total time: 27.56 minutes
total words: 1557
[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.
[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. All right. Thanks so much for being with me here today. If you don't mind just introducing yourself with your name, pronouns, and a bit about who you are.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. My name is Anna Callahan. She, her, coming at you from Medford. I got to say that because I run my own podcast, and so I always say that at the beginning of mine. And I'm a city councilor. I'm a new city councilor, just got elected in November.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great. And we do have a special co-host with us today, my niece, Bailey Jo. is here so you may hear some baby noises in the background. The baby podcast. Yeah the new baby podcast rebranding. Yeah so I think before we get into the to talk about City Council I'm wondering if you could answer our question for everyone which you've answered before but if you you may have some updates. What is your favorite place to eat in Medford and what do you like to eat there?
[Anna Callahan]: Oh yeah, well it still is Oasis. Oasis is, it's close to us. My son, who's nine, loves to go there because they have a buffet and he can pick anything he wants. He always picks like bread and watermelon, you know, like unexciting nine-year-old things. And then I love their fish stew. It's probably my favorite dish on the menu. But when I, I love their buffet because I just try like everything. It's like so amazing. So I do really love Oasis. It's probably my go-to. But there are a lot of wonderful, wonderful places in Medford.
[Danielle Balocca]: And I go to Tamper a lot. Oh, yes, yes. Yeah. Shelley and I meet up there sometimes, for sure.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, Oasis. If I may, Tamper, in the wintertime, I started to go to Tamper every day, even if I wasn't going to work there, because they have their own homemade bone broth. Oh, I did see that on the menu mug of bone broth. Oh, man.
[Danielle Balocca]: I was thrilled. I would get it every day. Nice. That's a good tip. Thank you. So, yeah, so I think the last time we talked to you, you were campaigning for city council. And so and I know you you had a lot of important sort of values that you were running on. And I wonder and I know we also know you from incorruptible master your podcast. So I'm wondering if you could share or reflect on like kind of How you've held on to those values sort of what you've experienced so far on the city council.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. So, I have to say, the last like seven eight years of my life, I have been, I used to be a software engineer so I, you know, got. really motivated during the 2016 campaign, and I just decided to devote my life to understanding corruption in politics, which to me is like the number one problem in, you know, America, perhaps the world, right? And you know, it's a very deep topic. There are many, many ways that people get corrupted like the minute they step into office. But before we go into that, just to answer your question, I ran kind of to be able to implement some of the stuff that I have been talking about for years and years, implement directly. And it's really interesting to see how the pressure that the city council is under, the really, to me, expected pressure, but which of the different kinds of pressure are very intense at Medford City Council level. and which are really not happening. Today I will be talking about, what I'm mostly going to talk about is the intense pressure that we are under, that I consider one of the classic forms of corruption in government.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great, yeah, I would love to hear about that. I think we've been. I think Bailey would really like to hear about it. Bailey has a lot to say about corruption, I guess. But yeah, so I think, so this is, we're recording this beginning of August, and we sort of had an interesting budget season, and I think we, like the last city council meeting that I watched was, there's like an introduction of a, I guess a motion about an audit by, Councilor scare Peli but yeah, I guess I'm interested to hear what you know what the pressure has been like how you would talk about that. How you describe it.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, well, I'm gonna go ahead and dive in I I've really spent a lot of time looking at why politicians, and I want to define what I mean by corruption. So almost every single politician, they get elected, and they run on a platform. They say they're going to do certain things. And then either quickly or slowly, they move away from the policies they first ran on and toward policies that favor the wealthy. Like that's my, that is the way that I describe it. I think that happens to almost every single person who is elected. And like I said, a lot of different kinds of pressure, takes a bunch of different forms, but that is the single constant. There was an amazing report done, and at this point it's pretty old, it's maybe almost 20 years old, but it's called the Princeton Study, and it basically looked at 20 years of bills in Congress. their likelihood of passing, and their popularity among the bottom 90% of wage earners, I think it was wage and not wealth, and the top 10% of wage earners. And their final outcome, what they got out of all the data was that the desires of the bottom 90% of people in America have a minuscule, near zero, statistically insignificant impact on policy. So minuscule, near zero, I think the important one is statistically insignificant. You can't tell the difference between zero and the margin of error in the piece. Basically, the only people who are listened to at the congressional level are the top 10% of wage earners in America. And that is just a fact. So this happens at every level of government. It's not as extreme as at the congressional level. But that is what I'm talking about in terms of, the pressures that people are under to essentially move away from policies they ran on and move toward policies that favor people who are wealthier.
[Danielle Balocca]: How does that happen in Medford?
[Anna Callahan]: This is what's been so interesting is there is a group, I think there are two basic elements happening in Medford. There's corporate lobbying happening in Medford, and there's also the essential fact that a lot of studies have talked about, about just who reaches out to city council, statistically. Who feels like it's their right and they're entitled to email, call, show up at city council meetings, and all this. And statistically, that is people who are wealthier people more likely to own their homes, people who, you know, have more education. study after study, that's who reaches out to the city council, which means city councils hear from those people, and they think that their constituents have those views, even though there's this gigantic swath of people who, they're too busy, it's not on their radar, for whatever reason, cultural reason, they just don't reach out, and their opinion's probably pretty different.
[Danielle Balocca]: And so I think one of the bigger, I think one of the reasons I reached out to you originally was the sort of policies around housing and renting and landlords. And I don't know, when you're talking about like wage earners and wealth, like I do sometimes, like I think about inherited wealth in Medford and especially in that topic about landlords. And so I wonder how that's played into all of this.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, well, the corporate lobbying group that I'm talking about is the Greater Boston Real Estate Board. And the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, look, they're not from Medford. They're outside of our city. They're a corporate lobbying group. They represent a lot of gigantic corporate developers. They really are very good at making small landlords who maybe only own one or two properties believe that they're on their side. I really don't think they are. But they're good at making it seem like that. And they have spent thousands of dollars sending mailers against things like the real estate transfer fee and the other housing policies that we, six out of the seven of the people on the city council, we ran on. It was on all of our literature. It was on all of our websites. We talked about it at the doors. This was not hidden. This was something everybody knew about. And this is something that we won the election on, is housing policies like the real estate transfer fee. And you know, there's stuff written up in the Boston Globe about how the Greater Boston Real Estate Board is spending thousands and thousands, I don't know how much, of dollars across the state to tank that piece of legislation. Because it is a state, it's like proposed to be a statewide policy as well, right? Yeah. There's state enabling legislation, right? So there's, you can pass a home rule petition at the city council level, but there's no guarantee that you can unless the state enabling legislation passes. If the state-enabling legislation passes, because there's also that at the state level, then we would be able to pass it without a home loan petition. Right, right, right.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and so you said that this lobbying group is good at making it seem like they're on the side of landlords. What does that mean? What do you think is the understanding of these landlords in terms of their motivation?
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, so for example, with the real estate transfer fee, It's couched in this like, oh, they're going to make it apply to every home and it's going to be, you know, they couch it so that no matter what we say. The Greater Boston Real Estate Board has put forward what they think we're going to do and they're accusing us that we are going to do things that we aren't going to do and we've said publicly we're not going to do. So, you know, and I'll just give the example of like the state enabling legislation was only going to apply to houses that sell for over a million dollars and only apply to the amount over a million dollars. So like if you sell your house for a million dollars and one dollar, you would pay like 1% or 2% of one dollar.
[Danielle Balocca]: Similar to the fair share amendment? I think so. In terms of like taxes over or like fees over a million dollars. Exactly, exactly.
[Anna Callahan]: So, but you know, people would come and we would say, hey, like, you know, we are inclined to have a limit, like a minimum. And they were like, we don't believe you. okay well we're like public officials saying public statements and having public things on our public websites and you know I mean they can not believe us all day long but they're not believing us because the real estate you know the greater Boston is out of town corporate lobbying group is sending all this you know, is paying a bunch of money to influence voters. I mean, that's. Yeah, it is a real thing. And they they can do it just like any corporate lobbying group, because they have the money to pay people to do this all day long.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. It seems like it mirrors like other processes like federally and then also maybe on the city council where there is like this insistence on misinformation or like that, like and maybe there's an element of like, who do we trust? But yeah, I guess I wonder how you notice that or like what you think that's about.
[Anna Callahan]: Oh, I mean, the trust thing is very interesting because, I mean, the second part that I alluded to is who tends to reach out to city council. And I will say it seems like there is a group of, I don't know how many people, you know, but from among that group, They bring between 25 and 50 people to almost every city council meeting. Because they are the ones that are coming up and speaking at the podium, and there are fewer people from the other side of the policy debate that are coming up and speaking at the podium, they have really accused us of not listening to the community. And I want to get into this, because this is really very, I get it that they, that they may genuinely somehow believe that they are the majority opinion. I think some of them genuinely, and I have empathy, I do. I don't think these are bad people. And I think that their viewpoint on policy is totally valid. It's not mine, and it's not what I got elected to do. It's not what I ran on. And I'm going to do the things that I ran on because that's why I got elected. I got elected on a policy. I ran as a policy person. I don't like to talk about my background or who I am that much. I want to run on policy. So I'm going to do the things I got elected to do because that's why people elected me. But it is, to me, not helpful when people come And what they say is, you're not listening to the community. Because 25 people have gotten up and spoken in one direction. And when I say people don't come on the other side, that's not really true. They're often 10, 15, 20 people speaking in the other direction. But the loudest voices, are the ones from this particular group. And I'm, you know, if any of those people are listening to this podcast, which, you know, very likely they are not. It's not really geared toward that particular, you know, policy group of people. But I want to lay out, I want to at least explain why we are continuing to vote for the policies that we ran on in a way that hopefully people can understand. I want you to imagine that you voted for certain people to get elected to your city council. And hypothetically, yes, hypothetically, you voted to elect certain people to your city council. And this was an election in which it wasn't, this was really a policy election. There is no question, it wasn't just a policy election. It wasn't just that everybody had clear policies on there. Like websites on their literature it was also that this was kind of a binary election because. The 6 of us who got elected. We had literature that put all of our policies on one side and all of our names and pictures on the other side. So this wasn't like 12 people all running on different independent platforms, and then it just so happens that five or six of them tend to vote together. This was literally, you're voting for a set of policies. You're voting for those policies. That's the way that it was. And we didn't win three seats out of seven. We didn't win four seats out of seven. We didn't win five seats out of seven. We won six seats out of seven. And guess what? The runner-up was also on our policy platform. I mean, there is no greater political mandate than that. That is a mandate. And the reason that the people who support what we're doing aren't showing up to the city council is because why on earth should they show up? They gave us a freaking mandate. They worked hard to make sure we were elected to do the things we said we would do. And I want people on the other side to imagine, if you voted somebody into office on a policy platform, and then suddenly they weren't voting that way, you would be pissed. You would be pissed. You would be like, corruption. And you would be right. You would be right. This is one classic and very normal and natural human nature form of corruption. When a bunch of people show up and they're angry and they're accusing you, you don't want to stand up to them. It's hard. You got to be kind of brave. It's deeply unpleasant, deeply unpleasant.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, one of the statements I was struck by in that meeting about the proposal for the audit was Kit Collins talking about division, right? And when someone's trying to convince you that you're being divided, that's sort of the most divisive tactic. That was very spot on. Yeah, and I can't imagine it's comfortable to be in those meetings. And yeah, I don't know what my question is, but I feel like that's got to be hard.
[Anna Callahan]: I am so glad that you mentioned this, actually, because I do want to talk a little bit about culture. I think there's a cultural change happening on the State Council. And I, for one, think it's an incredibly healthy change. So I was not following the Medford City Council eight or 10 years ago. But what I've heard from people is that it was very common for city councilors to get up and just angry rant. Angry rant at the mayor, angry rant at something that happened, angry rant about a business that is or is not doing whatever. And that people felt like their city councilor was doing their job if they were standing up and angry ranting. You know, and look, it's not my style. I mean, I don't know. It's a little more of my style, I guess, than like some of the other people on the city council. You know, I will say Kit, bless her heart. She is the most calm. She's so level-headed. It's amazing. I can get a little fiery sometimes.
[Danielle Balocca]: How you wouldn't.
[Anna Callahan]: But anyway. I do want to talk a little bit about the way that angry ranting affects a body, you know, I've been involved in so many groups, right? It doesn't matter whether it's like an activist group doing like issue politics or electoral politics, or if it's, you know, I've lived in a ton of like intentional communities where like you meet every month just to figure out like who's doing their chores, you know? Whatever, like, and every group that I have been involved in has explicitly had some kind of basic guideline that says, assume good intent and don't use accusational language. Right? That's basic. That is basic to having a healthy group. As soon as you start lashing out with wild accusations that other people are liars and they're, you know, whatever, whatever. It is really, really unhealthy. And, you know, I have to, I can't help but comment that it is not uncommon for people who use intimidation, fear-mongering, accusation, and these other kinds of tactics to project. To accuse other people of doing what they themselves are doing. And I gotta say, I think that the division in our community is being created by fear-mongering, misinformation. angry ranting, accusational language, assuming worst intent, you know, these are not healthy. They are not healthy for any group. It doesn't matter if it's like inside of your family. I mean, imagine, you're in your family, you know, and you're, you know, one of your parents is accusing the other parent of like being a liar and a, you know, horrible person or whatever. I mean, that is not, everybody knows that is not healthy. And it's not any healthier in a city council or in an organizing group or really in any group. It is not healthy behavior. So I hope, I hope, and I'm happy to disagree with people. Like I said, I have empathy. I have a lot of empathy for people who, you know, their policies were the policies done in Medford. And I think that was because in the past, it was the majority opinion. And that's great, that's how it should be. But you know, the city councils tend to lag behind the residents in the policy making, right? And so I think that actually the majority opinion changed a long time ago. And it's only now that the city council has caught up to the majority opinion in Medford about policy, about housing policy, about environmental policy, about inclusion policy, about like just about, you name it. Like these things, We, I mean like the six of us who ran, you know, on similar policy platforms, our policy platforms are unquestionably the majority opinion in that. We know that because of the election, right? I mean, you know, there's no like wondering, right? And I want to say, I have empathy for the people who used to have, who probably genuinely think that they're in the majority. They genuinely just can't believe. It's hard for them to believe. I get that. And I'm not, you know, I don't have any disrespect for them having different policy opinions from me. And I don't even have disrespect for them in their feelings of loss and anger. It ain't healthy to lash out and wildly accuse people in the middle of public. It is not healthy. It's not good.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, it's not a good look. Yeah. And I think what you're speaking to is that perhaps some people have a sense of losing something. Something's being taken away from them, given to other people, which maybe doesn't reflect the reality. Maybe there is more of a push towards maybe more people getting what they need. But yeah, I think, and I think that behavior when it's on such a sort of, well, mostly public like display is not a great look like for those people, but also I think the model behavior of the rest of the city council, right? Like I think even the last group of city councilors, there were some that would shout back at people that were speaking, right? And like, and sometimes there wasn't like a shutting down of folks who were speaking disrespectfully to city councilors. So yeah, I think it is like, It's a little bit calmer in some ways, but I think you're hitting a good point there about just sort of the decorum in those meetings sometimes. Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. I do want to encourage folks listening. And unfortunately, it has also become really uncomfortable for people who agree with our policy platform to show up because you know, people will interrupt, people will accuse, people will, you know, like, you're literally going to get attacked if you come and speak. And that is very unfortunate. That is very unhealthy for the community, I think. But if there are some brave souls out there listening to this, I really want to encourage people to come and say, just say the sort of essential basic reality, which is I'm I hope you guys can understand that you're not the majority opinion in Medford anymore. The election proved that. I'm happy to disagree with you on policy, but you've got to accept. You have to accept you're not the majority anymore. We're the majority.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and I think, too, particularly in the housing conversation, I could call to mind several people that I know have lived in Medford for generations whose housing is at risk, like my own neighbors. So when older family members pass away and there's not a plan for how to keep your home, they will directly benefit from some of these policies. And so I think there's an open-mindedness that's maybe missing. But yeah also I would totally I have a podcast about this and I think it's scary to go to I've never been to I don't think an in person city council meeting I participated over zoom but even that is scary. And you're right like I think it is especially for the you know when we started this conversation those folks that may be more marginalized or more like. vulnerable, the thought of speaking to an angry mob, that's not easy. I do find emailing you all to be helpful as well. I'm glad you mentioned that.
[Anna Callahan]: That's why it was going to be my tip, which is you can email and have your comments read at the meeting. You don't have to be there. You don't have to show up on You can also show up on Zoom. Zoom is a little easier. And then you'll be able to speak and you're comfortably sitting in your room. Although, wow, I'll tell you, these people are like, you should prioritize us and not those people on Zoom. They are like, you know. They're like, okay, yeah, you know take out the time to yeah, you know, they took the time to show up at the ballot box and It's not like there weren't other people running.
[Danielle Balocca]: Mm-hmm. There were other people right exactly, right? Yeah, and also I mean taking the time to show up at a meeting isn't just about the time, right? People have like kids, they have like, you know, they can't always leave the house. So I do think the Zoom option does make it way more accessible and, you know, still a little scary, but yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, send them in over email and, you know, have them read by somebody who's already there. You know, that's a great way. You know, you could do that every week. Send something in. Yeah. You know, pick anything on the agenda and then throw in the comment about like, please city councilors do what you ran on. Do your policy platform. Please do pro-housing, pro-environment, because you have a mandate. The more people who comment on anything and at the bottom say, city councilors, I expect you to do what we voted you in to do.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, and I think we have focused a lot on the loud, the self-perceived majority. But there are some coalitions and community groups in Medford that are maybe more aligned with the work you're doing, like Safe Medford, like Housing Medford. So yeah, I wonder, are there groups that folks could connect with in order to feel a little bit more able to participate or support your work?
[Anna Callahan]: It is always great to join these volunteer organizations. The stronger they are, the more the city is able to do. Trees Medford, I'm such a big trees person. So Trees Medford is a wonderful group. They're all fantastic. Safe Medford, those folks, man, when there's certain issues come up, they are there. They know everything. They're so informed. They have the whole history of everything. They're fantastic. Housing Medford is a wonderful fantastic group doing a lot of like research all these groups. They do a ton of research I mean, they're really amazing. So I absolutely encourage people to get involved in the volunteer groups because they you know, they are They're doing a lot of the work that enables for policies to change and for and for reality to change, right? I mean not everything that needs to change is a policy. There's some things that just, you know, we got to change things in our city and some volunteering will make it happen.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I'm on the Charter Review Committee, Charter Study Commission. We're almost wrapping up our work, but I feel like that would not have happened without the work of volunteers trying to get that done for so long. So yeah, and I do think, I always think about like, Medford has a lot of really invested people, right? They're not always saying the things that you want to hear, but there's a lot of energy towards making our city a place that people like and enjoy.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great. Well, anything else for today? Anything else you want to wrap up with?
[Anna Callahan]: You know, I think that's it for me. I could have come here and talked about a policy. I could have come here, whatever. But the reality is that the pressure at the city council is so ugly it is so difficult and it makes it very difficult for us to do our jobs because like often this group of people will come and they will each speak for five minutes three times I think we've cut it down to three now but you know we would be up past one in the morning like yeah many many many meetings yeah up past one in the morning and you know it's just really hard for us to do our jobs and I will I will comment like we have a really great We have really great rules around people speaking at the public comment period during city council. It is unfortunate that it is almost exclusively being used by this one group of people and not by the rest of the community. Because in surrounding cities, I tell you, and in other cities, like I've worked with cities across city councils and city councilors and mayors across the country, it is very normal for there to be one public comment period. It happens at the beginning. You get two minutes. When you're done, you go home because there's no more public comment for the rest of the meeting. We allow people to speak on every agenda item for three minutes each, sometimes multiple times. We have an unbelievably robust ability for people to come out. speak their minds on issues. And I think that's a good thing, right? I just, I hope that it becomes less, the more accusational it is, the more likely it's going to be ratcheted down. And I hope that it becomes something that people want to use and want to come and you know, let us know their opinions about things. So I encourage people to come. You know, come and speak on things that are maybe less controversial. You can say your piece, you can talk about really anything you want to.
[Danielle Balocca]: And thank you for continuing to uphold the values that you were elected on.
[Anna Callahan]: I'm going to, you know, it's funny, I had one of my volunteers who was really talking about optics. And we had this long discussion, because I have volunteers and I encourage, if anybody wants to volunteer with me, I have a couple of different teams. I have a group that meets with me before every city council meeting and we go over every item on the agenda, you know, and we, what questions should we ask of whom? Should we reach out to different, you know, coalition partners? Should we, you know, should I like reach out to the, that's why I reached out to the state auditor and asked some questions, you know. And I get such fantastic like information and even just like community, I hear from them because they know people in different parts of the city. So that's wonderful if anybody wants to volunteer there. And I have another group that is helping to set up. some listening sessions among people who typically don't come to city council, even people who typically don't vote. But in my opinion, doesn't matter if you own property, doesn't matter if you voted in the election, you're a valid human being. You are worthy of consideration in our policy platform. And I was going somewhere with this. Volunteers? Yeah, one of my volunteers, oh, was talking about optics. And we had this whole discussion. And at the end of the discussion, I was like, you know, the problem with being so concerned about optics is that it's like one of the elements of corruption. If you're so concerned about the way that you're seen, and some attack that somebody is doing that might seem valid to people on the outside, then you're not going to genuinely uphold your values. You've got to think about your values as an elected official. I mean, I ran on things because those are genuinely my values. Not because I thought it would get me to win. And so this question of optics is like, oh, you don't want to look bad. I'm a lot less concerned about looking bad than I am about being bad. I'm concerned that I, because of optics, might actually do something that is not my values and the values I got elected to pass policy on. So that, to me, is the most important thing, is that I got elected on a values platform. And sure, there's details. I could be convinced that, oh, I should change this detail or that detail. There's things about the real estate transfer fee I think should be changed. There are things that, like listening to people, I do want to hear more and get more opinions. I want to get opinions of landlords. I want to get opinions of renters. I want to get opinions of homeowners here and there. but I'm not going to be so concerned and that's what this is one of the goals and one of the not goals but like you know this is one of the reasons why this kind of things kind of accusation works well is because people are so worried about how they look right and to me you know in the end you look the way you vote yeah if you vote the way that you ran because that's why people elected you then you probably don't have a job and that's that's my it's what I intend to do oh hell yeah that I mean
[Danielle Balocca]: So yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: And you know, Bailey is happily sleeping right now. She's calmed by the idea.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, exactly. She's calmed by the current state of the city council. All right. Well, Anna, thank you so much for being here. And yeah, hopefully we'll chat soon. Wonderful. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Keshaman. Music is made by Hendrick Guidonis. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites. Never Bites. Good job.
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