Leading with Latitude — What We Can Learn from Former Massachusetts State House Representative Jeffrey Sánchez
By Monica Vohra
Democrats and Republicans are more divided today than at almost any other time in United States history. According to a 2018 survey, when asked to describe members of the opposite political party, 61% of Democrats described Republicans as racist, bigoted, and/or sexist, and 49% of Republicans described Democrats as ignorant. These statistics capture the underlying tension between the two political parties.
At a particularly polarizing time when it is challenging to compromise and negotiate, Jeffrey Sánchez, former Massachusetts State House Representative and Harvard alumnus, reminds us that “change doesn’t happen in a vacuum.”
On Friday, February 15, 2019, Dr. Robert Blendon, Senior Associate Dean for Policy Translation and Leadership Development, had the unique opportunity to interview his former student, Jeffrey Sánchez, in the Leadership Studio. Sánchez shared his experiences as a leader in Massachusetts and a young man of Puerto Rican heritage growing up in the neighboring community of Mission Hill.
Ties to Harvard
Sánchez is a current Harvard University Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow. He graduated with a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2011. While he has fond memories of his time as a student at Harvard and left with lifelong relationships, Sánchez’s impressions of the university were not always positive. He recalls how it felt to grow up next door to one of the most elite institutions in the United States:
“We used to want to go play in that quad where the grass was really green, because the parks were all messed up over here in Mission Main. Between the garbage and — we were living in a place that folks wanted to shut down. So let’s just say the grass over here was really greener.”
For Sánchez, the train tracks that separate the university from Mission Main, a Boston Housing Authority property that had been repeatedly ignored, symbolize a distinct barrier between Harvard and the greater community in which it is located — a relationship that has been historically tenuous.
An Activism that is pure
Growing up in the Mission Main housing development, Sánchez directly witnessed the impact that one person’s voice can have, especially when compounded with the voices of others.
Sánchez grew up among activists. His mother, along with other women living in his neighborhood, fought to make the Mission Main housing development and its residents a priority for local legislators. It was his mother’s health advocacy that brought Sánchez and his family from Washington Heights in New York City to Boston to seek treatment at Children’s Hospital. Sánchez’s sister was sick and his mother was in search of better healthcare. They quickly found that
“[the] hospital… wasn’t taking kids in the emergency room..They were doing everything through outpatient visit at the time. And being Puerto Rican, being Hispanic and being black from the south, even though we lived across the street, a lot of the folks we grew up with were receiving health care over at City Hospital.”
Seeing the power of advocacy through his mother, who grew up on a tobacco farm in Puerto Rico, left a lasting impression on Sánchez. Advocacy taught him how people from historically oppressed backgrounds continue to be deprived of basic human needs, despite living in close proximity to communities of overwhelming wealth.
While some may have anticipated a political future for Sánchez, he had never planned for it. He certainly did not foresee playing an integral role in shaping and strengthening the place he called home. With plans to work in finance, Sánchez was surprised when the trajectory of his career took a very sharp turn in 1995. That year, former Mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, asked Sánchez to join his team. Sánchez’s decision to take the offer was largely based on a mutual commitment to improve the lives of under-resourced and marginalized communities in Boston.
Principle of Shared Responsibility
Sánchez spent 16 years representing Brookline, Mission Hill, and Jamaica Plain in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and most recently served as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 2017–2018. In that time, he celebrated several victories, including criminal justice reform, universal health coverage, and gun control legislation. Sánchez attributes his success primarily to meeting and listening to people. Whether it was his colleagues or constituents, he felt it was important to “follow people where they’re at. It’s the way to find out who they are.” Sánchez’s strength lies in his ability to construct policy based on people’s stories and interests without managing to lose sight of the individual.
“Everybody has different interests, and you’re trying to figure out how do you cobble things together. And I think the success that I’ve had is in that. Is trying to figure out, what do people really value? And, ultimately, how does it help the most vulnerable amongst us in such a state that has such incredible wealth? And I think that Massachusetts, we’ve committed ourselves to that.”
For Sánchez, the Criminal Justice Reform Bill was particularly challenging. He had personal feelings about the system, having seen boys of Puerto Rican and Black descent disproportionately incarcerated while growing up in Boston. The chance to rewrite laws around mandatory minimum sentencing, court reform, and more, was both rewarding and humbling. Sánchez recognizes that serving the community he came from placed him in a unique position. He had to balance his ability to accurately represent the community while also meeting its expectations.
Healthcare reform in Massachusetts was a personal point of pride, having dealt with the challenges for his sister’s care. Sánchez reflected on the fact that:
“We made sure that healthcare for children was protected. Healthcare for the working-poor protected. We made sure that we provided copay-free birth control. We wrote legislation that mandated prescribing limits. We did things in healthcare that people thought that we weren’t going to be able to do given the size of the program itself.”
In order to accomplish all that he did, Sánchez had to compromise and work with people of various backgrounds. He found strength in shared interests and responsibility. When asked by Dr. Blendon how he made it work with Massachusetts governors, Sánchez admitted that, as a “progressive liberal,” he did not want to like current Governor Charlie Baker. It was tempting to make assumptions based on party affiliation alone, but Sánchez found that he and Governor Baker shared core values (e.g. meeting the needs of marginalized populations). They shared a set of goals that, over time, resulted in groundbreaking legislation. Sánchez went on to say:
“And, ultimately, what I noticed was it’s groups of people. Catalysts of people. And be it gay marriage or be it universal coverage, there was a shared principle. Everybody has shared responsibility to keep this thing going. Business. Individuals. Government. And government from the state to the federal. And even local communities, as well. And that’s how we’ve kept it together.”
Looking to the Future
While surveys suggest that people are more divided in the United States than ever before, perhaps it is a good time to explore common ground. A 2018 poll conducted by the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland, found that there is overwhelming support for criminal justice reform. Specifically, 64% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats support making retroactive adjustments for sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses. This bipartisan support translated into actionable change when the “First Step Act” (H.R. 5682), was signed into law at the end of 2018. While it is only one example that is far from perfect, working together to reshape the criminal justice system, a manifestation of institutional racism, is both promising and worthy of pride.
As the United States embarks on the 2020 presidential election season, perhaps the question to ask is: who among the sea of candidates will take the time to identify what unites people? Because once elected officials look beyond party lines to acknowledge and engage in the values shared among people in the United States, only then can the American people start to heal from the recent escalation of distrust, fear, and hate.
Sánchez reinforces the power of shared values in creating impactful change. He left the audience with one last message on the strength of individual activism:
“you gotta follow your heart. And at the end of the day, there’s going to be a crossroads where it’s, OK, why am I doing this? If I do this or if I do that. But I think you gotta just follow your heart. And frankly, that’s what I did my entire time.”
Story by Monica Vohra, a Master of Public Health student at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Monica received her Medical degree from Morehouse School of Medicine and her Bachelor’s degree from Emory University. She practices as a primary care physician at a community clinic in Boston. Monica has strong interests in delivering healthcare with a racial equity lens, de-stigmatizing mental health and health policy.
Story edited by Sherine Andreine Powerful, a Doctor of Public Health student at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. A Diasporic Jamaican, she received her Bachelor’s degree from Yale University and holds a Master of Public Health degree from Columbia University. She is interested in gender and sexual justice in the English-speaking Caribbean, as well as resilience and anticolonial sustainable development in the context of climate change.
