Diverse and driving change: How Boston youth are tackling the big issues | Bay State Briefing

John L. Micek

Mon, August 25, 2025 at 9:40 AM UTC

9 min read

Diverse and driving change: How Boston youth are tackling the big issues | Bay State Briefing

Good Monday morning, everyone.

Three Boston-area youth groups will spend the next 10 months working on projects as diverse as advocating for evidence-based policymaking on science to encouraging immigrants to register and vote in high-stakes elections in 2025 and 2026.

They're part of a contingent of 500 young people across 27 states who are participating in the first Carnegie Young Leaders for Civic Preparedness fellowship program.

It's a $2.05 million initiative from Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Institute for Citizens & Scholars .

"We wanted to have a robust group of young people, so that there were young people from both urban environments, rural environments [and] young people across the ideological spectrum as well," the program's director, Audra Watson, told MassLive last week. "And so we were looking to have as diverse a cohort as we possibly could."

Participants in the program range in age from 14 to 24, Watson said.

Each 5-member group has a mentor, with whom they meet monthly to help shape the project and keep it on track. These mentors generally have expertise in the areas in which the groups are focusing, Watson said.

The groups started their work with a kick-off ceremony in July and will wrap up their work by June 2026, when a new group of 100 teams nationwide will begin new projects.

"Our goal is that by the 250th anniversary of the country, we will have had 200 teams or a thousand young people in every state and the District of Columbia, working on issues in their community," Watson said.

Each participant is paid a stipend because "if they weren't doing this, they would probably be out having jobs," Watson said. "And we feel really strongly about honoring young people's time and their work.

Here's a quick look at the Boston-area groups and what they're doing:

Community Arts Initiative for Post-COVID Learning Recovery: This group uses arts-based education and creative kits to help Boston youth of color reengage with school.
Students for Science:This group is charged with advocating for evidence-based policymaking and separating science from misinformation.
The Beacon Project:This group has taken on empowering immigrants and low-income residents to participate in local elections through multilingual outreach and pop-up voter events.

At a time of increased political polarization, each of the groups will reach across that divide to find people who can help them tackle the challenges they've taken on, Watson said.

"The idea is really to help young people focus on the skill of collaborative problem solving," Watson said. " ... Because they're asked to have conversations with people in their communities and not just engage people who ... are thinking about the idea in the same way as they are thinking about [it], but to also bring in others who may have different ideas and to hear those different ideas."

And while they may not solve all the problems of the world when they're done, each group will leave with a "sense of agency, with a way to tackle the issues that are really vexing their communities," Watson said.

A board above the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange shows the closing number for the S&P 500 on Friday, June 27, 2025.AP Photo/Richard Drew

Divining the mood of the Fed

Susan Collins , the president of Boston's Federal Reserve Bank, pointing to inflation concerns, has said she might be open to an interest rate cut as soon as next month.

According to The Wall Street Journal , Collins said she saw risks of weaker-than-expected employment trends, and said higher tariffs might depress purchasing power, which could weaken consumer spending.

If the data provided for the Fed's September meeting points to the "risks of worsening labor market conditions relative to those risks of elevated inflation … then it may be appropriate soon to begin dialing back" interest rates, Collins, who has a vote on rates this year, said, according to the newspaper.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., talks rising prices and President Donald Trump during an appearance on WBZ-TV's "Keller @Large" program on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025.Screen Capture

Speaking of data ...

A new data drop from U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren's office runs down the updated benefit cuts for Massachusetts residents now that the dust has settled on President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill."

Pointing to data compiled by the progressive-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities , Warren, D-Mass., said some 350,000 state residents will have their Medicaid coverage "threatened" by the bill, while cuts to food assistance will affect 104,000 Bay Staters.

The bill also will hike energy costs by $300 a year for every household across the state, Warren, D-Mass., said in an email last week.

While the tax provisions of the sprawling bill are taking effect right away, most of the benefit cuts in the bill will not become effective until after the 2026 midterm elections.

That will likely not stop Democrats from making an issue out of it as they try to recapture the U.S. House and trim GOP margins in the U.S. Senate.

"Republicans sold out working Americans to make life better for a handful of billionaires," Warren said, previewing that message. "Kicking hundreds of thousands of people in Massachusetts off their health care and food assistance — while raising premiums and energy bills — makes clear exactly who Republicans are working for. I'm not giving up the fight until we reverse these cuts."

The Boston skyline seen across the Charles River from Cambridge.Hadley Barndollar

Monday numbers

Boston is becoming ever more diverse. But in some ways that matter, it's also becoming more compartmentalized, according to a new study.

For starters, income inequality is getting worse, according to new data from Boston Indicators , the research arm of The Boston Foundation.

Metro Boston's median income of $112,500 in 2023 was the fifth-highest of the state's major metropolitan areas, finishing only behind San Jose, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Seattle.

And after stagnating between 1990 and 2015, the region's inflation-adjusted income jumped by nearly 16% between 2015 and 2023, the data show.

But the most significant jumps largely have been confined to the region's most affluent residents. Between 1980 and 2000, the income for the top 20% increased by 98% between 2015 and 2023, while the income for the top 5% soared by 150%.

And since 2015, the income of that top 5% saw incomes rise by more than 21% — more than twice the rate of the bottom quintile, the data showed.

Meanwhile, the region's white population dipped from 92% in 1980 to 67% by 2020. Black residents accounted for 8% of the region's population by 2020, while Hispanic residents made up 12%, up from 6% each in 2000. The region's Asian community grew from 5% to 10% of the population during that same 20-year time frame, the data show.

Also:The study found less isolation between the city's Black and white residents. But the city's Hispanic and Asian residents have become more isolated.

That's not because they're living in separate neighborhoods, but rather, because "as these populations have grown significantly since 1980, it has become more likely that members of these groups live near one another — even if overall sorting patterns haven't changed much," researchers found.

Jeromie Whalen at Mountain View Farm in Easthampton. August 20, 2025. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)

They said it

"When we have a lack of leadership from the top, it makes my job a hell of a lot harder. It makes the jobs of nurses and union members and … the farmers, like literally everybody's life harder if we don't have leadership that can stand up to what we've been experiencing."

— Jeromie Whalen, the first-time candidate who's challenging U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-1st District , in the 2026 Democratic primary.

A view of the Massachusetts State House in Boston, looking across Beacon Street from the Boston Common.(John L. Micek/MassLive)

What goes on

U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-6th District, holds a roundtable and news conference this Monday (Aug. 25) morning to call attention to efforts to fight climate change on the North Shore, where rising sea levels and stronger storms threaten homes and businesses alike.

For those of you playing along at home, the event comes in the midst of National Emergency Management Awareness Month. The news conference gets rolling at 10:30 a.m.

Moulton, of Salem, will be joined at the event at Conomo Point in Essex by local officials from Essex, Salisbury and Gloucester, his office said in a statement.

James Taylor performed Sunday, June 29 at CMAC in Canandaigua, N.Y.Warren Linhart

Turned up to 11

Singer/songwriter James Taylor, whose ties to the Bay State run deep, plays a pair of dates at the MGM Music Hall on Aug. 26 and Aug. 27 ( tickets and more info here ). With a catalogue as deep and diverse as his, I could pretty much pick any tune.

But we'll go with " Your Smiling Face " from 1977's "JT" LP because it was recently pointed out to me that the bass line, played by session legend Leland Sklar, is kind of epic.

Mayor Michelle Wu speaks at a press conference in front of City Hall, where she said Boston would not comply with demands from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that the city cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts.Tréa Lavery/MassLive

Your Monday long read

Writing for Esquire , politics columnist Charlie Pierce (who has Massachusetts roots), homes in on the Trump administration's efforts to bring so-called "sanctuary jurisdictions," such as Boston to heel.

Mayor Michelle Wu has become something of a national spokesperson for mayoral resistance, telling the administration in no uncertain terms last week that her city would not comply with its demands to throw the gates open to immigration agents. That, in turn, prompted the White House to vow it would "flood" Boston with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

This resistance is "active opposition to a reckless and inhumane policy agenda," Pierce wrote.

"My guess, more than a few of these people will be willing to be arrested in their opposition. They've looked at the national and local polls, and they have noticed that courageous anti-authoritarianism is also the smart political move," he wrote.

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