Representative Tami Gouveia: Knock on doors, knock on doors, knock on doors

You can read the full transcript here.Hi, this is Anna Callahan and you’re listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts.  Our goal is to help people understand state politics: we’re investigating why it’s so broken, imagining what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and reporting on how you can get involved. Today I’m interviewing Representative Tami Gouveia.Tami Gouveia is the State Representative of Acton, Concord, Carlisle and Chelmsford and was first elected in November of 2018.  She is most active in addressing the opioid epidemic, our failing transit system, and our  climate crisis. Rep. Gouveia filed five pieces of legislative this session to ensure access to treatment and humane, evidence-based support for individuals suffering from substance use disorder. A public health social worker, Tami is committed to enacting policies that support the health and well-being of all Massachusetts residents and our future generations.Tami Gouveia recognizes the need to increase state revenue if we’re going to improve people’s lives in areas like housing, transportation, and climate change.  You’ll hear her talk about how inequality is not just a moral question about making sure people have the basic necessities of life, but that it’s also a question of the long-term sustainability of our economy.Rep Gouveia also has some great examples of finding constituents where they are — including waiting on a train platform to talk to people about the commuter rail. To jump on my soapbox about this issue again, we should demand of every politician that they spend time and energy talking to their constituents who don’t show up at activist meetings, and who may not even be voting.  Listening to, educating, and mobilizing the 99%.Without further ado, here is my interview with Rep Tami Gouveia.Anna Callahan: So I have the great pleasure of being here with representative Tammy Gouveia, from the Acton, Concord area of Massachusetts. Thank you so much for being on.Tami Gouveia: It's great to be here. I appreciate it.Anna Callahan: Absolutely. So we're here to talk about state politics and my first question is like, why, why state politics? Everybody's working on national politics and then a lot of people I know are going to local politics. What, what is interesting about state politics?Tami Gouveia: That's a really great and fair question. Some of your listeners may know this, but most probably don't -- I grew up in Lowell and I saw a lot of need and a lot of human suffering around me while growing up. And I also saw the role that government could play in making people's lives better and addressing the problems that families face.So I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be involved in some way professionally contributing to making people's lives better and always in the back of my mind was the thinking that I would run for office, particularly at the state level. So I'm 45 now. It's been going on for, this thinking has been going on for a very long time. And so that's why state politics for me. I do pay attention to what's happening both locally and at the federal level. But I think there's a lot of hope for a lot of people about what's happening at the state level that they see opportunities to try to pass innovative policies and create some change at the state level that then can eventually bubble up to the federal level. So I think that's the why of state politics...