Editor’s note: Cambridge Day does not endorse candidates or positions. Views expressed in this column are those of the writer.

Last week, Cambridge hosted a transparency forum for state Senate candidates running to represent the 2nd Middlesex district. I was proud to participate because transparency is the issue that brought me into public service in the first place.

I’m not a career politician, but as a daughter of immigrants I was drawn to state advocacy and later to run for state Representative after Donald Trump’s first term in office, the Massachusetts legislature passed zero bills to protect immigrants. This failure didn’t reflect the values of Massachusetts residents who welcomed and supported my family and so many of our immigrant neighbors.

I found this outrageous because hundreds of people testified in favor of the Safe Communities Act, representing countless more who supported it but couldn’t take a whole day off to wait hours in a packed hearing room. Courageous immigrants, including parents, children, workers, as well as faith leaders, community organizers and even some in law enforcement, came to the State House and told their stories. They asked for basic protections: that local police not be turned into an extension of ICE, that courthouses and schools remain safe, that families not be ripped apart. The response from Beacon Hill was silence. The Safe Communities Act died in committee with no vote.

How was that possible? Because legislators on Beacon Hill kept most votes they took hidden from the public. Committee votes were secret and there was no way to know which legislators killed the bill and which ones fought for it. The system protected legislators from accountability, and it did not protect immigrants from deportation.

That is why I co-founded Act on Mass, the only organization in Massachusetts dedicated to fighting for legislative transparency. We ran ballot questions across dozens of districts asking voters whether committee votes should be public, and we won with an average of 87% support. There are no shortcuts — we organized, we advocated, and we built power. That work is what led me to run for state Representative: because I saw that the lack of transparency was the reason our immigrant neighbors were left unprotected. Their silence was a choice, and secrecy made that choice possible.

After years of advocating inside and outside the State House as your State Representative, we won a historic change: all committee votes are now publicly available and all written testimony is posted after hearings. And these transparency reforms made all the difference when Trump returned to office. Late last year, some Beacon Hill lawmakers tried to claim there was nothing the state could do to protect immigrants, again. But I, alongside many of you, made our demands clear, and this time we proved them wrong.

This year, the Massachusetts legislature is passing two major bills that will protect immigrant families right here in the Commonwealth. The PROTECT Act (House version and Senate version) establishes statewide standards that prohibit police from inquiring about a person’s immigration status, restrict the use of state and local resources for civil immigration enforcement, and limit ICE from making arrests at courthouses. The Consumer Data Privacy Act (House version and Senate version)  includes a blanket ban on the sale of precise geolocation data that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been purchasing from data brokers to target and track down immigrants.

These are massive steps forward, and they happened because we made votes and testimony public, thereby making it impossible for legislators to quietly kill bills that the vast majority of their constituents supported. With transparency, people across the state demanded that the State House take action to protect immigrant families. That is how change works: by shining light on the problem so we can organize, advocate, and win.

If you weren’t able to attend the forum and want to learn more about where the candidates for this Senate seat stand on transparency, you can read the Cambridge Day report [editor’s note: we will link to the recording when it is available]. And if you want to view a breakdown of these bills and stay informed about what you can do to strengthen them, please sign up for my newsletter at electerika.com or follow me on social media for updates. This fight is not over, but we have come a long way from the days when hundreds of people could be met with silence on Beacon Hill.

The writer represents the 27th Middlesex District (Somerville) in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and is a candidate for the 2nd Middlesex State Senate seat, which includes Porter Square and North Cambridge, Somerville, Medford and parts of Winchester.

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