us not just to fight what’s wrong but to move us into the extraordinary opportunities that await us if we come together.
Our current Republican governor, Charlie Baker, has not addressed these problems. His understanding of the economy is 25 years old; he is unaware of the most basic principles of sustainability; and he is chronically afraid of controversy. When confronted with one outrage after another by Trump, has refused to stand up to him. For example, when Trump said that the only reason that he didn’t win the popular vote in New Hampshire was because hundreds of thousands of voters from Massachusetts crossed the state line to vote illegally, Charlie Baker did not defend his own citizens. He said, as meekly and quietly as he could, “I don’t know what goes on in New Hampshire.”
This is the same governor who, when running in 2007, said “I am not saying I do believe in climate change and I am not saying that I don’t.” Since he has been in office he has favored natural gas and slowed our development of wind, solar, and other renewable technologies. In an era when other parts of the country and world are leaping forward, when a shift to renewable energy would represent the greatest economic opportunity in the history of the state, and when the harm being done to the planet is becoming more visible every week, this is completely unacceptable.
We could energize the economy in a manner that would help the many families who are finding it harder and harder to find a good home, a good school, a good doctor, and a good job. We need to take our upside down economy — a broken system that removes money from local communities and sends it up to disappear inside the Wall Street casino — and turn it into an engine that builds equity and equality for everyone. As the former president of the New Economy Coalition, I know that there are already many extraordinary innovations to bring capital back to local communities under local control, to organize new forms of business with creative structures of ownership, and to get this state back on track to create a just, sustainable, and prosperous economy. What we are lacking is the leadership and the political will.
In the future, I will have more to say about my background and views, about the evolving race, and about what I am experiencing out on the road. You can find a great deal of information at our website, bobmassie2018.com. I have also written a short autobiography called A Song in the Night: A Memoir of Resilience, also published by Doubleday. And if you are in Massachusetts, please come here me speak or stop by our campaign office in Somerville so that we can meet.
I believe that as part of the resistance and the renewal of America, we need to win back governor’s offices across the country, especially in Massachusetts. 2018 will also be the year of Elizabeth Warren’s re-election in Massachusetts. That’s going to be a huge brawl, with immense amounts of money pouring in from the Koch brothers and other right-wing fanatics who are trying to defeat her — and that will drive up turn-out. When turn-out goes up, Democrats win.
I look forward to sharing this adventure as it unfolds — and to hearing from you as we fight to preserve the republic while advancing “liberty and justice for all.”
Let’s come together, dream big, work hard, stay focused — and win.
Bob