No matter how long you or your family has lived in Cambridge, we were all new once, and Cambridge has the ability and the obligation to care for longtime lower-income residents as well as those seeking to move here.

Cambridge’s tale of two cities is widely documented. But it has failed to make any meaningful effort at racial equity, and that has to change.

The Mayflower Poultry shop is closing its doors after 89 years of business and moving to Boston to open as an online business. The company’s “Live Poultry Fresh Killed” sign is up for auction Thursday but instead should be preserved and protected.

The Affordable Housing Overlay made some residents think more seriously about housing affordability, and it made Cambridge itself begin to address this issue citywide. Finding examples of development that meet the AHO’s stated goals is harder to do.

Clear-cut successes are uncommon in public policy. For a policy to go from idea to debate to passage to implementation, making concrete positive impacts on people’s lives in the span of a few years, is exceptional.

Household names have increasingly included social justice in their branding. It’s sometimes difficult to know whether these brands believe in their socially conscious messaging or whether their mission is drumming up engagement with performative activism.

The City Council’s respect for free speech has long been a bit dodgy, easily sacrificed for what members think constitutes a well-run meeting – and a well-run city where you can be part of the dialogue if you say what people want to hear.

The city plans to cut down trees at the Tobin/Vassal Lane property that it wouldn’t let anyone else remove. To be a good government, you need to live by your own laws and lead by example.

If we understand the science, we should be willing to pause and adjust construction projects at the Tobin School, Jefferson Park and the Volpe site to save mature trees, protecting environmental health and keeping Cambridge’s urban forest from collapsing.

Residents who have been meeting weekly on the topic of reparations say they want more time to discuss what the policy means for them, so one is developed that reckons with Cambridge’s founding role in slavery and reflects the voices of more people.