Solomon Goldstein-Rose

Clean Energy and Economic Development

• Climate Change is the most urgent issue of our time, and one that as a Millennial I am particularly passionate about. We need to be serious about its effects and work on bold solutions to solve them. We should be taking the full costs of fossil fuels into account by putting a price on carbon pollution in MA and investing the revenue into our residents and businesses to create jobs, rather than sending it out of state to buy oil and gas.

Education

• Our schools should be our most glorious institutions. Children should enjoy going to school each day, and should care about learning. All students should be able to succeed, regardless of their background. Education is the key to long-term elimination of racial and class inequalities, violence, and economic problems.
• To begin to meet these goals, we need better funding for public schools and we need to empower teachers far more. In the short term, I will fight for more Chapter 70 funding for our schools and work to create a statewide requirement for training in diversity, social justice, and inclusion that focuses on experienced educators mentoring new teachers. I am also proposing a short-term step of moving MCAS to the beginning of the year - use MCAS as a pre-test (measuring what students actually remembered over the summer) and give teachers information that can guide how they teach each student throughout the year, but don't use it for high-stakes decisions about students or teachers.

Government and Politics

• Government is the foundation of our society – not some “other” thing. When people see it as “other,” as more and more seem to these days, they get fed up not just with the failings of current government policies, but with the idea of government as a whole. This leads people to be less engaged with politics, in turn causing worse outcomes in government and making people more frustrated.
• We need to reverse this trend with a wave of new leaders in politics. Not so long ago in America, political party affiliation was only one part of who a politician was and didn’t prevent them from discussing ideas reasonably with all their colleagues. Parties were about engaging and empowering people, rather than raising and spending unseemly amounts of money every election. We can get back to that; but we also shouldn’t talk ourselves into believing it used to be great – American politics has had struggles since the beginning, and we need to move forward. We need a new generation of leaders who are idealistic, respectful, and dedicated.

Opioid Addiction

• Until recently, lawmakers were focusing very little on the opioid epidemic that has become one of the urgent social problems in New England – in Massachusetts in 2014, over 1,100 people died from opioid overdoses. A matter of public health, crime, mental health, and social justice, we need to address this crisis immediately. Putting in place better checks to ensure addictive painkiller medications are only being prescribed for and used by those who legitimately need them – while not making it too hard for doctors to prescribe what medical patients do actually need – and educating people about how to use and dispose of painkillers without becoming addicted are good first steps.

Racial Justice

• America, including Massachusetts, is still formed and shaped by racism in many apparent and hidden ways. Most MA residents want to do our best to combat institutional and overt racism, and we need to do this through government as well as by waking our personal consciousness. I suggest several areas in which the MA legislature should be taking immediate steps: first, in public education – we should make sure that diversity and social justice training is included in all teacher training programs and/or orientations so that teachers who hadn’t thought about subconscious racism can become aware of and avoid it, and teachers who are aware can learn techniques for making classrooms inclusive to students of all races, minds, and bodies.^[1]