The Merrimack Valley Project’s nonpartisan People’s Agenda forum pressed state representative and U.S. Senate candidates on housing, immigration, and health care — with continued TPS protection for Haitians among the commitments demanded from the stage
LAWRENCE, Mass. — The candidates did most of the talking, but the community wrote the script. At the Merrimack Valley Project’s People’s Agenda Regional Town Hall, residents and organizers set the terms of the conversation, telling candidates for state and federal office which issues they would be judged on: housing, immigration, and health care.
The forum, run by the Merrimack Valley Project (MVP), a nonpartisan community organizing nonprofit, centered on a simple reversal of the usual campaign dynamic. Rather than letting candidates deliver stump speeches, organizers presented a “People’s Agenda” drawn from priorities residents had identified, then asked each candidate to respond directly.
An organizer opened the evening by laying down ground rules that underlined the group’s nonpartisan status. “Let’s be respectful of everyone’s right to their own opinion, as well as the right for each of us to disagree,” she told the room. “Because we are a nonpartisan nonprofit organization, we cannot have any partisan activity — any campaigning like holding signs or fundraising or flyers.” Spanish-language translation was offered in a corner of the hall.
“Turning Our Struggle Into Power”
The most striking moment of the night came not from a candidate but from an MVP leader who used her own life to explain why health care topped the agenda. Growing up, she said, her mother held the family’s health insurance as a preschool teacher — but was laid off every summer, leaving the family uninsured for months at a time. They learned to stockpile medications before summer and hope no one got sick.
That system broke when she was 15. She needed a refill a week before coverage resumed, and the medication cost $3,000 — money the family did not have.
“This cost represented groceries for the next couple of months for our household,” she told the audience. “Do I not breathe properly for a week, or do we sacrifice eating? This decision should not be something a teenager has to think about.”
She turned the memory into a call to the room. “Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt powerless,” she said, and hands went up across the hall. “Who benefits from us feeling powerless? I am here today to remind everyone, both in this room and those beyond, that we, by being here, are powerful. We are turning our struggle into power.”
Her message set the frame for everything that followed: everyone must have access to proper health care, no one should fear detention or deportation for stepping outside their home, and housing is a right.
Organizers made it clear that the evening was meant to explain how people vote. “While we listen to the candidates’ responses to the People’s Agenda today, I ask that we reflect not only on the topics the questions raise, but on how each politician answers them,” an MVP leader said. “We are here to listen to their answers and use that information to shape how we vote in the upcoming elections.”
Two Panels: State Representatives, Then U.S. Senate
The program was divided into two panels. The first brought together candidates for the Massachusetts House of Representatives from districts across the Lowell area, including the 16th, 17th, and 18th Middlesex and First Essex seats. Among those who introduced themselves were Harini Aiyer and John Drinkwater, both running in the 17th Middlesex; Tara Hong, the incumbent seeking a second term in the 18th Middlesex; Lua Betts, a candidate in the 16th Middlesex; and candidates Elena Reyes and Steven Roth. Several described the districts they hoped to represent as among the most diverse in the state, socioeconomically, culturally, and racially.
The second panel, from 5 to 6 p.m., featured the three U.S. Senate candidates who accepted MVP’s invitation: Democrat Seth Moulton, Republican John Deaton, and Joe Tache of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
The incumbent, Sen. Ed Markey, did not attend.
Organizers pressed the Senate candidates hardest on the same three priorities. On health care, the candidates converged from very different starting points — Moulton calling it “a human right” that should not depend on immigration status, Deaton grounding his answer in his own recovery from opioid addiction and a plan to break up dominant insurers, and Tache arguing for single-payer coverage and framing the country’s struggles as a failure to put people’s needs over corporate profit. On immigration, all three addressed the enforcement fears gripping their audiences, each voicing support for immigrant communities and criticizing the current wave of federal actions.
The Questions That Matter Most to Haitian Families
For CTN’s audience, the sharpest portion came in a rapid round in which candidates answered a series of yes-or-no questions by holding up cards. Organizers asked whether candidates would guarantee legal representation for every immigrant facing deportation who cannot afford an attorney — stating pointedly that they were “not putting caveats in this particular question.”
They then asked directly about Temporary Protected Status: whether candidates supported continued legal protections allowing Haitian and Syrian immigrants with TPS to live and work in the United States. Another asked whether candidates would back a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have built their lives in the country. Each question drew applause from a crowd for whom these are not abstractions but daily anxieties, as Haitian families across Massachusetts navigate the end of TPS protections and the loss of work authorization and health coverage that came with it.
“The Community Saw You”
Closing the evening, MVP leader Alejandra Ortiz Leal of Haverhill returned the focus to the residents who had shaped the night. “Today we were able to present the People’s Agenda to elected officials and candidates on the top three priorities identified: housing, immigration, and health care,” she said.
“Candidates, tonight we accomplished something truly special,” she continued. “You spent your time with the community that you represent. You listened to the people’s priorities. You answered the questions. And tonight the community saw you, and the community listened to you.”
She closed with the note organizers had sounded all evening — that accountability runs in both directions. “Just as we expect our elected officials to step up into the power of representing our community with accountability, honor, and respect,” she said, “we must take a moment to think about the choices that we, as individuals and as a community, need to make.”
Massachusetts holds its state primary on September 1, with the general election November 3.
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CTN covered the People’s Agenda Regional Town Hall as a community event. Coverage of participating candidates is not an endorsement of any candidate or party.
