In 2018, Ayanna Pressley was elected to Congress as the representative from the 7th Congressional district —which includes large parts of Dorchester and Mattapan. Last week, after hosting a town hall in Roxbury that focused on participation in the 2020 Census, the congresswoman sat down with the Reporter’s Katie Trojano to talk about her first year in Congress, how she’s gearing up for her re-election, her legacy on the Boston City Council, and her endorsement of Elizabeth Warren.

“I came in in a historic election, joined a class full of historic firsts, and am serving in the most diverse and representative class in the history of Congress. We did all of that in the midst of a government shutdown, and almost to the date of my one-year anniversary of being sworn in, we voted on articles of impeachment. Shortly thereafter, we had been feeling as if we could be on the precipice of war. We find ourselves in unprecedented times and I do believe those times demand unprecedented legislating.

“It is an honor to be able to work at scale and to address issues systemically and on the macro-level that I worked on in the Boston City Council on a micro-level.  So many people have asked me, given the sobering political landscape and climate that we find ourselves in, if I’m growing cynical or apathetic about our country or the role of government. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

“First, I don’t have the luxury of being cynical. Given the fact that our country is at such an inflection point, it’s really a humbling honor to be doing the work of preserving our democracy and being a steward of it. The two reasons why I ran for Congress in the first place were to address the inequities and disparities that by the day were growing more entrenched — whereby in a three-mile radius from Cambridge to Roxbury, life expectancy drops by 30 years, and median household income by $50,000. That didn’t just happen. These are inequities and disparities that were put into motion based on short-sighted, discriminatory policies.

“I wanted to legislate to disrupt these inequities and to improve the outcomes of the Massachusetts 7th Congressional district. We just learned from Democratic leadership that I’ve introduced 30 bills, more than any other freshman in the 116th Congress. I’ve cast over 700 votes. I have co-sponsored almost 330 pieces of legislation. And I’ve authored and passed about 10 amendments.

“I had specific things that I wanted to focus on – worker’s rights, survivor’s justice, the rights of immigrants, addressing inequities in our education system that are disproportionately putting students of color on a pathway to confinement. But there are a lot of things that I worked on that were not on my to-do list, because once you’re there you have to be nimble and responsive to what’s happening in real time.”

Earlier this month, Pressley hosted a delegation of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) on a visit to Boston. The CBC engaged the community in conversations on economic disparities, criminal legal reform, and education at a town hall meeting. Pressley calls hosting the group in her district “one of the greatest honors” of her life.

“This was a part of a broader series that the CBC is doing nationally to assess the State of Black America. To have intimate conversations and town halls to actively listen to the lived experiences of people every day and to respond through legislation.

“This is a unique challenge for the CBC in that policies are informed by data, and the data show that black Americans are at the bottom of every category. Despite the fact that we find ourselves in really sobering times doesn’t mean that we lose the opportunity to lead; it actually presents tremendous opportunity to do that and to demonstrate a strength of conviction. This is a fundamentally different Congress, and I think that means we need to have fundamentally different policies.

“I ran on a campaign message that the people closest to the pain should be closest to the power, driving it and informing the policy making. That was not a campaign slogan; that is a value and a lived practice in my organization, and it’s exactly why I was able to do things like found the Future of Transportation Caucus. It’s a reminder that we don’t just have to work with what already exists. We can create new things. That’s why I’ve put forward this People’s Justice Guarantee Resolution of bold, radical, re-imagining of our criminal legal system.

And so doing things like the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) fly-in, a first for Massachusetts because I’m the first CBC member elected to represent Massachusetts in the House of Representatives. For 230 years we’ve never had a person of color, a black woman, representing the commonwealth in the US House. 
 
Pressley last week released a video through the news site The Root sharing her personal battle with alopecia, an auto-immune disease that causes baldness. The video has since caught national attention for the way its sheds light on a common, yet rarely addressed topic. The congresswoman told the Reporter that she’s “floored,” and “dizzied” by the outpouring of love she has received. 

“First, let me just say that I have been overwhelmed and very humbled by the outpouring of love, support, and encouragement on the issue from my alopecia community but also from those that have been impacted by the issue of hair loss. Unfortunately, it’s a big community. It has been so meaningful for so many members of the hair loss community to reach out to me, and those are people who have suffered hair loss because of cancer and chemotherapy, or because of heredity, or because of alopecia— or you know, people who have shaved their head by choice and what it has been like navigating the world in that way.

“We do live in a world that has very finite ideas about what is socially acceptable and about standards of beauty, right?... I just knew that it was important to me as a part of my own healing to connect to a broader part of the alopecia community and also to create space for the millions who were suffering in silence. That’s what I’ve heard from a lot of alopecia sufferers – ‘Thank you for using your platform to shine a light on this autoimmune disease.’”
 
Pressley says she has been able to bring much of what she began working as an at-large Boston City Councillor in 2018 to Congress. 

“On the council, I was working on the issue of school push-out, and the criminalization of black girls in our schools, and the fact that in the city of Boston, black girls are expelled six times more than that of their white peers for the same infractions, creating a school-to-confinement pathway. That’s an issue I worked on with the council. Now I’ve introduced federal legislation to address that called the Ending Push-out Act.

“When I was on the council, I held hearings about the need for transportation, access, and equity, and now I’ve created the Future of Transportation Caucus. I worked on reproductive justice and sex ed and all of these things on the council, and now I vice-chair the Abortion Access and Rights task force under our Pro-Choice Caucus and I get to work on those issues every single day. The issue of equity in the cannabis industry – that’s an issue I get to address as part of the People’s Justice Guarantee Resolution.

“The issues that I led on at the municipal level I now get to address systemically and at scale on a macro level, and to codify my activism through lawmaking.

Now, what don’t I like? I don’t like the commute. I don’t like being away from my husband, our daughter, and our cat. But everything else, I just have such a peace and an alignment because I know where I’m supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to be doing, when I’m supposed to be doing it, with whom I’m supposed to be doing it.”
 
When asked how she might treat a re-election campaign differently, now that she’ll be running as an incumbent, Pressley said there’s no difference.

“I treat all my runs the same. I run hard, okay? There’s nothing about my organization that is complacent. I continue to be very present in community doing things like this — a census awareness event – equity agenda roundtables, town halls. I think we’ve done somewhere around 82 events in-community. Here’s the thing: Our campaign did introduce a disruptive and unconventional way of running and winning elections because we’re ushering in a paradigm shift where our politics are not about the transactional, they’re about transformation. It’s about power building and community building and the reason why I continue to work so hard and be so present is that people are relying on me and depending on me. I think our campaign was a mandate for hope and I intend to keep it [that way].” 

In November, Pressley endorsed Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s bid for the Democratic nomination for president. A cluster of her fellow progressive members of Congress have endorsed Bernie Sanders. The congresswoman calls Warren a ‘student of the people’ who speaks in policy. 

“She’s my senator, she’s my friend, she’s my partner. I’m honored to be her co-chair. And I want to make something abundantly clear. I didn’t give Elizabeth Warren anything. She earned my endorsement because I paid attention and I watched the campaign she was running. We have to out-organize everyone to take back this Senate and White House. Her commitment to down-ballot campaigns and recognizing the importance of the very organizing that I just told you was critical for our 2018 victory is one of the reasons why I’ve endorsed her. 

“This is a friendship that I’ve had for decades. Elizabeth Warren has been my partner in good on issues from ensuring the surviving family members who’ve been robbed of loved ones due to gun violence get the trauma supports that they deserve. She’s been my partner in good from a consumer protection standpoint [like] when I went to her about those families and individuals who had been victimized by for-profit colleges and universities who were engaging in deceptive business practices and predatory marketing. 

“The fact that she acknowledges and names racial injustice. You cannot lead and legislate on a prescription and solution for inequities and disparities if you don’t tell the truth, I want somebody to name my pain. I want someone who’s going to tell the truth about the role the federal government is playing in creating income inequality, and in creating a racial wealth gap. I know everyone talks about her being a great professor, but she’s a better student. She’s a student of the people and what I’ve seen is that she responds in what is my love language, and that is policy. These plans are about policy and they’re about power, and those are two things that I care a lot about.”